Congress Grants Broad Prize Authority to All Federal Agencies ($45 billion over three years)

[ProSense]

Congress Grants Broad Prize Authority to All Federal Agencies

Posted by Tom Kalil and Robynn Sturm

The America COMPETES Act passed by Congress today provides all agencies with broad authority to conduct prize competitions as called for by President Obama in his 2009 Strategy for American Innovation. By giving agencies a simple and clear legal path, the America COMPETES Act will make it dramatically easier for agencies to use prizes and challenges to spur innovation, solve tough problems, and advance their core missions.

In a world of widely dispersed knowledge, prizes and challenges are an essential tool for every agency’s toolkit. As the co-founder of Sun Microsystems Bill Joy once famously said, “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.” This fact calls for a fundamental shift in the way an institution solves problems. Prizes and challenges are part of the solution.

A recent McKinsey report found that the private sector and a new generation of philanthropists are embracing prizes. Catalyzed by new crowd sourcing technologies, investments in prize competitions have increased significantly in recent years. According to the study, more than 60 prizes of at least $100,000 each made their debuts from 2000 to 2007, representing almost $250 million in new prize money.

As the Wall Street Journal recently concluded, “These prizes have proliferated because they actually work.” Specifically, well-designed prizes allow the sponsor to dramatically increase the number and diversity of minds tackling a tough problem, to articulate a bold goal without having to predict the team or approach that is most likely to succeed, and to only pay for results.

Despites these benefits, the public sector have been slow to reap the benefits of open innovation strategies. The Obama Administration is committed to change that.

On his very first day in office, the President set out new principles for the way government works. Recognizing that the problems of the 21st century are too great to be solved by government alone, he called for an “all hands on deck” approach that taps the “distributed intelligence” of the Nation.

In September 2009, in his Strategy for American Innovation, President Obama expanded on these principles to explicitly call on agencies to increase their use of prizes and challenges to solve tough problems. In March, the Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum to all agency heads affirming the Administration’s commitment to this problem-solving approach and providing a policy and legal framework to guide agencies in using prizes to stimulate innovation to advance their core missions. And, in September 2010, the White House and the General Services Administration launched Challenge.gov, a one-stop shop where entrepreneurs, innovators, and citizen solvers can compete for prestige and prizes by providing novel solutions to tough national problems, large and small.

As a result, 2010 has witnessed widespread government experimentation with prizes. In its first 3 months, Challenge.gov featured 57 challenges from 27 agencies across the Executive Branch, generating novel solutions for childhood obesity, advanced vehicle technologies, financing for small businesses, Type One Diabetes, and many other national priorities.

The prize authority in the America COMPETES Act will further unleash the public sector’s ability to leverage prizes and challenges to spur innovation. Stay tuned to Challenge.gov for new developments in the New Year!

In the meantime, you can read more about today’s passage of the America COMPETES Act on the OSTP blog and find the full text of the final bill here.

US Congress passes strategic science bill

Crucial vote will boost funding for an array of federal science agencies.

Dreams of a US renaissance in basic research were kept alive today when the US House of Representatives passed the America COMPETES Act, a key funding bill for the physical sciences. The milestone came as a huge relief to supporters of the bill, which only last week seemed likely to die with the current Congress at the end of this year. But after a dramatic rally of support in the US Senate on Friday, the bill found itself back in the House, where it was briskly shepherded through to a final vote this afternoon. The bill now goes to President Barack Obama to be signed into law.

COMPETES is a reauthorization of a three-year 2007 act that followed recommendations in Rising Above the Gathering Storm, a 2005 report from the US National Academies. The report supported increased funding for science education and placed certain science-funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, on a path to double their funding over ten years, relative to a 2007 baseline.

The bill's passage is a major victory for congressman Bart Gordon (Democrat, Tennessee), who spearheaded the legislation in 2007 and again this year. Gordon is retiring from the House after three years as chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology, and says that he sees COMPETES as part of his legacy. "There is nothing I'm more proud of than the America COMPETES bill," Gordon told the House during the floor debate. "I cannot think of anything I would rather be doing in what is likely my final act on the House floor in 26 years of service than sending this bill to the president's desk."

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Ayes and nays

Once the Senate had passed the bill, it just remained for the House, which had first passed it in May, to pass an amended version that matched that of the Senate. Although Ralph Hall (Republican, Texas), the incoming chairman of the House science and technology committee, spoke in opposition to the bill because of its cost to taxpayers, his colleague, nuclear physicist Vernon Ehlers (Republican, Michigan), who is retiring at the end of this Congress, spoke strongly in favour. Ehlers said it was important not to abandon scientists, who contribute crucially to manufacturing in America. He gave the example of the laser as an economically important innovation that relied on only a few tens of thousands of dollars in investment from the US federal government. Ultimately, the House signed up for the Senate's three-year- instead of its own five-year-version of the bill, at a total cost of $45 billion rather than $85 billion. The final vote was 228-130.

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[vaberella]

1. We got a science bill too?! Coolness. n/t

[Recursion]

2. Outstanding. Build on the success of the X prize

This is cool stuff.