Government Crowdsourcing Efforts Are Tricky, Just Ask Agencies

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for government crowdsourcing practitioners -- weeks that have pointed out both the variety of opportunities for the public to pitch in on projects and some pitfalls as well.

The Health and Human Services Department’s Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology launched a Challenge.gov contest Aug. 23 to create a mobile tool to help improve the prevention and treatment of breast, cervical and uterine cancer in minority women.

Five days later, the State Department launched an “innovation in arms control challenge” seeking everything from “creative ways to prevent ‘loose nukes’ from falling into the hands of terrorists” to smart phone and tablet apps to aid inspectors monitoring nations’ abidance by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Those contests both included substantial awards for the winners -- $100,000 for the cancer app and $10,000 for an arms control innovation. Getting the incentive right and getting it approved can be arduous, however.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, for instance, was rebuffed in its attempts to lure citizen watchdogs into its Neighborhood Safety Network with $5 gift cards. The Comptroller General’s office opined that purchasing the gift cards as part of a membership drive was outside CPSC’s statutory mission “to protect the public from unreasonable risks of serious injury or death from consumer products under the agency’s jurisdiction.”