Fifth U.S. Open Government National Action Plan
Commitment Tracker
Encourage Greater Public Participation in Science
Progress for this commitment is tracked based on the following sub-commitment(s). You can also view the full text of this commitment.
| US0123.0 | For these reasons, the Biden-Harris Administration is committed to supporting citizen science efforts... Looking ahead, most agencies implementing prize competitions and challenges in recent years have indicated that they will continue to leverage such competitions and challenges, and the Biden-Harris Administration will commit to supporting these efforts to stimulate innovation, develop solutions to challenging problems, and advance core Administration and agency priorities. |
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| Agency & Subagency | General Services Administration Federal Acquisition Service / Technology Transformation Services |
Sub-Commitment Status | In Progress |
| February 2024 Progress | Progress Update: In 2024 we continue to see growth and widespread federal interest in the use of prize competitions as an important innovation sourcing mechanism. Since January 19 federal agencies have launched 68 prize competitions on Challenge.Gov. These competitions have offered almost $100M in prize awards to the public. Prize competitions sponsored by cabinet level agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Defense, and Department of Energy make up over a third of all competitions launched this year on the Challenge.Gov platform and this indicates that agencies are scaling their use of prize competitions to engage the public in innovation. Interest among federal agencies has increased and the federal prize and challenge community of practice has expanded to over 700 members who represent prize managers and innovation leaders across government. Similarly, the catalog of projects on CitizenScience.Gov grew to over 550 projects in 2023. Agencies including NOAA, NASA, EPA and others are seeing increased public interest and engagement with these projects that span a variety of models including community science, participatory research, and citizen science. GSA will be hosting a federal meeting focused on Public Engagement in Science in partnership with the White House, PCAST, and the Wilson Center in mid April 2024. One outcome of the meeting will be the draft of a toolkit to support strategies for public engagement in science. In the Spring of 2024 OSTP plans to release the FY21-22 biennial report to Congress on Federally Sponsored Crowdsourcing, Citizen Science, and Inducement Prize Activity. Evidence: |
| August 2023 Progress | In 2023 we are seeing continued growth of the use of prize competitions as an important sourcing mechanism. Since January 19 federal agencies have launched 68 prize competitions on Challenge.Gov. These competitions have offered almost $100M in prize awards to the public. Prize competitions sponsored by cabinet level agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Defense, and Department of Energy make up over a third of all competitions launched this year on the Challenge.Gov platform and this indicates that agencies are scaling their use of prize competitions to engage the public in innovation. Interest among federal agencies has increased and the federal prize and challenge community of practice has expanded to over 700 members who represent prize managers and innovation leaders across government. Similarly, the catalog of projects on CitizenScience.Gov has grown to over 500 projects in 2023. Agencies including NOAA, NASA, EPA and others are seeing increased public interest and engagement with these projects that span a variety of models including community science, participatory research, and citizen science. |