White House kicks off contest website to find fixes to big problems

The government's top tech chiefs announced on Tuesday the launch of a depot for online contests that let Americans vie for cash prizes by solving problems federal agencies cannot confront alone.

Challenge.gov is both a tool for agencies to easily publicize competitions and for citizens to enter contests. The public also can vote on proposed solutions on the site.

Federal contests "provide powerful financial and social incentives," said Bev Godwin, co-director of the Center for New Media and Citizen Engagement at the General Services Administration, who was speaking with federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra at a government innovation conference hosted by technology publishers O'Reilly Media and UBM TechWeb.

On Tuesday, agencies governmentwide provided prospective applicants access to 35 contests through the gateway. In March, the White House issued guidance for agencies on how to legally award money for prizes, using funding mechanisms such as grants. The memo also ordered the General Services Administration to offer departments a single tool for quickly posting challenges to the Web.

Challenge.gov makes it "free and easy for agencies to launch challenges," Godwin said. "They can literally post challenges in a matter of minutes without any technical skills" by filling out an online form with the details of the initiative and publishing it to the Web.

Visitors can search for competitions by subject matter, agency, award amount, time remaining to enter and recently posted contests.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, for example, on Tuesday started a contest to design nine posters that will teach Americans how to prevent carbon monoxide deaths. The competition for $2,750 in prize money closes in four months.

Meanwhile, applicants have eight days left to compete for $10 million in prizes the Energy Department and Progressive Insurance are offering for engineering vehicles that can travel more than 100 miles on a gallon of fuel. Winners will be announced on Sept. 16.

GSA acquired the technology for the website for free through the Web services firm ChallengePost. First lady Michelle Obama and the Agriculture Department had success using ChallengePost's software for the online nutrition campaign Appsforhealthykids.com, federal officials recently said.

Agencies are not obligated to award funding if competitions do not yield satisfactory submissions. Chopra said the purpose of challenges is to create a results-oriented ecosystem of ideas generated by grass-roots movements, industry and the general population.