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.
The Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program pairs top innovators from the private sector, non-profits, and academia with top innovators in government to collaborate during focused 6-12 month “tours of duty” to develop solutions that can save lives, save taxpayer money, and fuel job creation. Each team of innovators is supported by a broader community of interested citizens throughout the country.
The 1st round of five projects – MyUSA (formerly known as MyGov), RFP-EZ, Blue Button, Better Than Cash, and Open Data Initiatives – launched in August 2012 with 18 inaugural Fellows. Each of these five project teams have made remarkable progress.
The 2nd round of the Presidential Innovation Fellows program will include nine projects, described below – four that are the second phases of Round 1 projects and five new projects. Presidential Innovation Fellows have a unique opportunity to serve our Nation and make an impact on a truly massive scale. We will be accepting applications to be a Round 2 Fellow from February 5 through March 17, and are looking to put together a dynamic, diverse, innovative class that will produce tremendous results for the American people.
- WhiteHouse.gov/InnovationFellows has information about the program, past PIFs, and will serve as the gateway through which to apply (just click on the “Apply Here” button starting February 5th)
- Those interested can follow @WhiteHouseOSTP on Twitter and can discuss the program on social media using: #InnovateGov
- Applications to be a Round 2 Fellow will be accepted through March 17th
Disaster Response & Recovery
Collaboratively
building and “pre-positioning" needed tech tools ahead of future
emergencies or natural disasters in order to mitigate economic damage and save
lives.
During
an emergency or natural disaster, it is essential that first responders,
government agencies, volunteers, the private sector, and the public have access
to real-time information about the critical needs of survivors and resources
that can help them. The goals of the Disaster Response & Recovery project are
to: (1) identify information critical to saving lives and mitigating damage in
a disaster; (2) identify existing and new tools to be built and deployed that
can collect, synthesize and distribute that information; and (3) build out these
tools and train disaster response personnel in their use.
Once
these tools are built and rolled out, they can be used collaboratively by the
private sector, first responders, local officials, volunteers, and survivors
themselves in order to get information where it needs to be in real-time. This improved ability to collect and
disseminate information will support disaster response and recovery efforts for
years to come. The potential
savings – in terms of both American lives and taxpayer dollars – are dramatic.
MyUSA
Simplifying the process of finding and
accessing information and government services that are right for you. Helping American businesses access the
information and services that will help them grow, hire American workers, and
export to foreign markets.
MyUSA (formerly known as MyGov) is creating a new service that helps Americans find the information and services they need across the Federal Government. Rather than organizing services around the agencies that deliver them, as most Federal websites do today, MyUSA organizes services around people and the specific tasks they need to complete. Building on the work of the inaugural class of MyUSA Presidential Innovation Fellows, motivated by President Obama's call for a smarter, leaner government, and inspired by innovative models of collaboration in the private sector, the US Chief Technology Officer, the US Chief Information Officer, and the White House Director of Digital Strategy will work closely with and support the Round 2 MyUSA Fellows as they take the MyUSA service to the next level.
In particular, small businesses
and exporters have a fundamental problem navigating the Federal Government’s
myriad resources. It can be
difficult to locate information about government assistance programs or find
and complete the correct forms for taxes or business operations. MyUSA is
working to solve these problems. The project team will build and
beta-test new features and tools for entrepreneurs and businesses with the
purpose of cutting red tape, increasing efficiency, and supporting American businesses
and American jobs.
MyUSA will save people and businesses
time when transacting with the government, increase awareness of available
government services, and speed up notifications and updates. MyUSA has the
potential not only to save Americans time and money, but to reshape how they
interact with and view their government.
@ProjectMyUSA on Twitter.
@ProjectMyUSA on Twitter.
RFP-EZ and
Innovative Contracting Tools
Making it easier for the government to do
business with small, high-growth tech companies, and enabling the government to
buy better, lower-cost tech solutions from the full range of American
businesses.
RFP-EZ improves the operations
of government by making it easier for small businesses to sell their services
to government buyers, and by making it easier for contracting officers within
government to navigate the process of purchasing. In Round 1 of the PIF
program, the RFP-EZ team opened the door to small businesses by building a
platform for small, creative businesses to more effectively sell to the Federal
Government. The objective of the RFP-EZ 2.0 team is to improve upon the
existing product and scale the tool across additional government agencies so
that fewer taxpayer dollars are spent getting the technology that government
needs 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 portal
of prices paid by agencies under their contracts. Improved information
sharing, both within and between agencies, about prices paid for common-use
goods and services will make it easier for agencies to find “best in class”
spending options. More informed decision making promises to help save substantial
amounts of money each year by pooling resources in the vehicles that offer the
best value for the taxpayer.
