The Obama Administration is turning to crowdsourcing to identify "grand challenges" to support as national technology innovation goals.
The Obama Administration is turning to crowdsourcing to identify
"grand challenges" to support as national technology innovation
goals.
The White House this week issued a request for public input on
potential game-changing technologies the administration might
pursue with research and development dollars. The quest to identify
innovation goals for the next century is modeled at least in part
on President Kennedy's commitment to send man to the moon in the
1960s.
More specifically, the White House appears to be looking to set up
a number of "grand challenges" for inventors and scientists to
solve over coming years, which the country could use as "an
organizing principle for America's science, technology and
innovation policy" in order to address key national priorities,
spur economic growth, and catalyze interest in the sciences.
"The focus of this RFI is on hard, unsolved scientific or
engineering challenges that will have significant economic or
societal impact and address an important national priority," the
White House said in an announcement outlining the effort. Federal
CTO Aneesh Chopra's most commonly used phrase in talking about
sparking innovation is "the need for game-changing ideas."
The administration first raised the prospect of these "grand
challenges" in a September
document outlining the President's innovation strategy. That
document identified a number of ambitious goals for the United
States to meet in the 21st Century, among them the development of
educational software that is as effective as a personal tutor,
medical advances such as smart anti-cancer drugs that attack only
tumor cells, energy advances such as solar cells as cheap as paint,
and devices the size of a sugar cube that could store the entire
contents of the Library of Congress.
Responses are due to the White House by April 15, and the White
House's Office of Science and Technology Policy has set up an
e-mail address, challenge@ostp.gov, where
citizens can send their ideas.
Specifically, the White House is asking for public input not only
on what challenges should be pursued and how the public might
participate in their pursuit, but why certain activities should be
grand challenges, how the United States could build on already
ongoing activities to pursue them, how to measure success and
evaluate progress, what the appropriate roles are for government
and other stakeholders, and what sticky issues might be raised by
their pursuit.
While it's unclear exactly what might be done with the
information, the effort dovetails with the administration's
open government strategy. Part of that
strategy seeks to increase citizen participation in government, as
public input may help guide the White House's research and
development policies and determine ways for the public to become
part of these challenges.
The White House will be working with social media pioneer Anil
Dash's non-profit Expert Labs to "explore new ways of tapping
the expertise of the American people on these grand
challenges."
- Information Week