"By giving agencies a clear legal path, the legislation has made it dramatically easier for agencies to use prize competitions, subject to the availability of appropriations or other allowed sources of funds. By significantly expanding the authority of all Federal agencies to conduct prize competitions, the legislation enables agencies to pursue more ambitious prize competitions with robust incentives, and has inspired the use of other authorities to operate prize competitions and challenges...
The authority provided in COMPETES has led to significant new efforts, applying prize competitions and challenges to national priority areas including energy, public safety, health, cybersecurity, and infrastructure. Since its creation [in 2011], 100 prize competitions have been offered through the authority provided by COMPETES by 30 agencies. In FY 2014, 34 prize competitions were conducted under COMPETES authority, as well as 63 challenges conducted using authorities other than COMPETES...
Contracts and grants are awarded based on proposals for future work. Agencies are
limited to the use of expert review of potential impact or past performance, at the expense
of disruptive innovation to assess merit. However, with a focus on proven results, prize
competitions and challenges empower new, untapped talent to deliver unexpected
solutions to tough problems."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/NSTC/fy14_competes_prizes_-_may_2015.pdf
The Federal government does some pretty cool stuff - a lot of these are really great.
I recommend going to page 54 and 197 to see all the prizes - some that I think are cool: the Department of Housing and Urban Development's "Rebuild By Design"; the NIH prizes on racial bias in peer review, and the Breast Cancer Startup Prize; the TSA prizes (I know, but they make me kinda appreciate the TSA); the DARPA Chikungunya Challenge; the National Institute of Justice "randomized control trial" to figure out how to apply experimental technique to criminal justice; the USAID "DESAL prize".
And the ones that have opened since the report and are taking submissions are on challenge.gov
FB: Happy 4th - obviously kinda complicated to celebrate "American Independence" but I wanted to post about some of the cool stuff that the American government does that other governments are trying to institutionalize. In 2011, a law was passed that made it way easier for Federal agencies to launch Prizes and Challenges, and a community of practice has been growing ever since, and it's led to some really, really cool efforts that are legit inspiring.
--
No comments:
Post a Comment