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Presidential Innovation Fellows, round two
Presidential Innovation Fellows, round two by Eric Ries
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Presidential Innovation Fellows, round two
By Eric on Feb 05, 2013 06:00 am
Yes, there are Lean Startups even in the United States federal government. I know this is an unpopular thing to say, since it sounds so patently absurd. But I've seen the teams with my own eyes and witnessed their results first hand. For my take on how this is possible, you can see my previous post on Lean Government here. Today, I'm excited to share the latest round of startups that are being run by the Presidential Innovation Fellows program. If you'd like to try your hand at being an entrepreneur inside one of the world's largest bureaucracies, you can apply right here starting today.
I've excerpted descriptions of the program and summaries of all the projects below. Take a look and judge for yourself.
Disaster Response & Recovery
Collaborativelybuilding and “pre-positioning" needed tech tools ahead of futureemergencies or natural disasters in order to mitigate economic damage and savelives.
Duringan emergency or natural disaster, it is essential that first responders,government agencies, volunteers, the private sector, and the public have accessto real-time information about the critical needs of survivors and resourcesthat can help them. The goals of the Disaster Response & Recovery project areto: (1) identify information critical to saving lives and mitigating damage ina disaster; (2) identify existing and new tools to be built and deployed thatcan collect, synthesize and distribute that information; and (3) build out thesetools and train disaster response personnel in their use.
Oncethese tools are built and rolled out, they can be used collaboratively by theprivate sector, first responders, local officials, volunteers, and survivorsthemselves in order to get information where it needs to be in real-time. This improved ability to collect anddisseminate information will support disaster response and recovery efforts foryears to come. The potentialsavings – in terms of both American lives and taxpayer dollars – are dramatic.
MyUSA
Simplifying the process of finding andaccessing information and government services that are right for you. Helping American businesses access theinformation and services that will help them grow, hire American workers, andexport to foreign markets.
MyUSA (formerly known as MyGov) is creating a newservice that helps Americans find the information and services they need acrossthe Federal Government. Rather than organizing services around the agenciesthat deliver them, as most Federal websites do today, MyUSA organizes servicesaround people and the specific tasks they need to complete. Building on the work of the inauguralclass of MyUSA Presidential Innovation Fellows, motivated by President Obama'scall for a smarter, leaner government, and inspired by innovative models ofcollaboration in the private sector, the US Chief Technology Officer, the USChief Information Officer, and the White House Director of Digital Strategywill work closely with and support the Round 2 MyUSA Fellows as they take the MyUSAservice to the next level.
In particular, small businessesand exporters have a fundamental problem navigating the Federal Government’smyriad resources. It can bedifficult to locate information about government assistance programs or findand complete the correct forms for taxes or business operations. MyUSA isworking to solve these problems. The project team will build andbeta-test new features and tools for entrepreneurs and businesses with thepurpose of cutting red tape, increasing efficiency, and supporting American businessesand American jobs.
MyUSA will save people and businessestime when transacting with the government, increase awareness of availablegovernment services, and speed up notifications and updates. MyUSA has thepotential not only to save Americans time and money, but to reshape how theyinteract with and view their government.
on Twitter.
RFP-EZ andInnovative Contracting Tools
Making it easier for the government to dobusiness with small, high-growth tech companies, and enabling the government tobuy better, lower-cost tech solutions from the full range of Americanbusinesses.
RFP-EZ improves the operationsof government by making it easier for small businesses to sell their servicesto government buyers, and by making it easier for contracting officers withingovernment to navigate the process of purchasing. In Round 1 of the PIFprogram, the RFP-EZ team opened the door to small businesses by building aplatform for small, creative businesses to more effectively sell to the FederalGovernment. The objective of the RFP-EZ 2.0 team is to improve upon theexisting product and scale the tool across additional government agencies sothat fewer taxpayer dollars are spent getting the technology that governmentneeds to do its work for the American people.
As RFP-EZ is tested and scaled,a new effort will be launched to improve Federal procurement by building a portalof prices paid by agencies under their contracts. Improved informationsharing, both within and between agencies, about prices paid for common-usegoods and services will make it easier for agencies to find “best in class”spending options. More informed decision making promises to help save substantialamounts of money each year by pooling resources in the vehicles that offer thebest value for the taxpayer.
and follow
on Twitter.
