NIST on the Search for Innovative Mobile Apps

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is looking for apps to showcase its wealth of data, so it's turned to the public for help.

NIST just launched a competition in which participants create a mobile app that showcases one of six of the agency’s eligible data sets, according to a notice posted Wednesday in the Federal Register.

Most of NIST’s more than 100 types of Standard Reference Data are free for public use, according to its notice. But the agency wants to start making them much easier for the public to access and navigate.

“The focus of the challenge is to stimulate innovative solutions to advance how people use NIST data,” said Heather Evans, policy analyst at NIST, in a statement to Nextgov.

The six data sets relate to chemistry or physics, according to the notice. For example, one of them includes thermochemical data for chemical substances, while another provides a rundown of the atomic weights of a wide array of elements.

Competitors are also free to supplement one of these data sets by adding data from any number of the agency’s other free sets.

Winners are expected to be announced in mid-November, and will be awarded a combined prize total of $45,000.

Judges may come from both inside or outside the agency, but are all expected to be well versed in the competition’s subject matter. They will evaluate apps based on four categories: potential impact, creativity and innovation, performance and use of datasets.

“I hope that we will see a lot of exciting apps that use freely available NIST [Standard Reference Data], and that we will further extend the community of interest around NIST data for future challenges or opportunities,” Evans said.

Each participant’s submission is due by Sept. 28. It must include app software, a description of the app with a screenshot of it in use, and a short video demonstration of its abilities.

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