5.3: Ideas
Casting a Wide Net for the Best Ideas Other Information:
Open and innovative government also includes active collaboration with private sector individuals and companies, not-for-profit
organizations, and other governments that have already developed best practices and proven solutions for many of the management
and operational challenges we face. We are actively engaging with these groups to identify these practices and adopt them
for use across government. For example, earlier this year, the President hosted a Forum on Modernizing Government that brought
CEOs from a wide range of industries and labor union leadership together with PMC members, agency CIOs, and senior White House
staff. 11 The private sector leaders who participated in the Forum shared dozens of concrete ideas and best practices, some
of which reinforced our existing performance management efforts and others that suggested new solutions we are now exploring.
Based on the success of the Forum, the President established the President's Management Advisory Board of business leaders
to provide recommendations and advice on best practices to the government on productivity, technology, and customer service.
This board will consist of individuals with proven track records leading large, complex, or innovative private sector organizations,
and will hold its first meeting this Fall. In addition to our outreach to private sector experts, we are also embracing the
use of prizes and challenges to solicit innovative solutions to our national challenges and priorities. Agencies are increasing
the use of prizes and competitions because they are a cost-effective, solutions-oriented tool for tackling large, ambitious
challenges. For example, NASA recently held three challenges on InnoCentive, an online innovation marketplace where more than
200,000 of the world’s brightest minds compete to solve tough problems. Nearly 1,500 problem solvers from 65 countries worked
on the NASA challenges, and NASA reaped important breakthroughs in three areas critical to astronaut health. One winning solution
came from a mechanical engineer in Foxboro, Massachusetts, who won the prize for the best proposed design for an exercise
device to reduce the bone and muscle loss astronauts suffer in weightlessness. He had never before responded to a government
Request for Proposal, and NASA may never have found him or benefitted from his winning insight were it not for the use of
this approach. To allow other agencies to achieve similar results, we have launched Challenge.gov, a site that guides agencies
through the use of prize-backed challenges and provides the public with a place to find opportunities to put their skills
and passions to use solving national challenges.
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