Cyber-PhysicalSystems
Working with government and industry to createstandards for a new generation of interoperable, dynamic, and efficient “smartsystems” – an “industrial Internet” – that combines distributed sensing,control, and data analytics to help grow new high-value American jobs and theeconomy.
The emerging “industrialInternet” revolution, enabled by the convergence of networking and informationtechnology with engineered physical systems and associated services, isenabling a new generation of “smart systems” and an innovation-based growthengine for the U.S. economy in a broad range of industries includingmanufacturing, transportation, energy, healthcare, defense, agriculture, andemergency response. Thesecyber-physical systems (CPS) will combine distributed sensing, monitoring,actuation, and control networks with interoperable systems integration,advanced analytics, and user interfaces featuring customized degrees ofautonomy to enable adaptive, predictive, and collaborative optimization ofsystem performance over the entire life cycle of a device (e.g. design, build,operate/use, maintain, and service). These innovations could lead to entirely new markets and platforms forgrowth in the economy, increase U.S. competitiveness, catalyze the creation andretention of U.S. jobs, enable cost-effective renewable clean energy, enhancenational security, and help support affordable health care and improved qualityof life for our citizens.
Realizingthis potential will require partnerships between industry and government todevelop a framework and bestpractices for cyber-physical-systems platform technologies that includeintegrated architectures, standards and protocols, advanced analytics,evaluation testbeds, and reference implementations to ensure such systemsperform reliably, correctly, safely and securely. These platform technologies will leverage advances in controlsystems and process engineering, big data and cloud computing, broadbandcommunications, and cybersecurity.
Open Data Initiatives
Acceleratingand expanding efforts to make government information resources more publiclyaccessible in “computer-readable” form and spurring the use of those data byentrepreneurs as fuel for the creation of new products, services, and jobs.
TheOpen Data Initiatives project is “liberating” government data and voluntarily-contributedcorporate data to fuel entrepreneurship, create jobs, and improve the lives ofAmericans in tangible ways. As a model, decades ago, the National Oceanic andAtmospheric Administration began making weather data available for free electronicdownload by anyone. Entrepreneurs used these data to create weather newscasts,websites, mobile applications, insurance, and much more. Similarly, thegovernment’s decision to make the Global Positioning System (GPS) freelyavailable has fueled a vast array of private-sector innovations ranging fromnavigation systems to precision crop farming, creating massive public benefitand contributing significantly to economic growth. More recently, the HealthData Initiative, launched by the Institute of Medicine and the U.S. Departmentof Health and Human Services in 2010, has opened growing amounts ofhealth-related knowledge and information in computer-readable form from thevaults of the government and publicized the availability of these data toentrepreneurs and innovators. Hundreds of companies and nonprofits have usedthese data to develop new products and services that are helping millions ofAmericans and creating jobs of the future in the process.
Workingclosely with the US Chief Technology Officer, the US Chief Information Officer,and an array of agencies, the Open Data Initiatives team has launched and iscontinuing to scale open data efforts in Health, Energy, Education, Finance,Public Safety, and Global Development. These efforts involve governmentreleasing general data resources in computer-readable form and in accordancewith policies that rigorously protect privacy. The goal is to stimulate arising tide of private-sector entrepreneurship that leverages these data tocreate tools that help Americans find the right health care provider for them,identify the college that provides the best value for their money, save moneyon their electricity bills through smarter shopping for the right rate plan,keep their families safe by knowing which products have been recalled, and muchmore – a rising tide of innovation that also contributes to economic growth andcreates jobs.
on Twitter.
For Round 2, we are looking for Presidential Innovation Fellowsto work on the existing Open Data Initiatives in Health, Energy, Education,Finance, Public Safety, and Global Development, as well as the following newdata innovation efforts:
Building Virtual Learning at National Scale
Harness new techniques in big data and learning analytics tohelp students master core academic subjects such as math and science.
Digital Tools for the Smithsonian
Develop new ways for the Smithsonian Institution to engage inthe historic effort to make its unparalleled collections in science, history,art, and culture more open and available to the American public – fromresearchers to schoolchildren and everyone in between.
Data.gov
Build upon the success of
(launched in 2009) – and recent improvements such as
– to create an optimal hub for the growing open data work of the FederalGovernment.
on Twitter.
MyData Initiatives
Empoweringthe American people with secure access to their own personal health, energy,and education data.
TheMyData Initiatives seek to spread the ability for people to securely accessto their own data while spurring the growth of private-sectorapplications and services that a person can use to crunch his or her own datafor a growing array of useful purposes.