Cyber-Physical
Systems
Working with government and industry to create
standards for a new generation of interoperable, dynamic, and efficient “smart
systems” – an “industrial Internet” – that combines distributed sensing,
control, and data analytics to help grow new high-value American jobs and the
economy.
The emerging “industrial
Internet” revolution, enabled by the convergence of networking and information
technology with engineered physical systems and associated services, is
enabling a new generation of “smart systems” and an innovation-based growth
engine for the U.S. economy in a broad range of industries including
manufacturing, transportation, energy, healthcare, defense, agriculture, and
emergency response. These
cyber-physical systems (CPS) will combine distributed sensing, monitoring,
actuation, and control networks with interoperable systems integration,
advanced analytics, and user interfaces featuring customized degrees of
autonomy to enable adaptive, predictive, and collaborative optimization of
system 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 for
growth in the economy, increase U.S. competitiveness, catalyze the creation and
retention of U.S. jobs, enable cost-effective renewable clean energy, enhance
national security, and help support affordable health care and improved quality
of life for our citizens.
Realizing
this potential will require partnerships between industry and government to
develop a framework and best
practices for cyber-physical-systems platform technologies that include
integrated architectures, standards and protocols, advanced analytics,
evaluation testbeds, and reference implementations to ensure such systems
perform reliably, correctly, safely and securely. These platform technologies will leverage advances in control
systems and process engineering, big data and cloud computing, broadband
communications, and cybersecurity.
Open Data Initiatives
Accelerating
and expanding efforts to make government information resources more publicly
accessible in “computer-readable” form and spurring the use of those data by
entrepreneurs as fuel for the creation of new products, services, and jobs.
The
Open Data Initiatives project is “liberating” government data and voluntarily-contributed
corporate data to fuel entrepreneurship, create jobs, and improve the lives of
Americans in tangible ways. As a model, decades ago, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration began making weather data available for free electronic
download by anyone. Entrepreneurs used these data to create weather newscasts,
websites, mobile applications, insurance, and much more. Similarly, the
government’s decision to make the Global Positioning System (GPS) freely
available has fueled a vast array of private-sector innovations ranging from
navigation systems to precision crop farming, creating massive public benefit
and contributing significantly to economic growth. More recently, the Health
Data Initiative, launched by the Institute of Medicine and the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services in 2010, has opened growing amounts of
health-related knowledge and information in computer-readable form from the
vaults of the government and publicized the availability of these data to
entrepreneurs and innovators. Hundreds of companies and nonprofits have used
these data to develop new products and services that are helping millions of
Americans and creating jobs of the future in the process.
Working
closely with the US Chief Technology Officer, the US Chief Information Officer,
and an array of agencies, the Open Data Initiatives team has launched and is
continuing to scale open data efforts in Health, Energy, Education, Finance,
Public Safety, and Global Development. These efforts involve government
releasing general data resources in computer-readable form and in accordance
with policies that rigorously protect privacy. The goal is to stimulate a
rising tide of private-sector entrepreneurship that leverages these data to
create tools that help Americans find the right health care provider for them,
identify the college that provides the best value for their money, save money
on their electricity bills through smarter shopping for the right rate plan,
keep their families safe by knowing which products have been recalled, and much
more – a rising tide of innovation that also contributes to economic growth and
creates jobs.
For Round 2, we are looking for Presidential Innovation Fellows
to work on the existing Open Data Initiatives in Health, Energy, Education,
Finance, Public Safety, and Global Development, as well as the following new
data innovation efforts:
Building Virtual Learning at National Scale
Harness new techniques in big data and learning analytics to
help students master core academic subjects such as math and science.
Digital Tools for the Smithsonian
Develop new ways for the Smithsonian Institution to engage in
the historic effort to make its unparalleled collections in science, history,
art, and culture more open and available to the American public – from
researchers to schoolchildren and everyone in between.
Data.gov
Build upon the success of Data.gov
(launched in 2009) – and recent improvements such as Alpha.Data.gov
– to create an optimal hub for the growing open data work of the Federal
Government.
@USDataGov on Twitter.
MyData Initiatives
Empowering
the American people with secure access to their own personal health, energy,
and education data.
