Stephen Goldsmith, New York City's deputy mayor for operations and author of The Power of Social Innovation: How Civic Entrepreneurs Ignite Community Networks for Good, talks on WYNC's Brian Lehrer Show about the city's recent request for cost-cutting suggestions.
The interview discusses some interesting ideas and innovations from the public on how to save the city money, without impacting on service provision. He responds to callers suggestions on improving efficiencies within the city.
Earlier this month, the General Services Administration (GSA) held an Industry Day to discuss ways in which industry and newcomers could team up to offer contest services to government agencies. This forms part of the President Barack Obama’s call for government to be more open and participatory.
one-stop source for all the challenges and contest being offered across the government
The website will be dedicated to hosting federal agency competitions to showcase innovation. GSA said in a statement:
Challenge.gov is a new platform that allows federal agencies to post challenges, and at the same time, allows the public to find federal challenges. It's now open to federal agencies to create challenges or showcase challenges from other platforms.
Bev Godwin, Director for New Media and Citizen Engagement explained the reasons behind the initiative:
GSA is taking citizen engagement to next level of co-creation by tapping the American spirit of creativity. We are accelerating new ideas and innovation as President Obama asked government to engage citizens to accelerate innovation and solve tough problems.
In the video below, Godwin and ChallengePost founder Brandon Kessler talk about the upcoming public launch of Challenge.gov and the potential of grand challenges to improve government efficiency and increase the speed of innovation.
Earlier this month the Center for American Progress Please join the Center for American Progress - in conjunction with the Young Foundation - released two practical innovation guides as part of their Doing What Works programme:
The guides discuss why it is so difficult to innovate in the public sector, and provide thoughts on how government can begin generating and implementing new ideas. The absence of a profit motive requires different ways of inspiring great ideas and nurturing the best of them into social transformations that improve the world. Innovation in the public sector is not, however, an oxymoron and the guides provide many examples of governments around the world that are working on projects to spur innnovation and harness the ideas of their employees.
Facebook is teaming up with the British Prime Minister's office to solicit ideas from the public on how to cut the budget deficit. The social networking site will ask its 23 million members in the UK to submit and vote on ideas for where cuts can be made.
The government says Facebook will be its "primary channel" for communicating with the public about spending cuts.
The website will have a page for people to debate spending priorities and will allow people to submit and vote for ideas on where cuts could be made.
Watch a video chat between PM David Cameron and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg below.
NASA - in conjunction with 23 other Federal agencies - has launched its Open Government site.
In a post on NASA's collaborative blog Beth Beck - Space Operations Outreach manager - encouraged citizens to use the site to provide ideas and comments on ways to make NASA more Transparent, Participatory, Collaborative, and Innovative.
According to OpenGovTracker, the site has the most ideas (93) of all Agencies involved in the Open Government initiative. These ideas have had 717 votes along with 217 comments.
The first Australian Social Innovation Camp is scheduled for 5th -7th March 2010. Today is the last day to submit ideas to be developed during the weekend. To submit your idea goto http://asix.org.au/content/submitting-idea.
Social innovation refers to new strategies, concepts, ideas and organizations that meet social needs of all kinds - from working conditions and education to community development and health - and that extend and strengthen civil society. The camp is an opportunity to concentrate on particular ideas and develop working prototypes.
Here's a brief description about how the camp works:
Collecting ideas
The Social Innovation Camp starts with a big, open call for ideas. Anyone can enter an idea for a web-based social innovation. You don't need to be technically skilled - you just need to know about a social need that you've either encountered in your personal or professional life where the web might be able to help.
From the ideas submitted, a panel of judges select between six and eight of the most promising to be developed at the Social Innovation Camp weekend. The public votes will also be taken into account when selecting the ideas coming to the camp.
Weekend event
Then the people behind the selected ideas, together with software developers and designers, those with business and marketing skills, as well as individuals with expert knowledge of social need are invited to the Social Innovation Camp weekend.
From a Friday evening to a Sunday afternoon, participants are asked to organise themselves into teams around the selected ideas and then set five challenges:
1) What’s the problem they're trying to solve?
2) Build the technology with which to do this
3) How will you sustain your idea?
4) How will you build a community of users?
