This week, the U.S. Government celebrated the 5th anniversary of the open innovation platform Challenge.gov with an event hosted by the Obama Administration, Case Foundation, Joyce Foundation, and Georgetown University bringing together practitioners across the prize-backed challenge landscape. To mark the occasion, the Administration also released a new Fact Sheet highlighting new commitments to expand and foster the innovation prize community. The commitments include the deployment of new challenges from Federal agencies, expanded support from the General Services Administration, and efforts by non-governmental institutions to improve people’s lives through challenge-related initiatives.
Included in the Fact Sheet is the commitment by the GovLab and MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Opening Governance to expand the capability for prize designers to find one another through the Network of Innovators platform:
“The GovLab and MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Opening Governance will launch an expert network for prizes and challenges. The Governance Lab (GovLab) and MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Opening Governance will develop and launch the Network of Innovators (NoI) expert networking platform. NoI will make easily searchable the know-how of innovators on topics ranging from developing prize-backed challenges, opening up data, and use of crowdsourcing for public good. Platform users will answer questions about their skills and experiences, creating a profile that enables them to be matched to those with complementary knowledge to enable mutual support and learning. A beta version for user testing within the Federal prize community will launch in early October, with a full launch at the end of October. NoI will be open to civil servants around the world.”