The
MyData Initiatives seek to spread the ability for people to securely access
to their own data while spurring the growth of private-sector
applications and services that a person can use to crunch his or her own data
for a growing array of useful purposes.
Existing
MyData Initiatives are paving the way. For example, through Blue Button – a growing
initiative across the public and private sectors – patients can download their
own health information from a growing array of organizations (the Department of
Veterans Affairs’s health system, private-sector health care providers, etc.)
and securely share their medical histories with caregivers, import their prescription
histories into mobile reminder apps, and more. Similarly, the Green Button team
at the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards and
Technology is working collaboratively with industry to enable millions of
residential and commercial energy customers to securely download their own energy
usage data in a standardized machine-readable format directly from their
utilities. The MyData Initiative at the U.S. Department of Education is
empowering learners of all ages in hundreds of school districts to access
machine-readable copies of their academic transcripts and student loan/grant
histories, including their own Federal student loan and FAFSA data.
The
Round 2 MyData team will work with public sector and private sector
organizations to continue to expand the ability for Americans to securely and
privately access their own data from wherever it might be, and encourage the
development of private-sector tools and services that help people utilize their
own data for their own benefit.
Innovation Toolkit
Developing
an innovation toolkit that empowers our Federal workforce to respond to
national priorities more quickly and more efficiently.
Inspired
by President Obama’s pledge to “make government cool again,” the U.S. Office of
Personnel Management, in connection with the General Services Administration
and the U.S. Department of State, will lead an effort to apply technology to
augment and tap into the skills, creativity, and capacity for innovation of the
Federal workforce. There are a variety of ways the Federal Government can
improve the efficiency and productivity of its talented people – by connecting
employees through an intuitive online collaboration platform, by providing opportunities
for online learning and skills sharing (particularly since 85% of the Federal
workforce is located outside of the Washington, DC metro area), and by offering
dynamic libraries of case studies, guides, and “how to” documents – an
“innovation toolkit” – for employees looking to think out-of-the-box without
having to reinvent the wheel. Using these and other tools, we can deliver on
President Obama’s call for a smarter, leaner government and enable the Federal
workforce to deliver greater value to the American taxpayer by saving time,
money, and resources.
21st Century Financial Systems
Moving
financial accounting systems of Federal agencies out of the era of unwieldy
agency-specific implementations to one that favors more nimble, modular,
scalable, and cost-effective approaches.
The
Federal Government has traditionally approached new financial system
implementations by focusing on implementing commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS)
packages and adapting them to agency-specific needs. This approach has
resulted in many cost and schedule over-runs, aborted implementations, and
overly complex systems that are not used to their full potential. The
Office of Management and Budget and the Department of the Treasury’s Office of
Financial Innovation and Transformation (FIT) are charting a new course for
Financial Systems focused on using shared services, standardized requirements,
and fewer agency-specific tweaks. The 21st Century Financial
Systems project is focused on designing and building an evidence-based “test”
that Treasury will use to ensure agencies don’t put out over-engineered
requirements. The key to this effort will be designing and implementing a
credible and efficient process to determine which agency deviations from a
standard set of requirements are truly required and what would be the best way
to accommodate those deviations. The success of this program could lead to
dramatic and lasting cost savings on behalf of American taxpayers.
Development Innovation Ventures
Enabling
the US government to identify, test, and scale breakthrough solutions to the
world’s toughest problems.
Great
ideas and breakthrough solutions come from all kinds of different places, and
the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has recently pioneered a
competitive method for sourcing and scaling innovations to drive faster, more
cost effective, and more reliable results. It uses staged financing to make
small investments in promising approaches and technologies and larger
investments when there is clear evidence that the method is producing
significant results. It accepts proposals from startup or established
businesses, social enterprises, academic institutions or non-profits, both
domestically and internationally. Over 2000 proposals have been reviewed and over
40 investments made across the world in a wide range of sectors, with many more
under negotiation.
Building
on this innovative approach to government financing, there are opportunities to
scale this effort to reach millions of people more quickly and ensure that the
program structure is sustainable (through either profitability or host country
adoption, not long-term donor support). Of particular interest would be supporting
enterprises that are scaling through the private sector. In addition, there is
a desire among domestic Federal Government agencies to optimize the use of
taxpayer resources and further their missions by adapting this model of
broad competitions and tiered funding for additional missions, to produce the
most cost-effective, evidence-based, and scalable solutions.
USAID.gov, and @DIVatUSAID on Twitter.
