Challenge.gov claims innovation honor

The General Services Administration's Challenge.gov, which uses contests to engage with the public and spark new ideas, is the winner of the Innovations in American Government Award.

The award is presented by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. The award was established in 1985, and the center received more than 600 applications last year.

Since GSA launched Challenge.gov in 2010, 59 federal agencies have used the site to hold more than 300 contests that have resulted in new apps, software and designs.

"The success of Challenge.gov has really been a result of people seeing an opportunity to get outcomes that they might not have been able to realize before," said GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini. "It really revolutionizes the way we go to the marketplace and ask people to help us resolve the issues in government."

"I think one of the interesting innovations about this is that it's a platform, it's not just...a program, and it recognizes that there [are] a lot of good ideas that come from crowdsourcing," said Stephen Goldsmith, director of the Innovations in American Government Program at Harvard. "So I think that the extension of innovation in the citizen response, how can we engage citizens and [solve] problems together, really is the future of public/private partnership."