5) What are you going to do after the Social Innovation Camp weekend
At the end of the two days, all participants come back together to pitch what they have built and the judges award a small prize to the projects which have shown greatest potential.
The White House is soliciting feedback on improving Data.Gov and the creation of an Open Government Directive (OGD) Dashboard. They're look for ideas from the public in relation to these substantive initiatives of the the White House Open Government agenda.
1. Open Government Dashboard: The Open Government Directive calls for the creation of an Open Government Dashboard to measure progress and impact. Deputy Chief Technology Officer, Beth Noveck is looking for your input, including as to the metrics by which we measure success.
The Dashboard will combine quantitative and qualitative measures of progress and we are looking to you for your input about what metrics the Dashboard should measure.
The Sunlight Foundation has a dashboard up and running to monitor progress. Ideas could also be taking from existing government dashboards, including the IT Dashboard and Recovery.gov. For more on existing government dashboards, check TechPresident's recent analysis.
2. Future of Data.gov: The Open Government Directive instructs all federal agencies to make available high-value data that promote national priorities and improve the lives of everyday Americans through Data.gov. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra is asking for your help in shaping the next version of this key open government platform. He wants to evolve and expand on the principles upon which Data.gov is based. These include:
Through initiatives like Data.gov, we are laying a new foundation that changes the default setting of government from closed, opaque and secretive to open, transparent and participatory.
As part of the Data.gov Dialogue, you can download the draft plans, submit a new idea, or comment on someone else’s. The online Dialogue has already received dozens of suggestions and hundreds of votes.
The White House has a nice collection of blog posts written by SAVE Award finalists. They outline their stories and the reactions they received after becoming finalists. The sense of pride and achievement they feel is invigorating. It showcases the passion and dedication of many in the federal government towards saving money and improving efficiencies.
All in all it was an overwhelming but exciting event to be involved in. I think that everyone that worked on the project submitting ideas or reviewing them and organizing everything should be very proud of themselves. As we begin to see some of the ideas implemented in the next few months or years, I can look back and smile as I know that I had a part in it.
Huston's (Department of Housing and Urban Development) idea and interview with Federal News Radio:
Becoming a finalist among more than 38,000 candidates is one of the greatest accomplishments in both my career and my life. I received tremendous support from my family, church, friends and co-workers.
As word got out about the “Final Four,” I started to receive emails from Forest Service employees all around the nation thanking me for submitting this idea because they are just as frustrated with our collections process as I am. Those emails (from folks I don’t even know) and good wishes from present and former Forest Service co-workers and friends (as far back as college) really made this time special for me.
While I'm bummed that my idea didn't win (so I'm not going to meet with President Obama), I am totally psyched that there are already serious discussions higher up in my agency about how this process can be streamlined.
Julie Fosbender's (Department of Agriculture) idea and interview with Federal News Radio:
Nancy Fichtner is due to meet the president on Monday, so there will be an update from her then.
Nancy Fichtner's (Department of Veterans Affairs) winning idea and interview with Federal News Radio:
What Matters Now is the work of more than 60 people with big ideas and something to say. It contains a diverse range of ideas from tech thinker Kevin Kelly, to publisher Tim O'Reilly. They each contribute a page focused on one word that matters, plus a short (under 200 words) explanation.
It available to 'inspire you to make some changes in 2010, and to keep doing work that matters.'
The winner of the first-ever winning of the President's SAVE award has been announced as Nancy Fichtner. Her idea - on how to make the government perform more effectively and efficiently - was picked from the "final four" as the winner.
See video of President Barack Obama explaining the initiative and the finalists.
On Monday, December 21, Nancy will present her idea to President Obama at the White House.
The winning idea (from Nancy Fichtner of Department of Veterans Affairs)
Veterans leaving VA hospitals should be able to take the medicine they’ve been using home with them instead of it being thrown away when they’re discharged.
As is the case in most hospitals all across the country, medicine that is used in the hospital is not given to patients to be brought home; instead, it is thrown out. “Currently the inpatient medications such as ointments, inhalers, eye drops, and other bulk items are being disposed of upon patient discharge.”
Nancy proposes ending this waste and finding a way to allow this medicine to be used by those who need it.
