Open Innovation Methods
3.1 Redesign Challenge.gov as a Platform.
Challenge.gov is the government’s website that catalogues opportunities for the public to provide solutions to issues that government is working to address such as providing better access to services for veterans and empowering women and families. In 2016, the United States will launch a new version of Challenge.gov to make it easier for the public to discover, understand, and participate in prizes and challenges. The GSA will also release an open source version of Challenge.gov to enable implementation by governments around the world to improve citizen engagement, encourage entrepreneurship, and develop breakthrough solutions to meet national needs.
3.2 Coordinate Open Innovation Opportunities Across Government with Innovation Toolkit and CitizenScience.gov
Federal agencies will catalog their current open innovation activities including prizes, challenges, citizen science, and crowdsourcing activities. Agencies will list all prizes and challenges on Challenge.gov. In addition, the GSA will create a new project database that lists citizen science and crowdsourcing projects 13 from across government. To continue to build the evidence base for open innovation, agencies will contribute metrics-driven case studies for open innovation activities to the Open Innovation Toolkit.
GSA launched CitizenScience.gov to accelerate the use of crowdsourcing and citizen science across government by providing a searchable catalog of federally supported citizen science projects, a toolkit to assist with designing and maintaining projects, and a gateway to a federal community of practice to share best practices.
3.3 Redesign Open.GSA.gov Portal
Open.gsa.gov is an Open Innovation Initiative in the Office of the Chief Technical Officer’s Digital Service divison. As the current developer portal for all GSA data, APIs, and code open to the public, the site acts as a resource for developers who are interested in building applications using GSA data and web services. In late 2016, a new version of Open.gsa.gov will be launched with a refreshed design emphasizing a user-focused experience and increased engagement with the public.