ExistingMyData Initiatives are paving the way. For example, through Blue Button – a growinginitiative across the public and private sectors – patients can download theirown health information from a growing array of organizations (the Department ofVeterans Affairs’s health system, private-sector health care providers, etc.)and securely share their medical histories with caregivers, import their prescriptionhistories into mobile reminder apps, and more. Similarly, the Green Button teamat the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards andTechnology is working collaboratively with industry to enable millions ofresidential and commercial energy customers to securely download their own energyusage data in a standardized machine-readable format directly from theirutilities. The MyData Initiative at the U.S. Department of Education isempowering learners of all ages in hundreds of school districts to accessmachine-readable copies of their academic transcripts and student loan/granthistories, including their own Federal student loan and FAFSA data.
TheRound 2 MyData team will work with public sector and private sectororganizations to continue to expand the ability for Americans to securely andprivately access their own data from wherever it might be, and encourage thedevelopment of private-sector tools and services that help people utilize theirown data for their own benefit.
on Twitter.
Innovation Toolkit
Developingan innovation toolkit that empowers our Federal workforce to respond tonational priorities more quickly and more efficiently.
Inspiredby President Obama’s pledge to “make government cool again,” the U.S. Office ofPersonnel Management, in connection with the General Services Administrationand the U.S. Department of State, will lead an effort to apply technology toaugment and tap into the skills, creativity, and capacity for innovation of theFederal workforce. There are a variety of ways the Federal Government canimprove the efficiency and productivity of its talented people – by connectingemployees through an intuitive online collaboration platform, by providing opportunitiesfor online learning and skills sharing (particularly since 85% of the Federalworkforce is located outside of the Washington, DC metro area), and by offeringdynamic libraries of case studies, guides, and “how to” documents – an“innovation toolkit” – for employees looking to think out-of-the-box withouthaving to reinvent the wheel. Using these and other tools, we can deliver onPresident Obama’s call for a smarter, leaner government and enable the Federalworkforce to deliver greater value to the American taxpayer by saving time,money, and resources.
21st Century Financial Systems
Movingfinancial accounting systems of Federal agencies out of the era of unwieldyagency-specific implementations to one that favors more nimble, modular,scalable, and cost-effective approaches.
TheFederal Government has traditionally approached new financial systemimplementations by focusing on implementing commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS)packages and adapting them to agency-specific needs. This approach hasresulted in many cost and schedule over-runs, aborted implementations, andoverly complex systems that are not used to their full potential. TheOffice of Management and Budget and the Department of the Treasury’s Office ofFinancial Innovation and Transformation (FIT) are charting a new course forFinancial Systems focused on using shared services, standardized requirements,and fewer agency-specific tweaks. The 21st Century FinancialSystems project is focused on designing and building an evidence-based “test”that Treasury will use to ensure agencies don’t put out over-engineeredrequirements. The key to this effort will be designing and implementing acredible and efficient process to determine which agency deviations from astandard set of requirements are truly required and what would be the best wayto accommodate those deviations. The success of this program could lead todramatic and lasting cost savings on behalf of American taxpayers.
Development Innovation Ventures
Enablingthe US government to identify, test, and scale breakthrough solutions to theworld’s toughest problems.
Greatideas and breakthrough solutions come from all kinds of different places, andthe US Agency for International Development (USAID) has recently pioneered acompetitive method for sourcing and scaling innovations to drive faster, morecost effective, and more reliable results. It uses staged financing to makesmall investments in promising approaches and technologies and largerinvestments when there is clear evidence that the method is producingsignificant results. It accepts proposals from startup or establishedbusinesses, social enterprises, academic institutions or non-profits, bothdomestically and internationally. Over 2000 proposals have been reviewed and over40 investments made across the world in a wide range of sectors, with many moreunder negotiation.
Buildingon this innovative approach to government financing, there are opportunities toscale this effort to reach millions of people more quickly and ensure that theprogram structure is sustainable (through either profitability or host countryadoption, not long-term donor support). Of particular interest would be supportingenterprises that are scaling through the private sector. In addition, there isa desire among domestic Federal Government agencies to optimize the use oftaxpayer resources and further their missions by adapting this model ofbroad competitions and tiered funding for additional missions, to produce themost cost-effective, evidence-based, and scalable solutions.
, and
on Twitter.
