In his Strategy for Innovation (published a year ago), President Obama called for government agencies to “increase and harness innovation by using policy tools such as prizes and challenges”.
This plan became a reality this month as the US government’s crowd-sourcing site www.challenge.gov was launched.
The site features over 50 challenges published by various government agencies.
Some are clearly aimed at “Citizens”, for example the Recipes for Healthy Kids challenge, which offers up to $3000 for a healthy recipe kids will actually eat.
Career Videos for America’s Job Seekers – The Department of Labour will award you $1000 if you make a high standard promotional video of your day in the office.
Others are a little more specialised.
NASA has published many challenges such as the Strong Tether Challenge. A prize of $2 million will be awarded to a tether that exceeds the strength of the best available commercial tether by 50 percent with no increase in mass. I’m no expert but this sounds tricky to me.
There are also challenges from the Treasury Department, including one which asks for “….the best models worldwide that catalyze finance for small and medium enterprises (SMEs)”. Well I’m sure there are plenty of European politicians who would like the answer to that one.
Is this a good approach? Clearly there are benefits for the government – two obvious ones are that the government agencies pay only for results, and do not waste time or money judging candidates, teams or methods beforehand.
Other benefits listed by the White House include to “motivate, inspire, and guide others”; “Stimulate private sector investment” and “Capture the public imagination and change the public’s perception of what is possible”.
It also takes public participation in science to a whole new level. Bev Godwin of General Services Administration (GSA) which runs the site says:-
“It’s the next form of citizen engagement beyond participation to co-creation,”
Could this approach, if taken too far, damage the research base ? Perhaps. Researchers cannot just be paid on results, they have to pay the bills like everyone else and there can often be only one winner.
However this is one giant experiment in “public co-creation”; it will be exciting to see how it progresses.
//Esther Crooks
