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Government Website Invites Innovative Business Solutions

When Frederic and Marta DeWulf learned earlier this year that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had an open challenge to develop software and games that promote healthful eating, they knew they had to move quickly.

Within months the couple created a game,

entered the contest, and won, putting to rest the idea that the U.S. government always moves at a bureaucratic pace.

 The challenge entered by the DeWulfs is just one of the many opportunities businesses will find at Challenge.gov.

In September 2009, President Obama released his Strategy for American Innovation, calling for agencies to increase their ability to promote and harness innovation by using policy tools such as prizes and challenges. This past March, the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo on the use of challenges and prizes to improve government and encourage innovation, and it promised to make a Web-based platform available.

One year after the president's call for the return of American ingenuity, the government launched Challenge.gov, a website administered by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) that allows other government agencies to post challenges that reward citizens and businesses that reply with the winning solutions.

"Just the general idea of Challenge.gov and the way it makes it so easy for anyone with an idea to get involved and submit it directly is definitely something that small businesses should be a part of," says Dan Munz, a spokesperson for the GSA's Center for New Media and Citizen Engagement.

The challenges offer a wide array of options for innovators. For example, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is asking participants to use data available through the National Cancer Institute to develop Web and/or mobile applications for cancer prevention and control.

In a recently completed challenge, the U.S. Department of Transportation asked young adults to record their own public service announcement videos to discourage distracted driving. The intellectual property rights agreement and the award for each challenge is at the discretion of the hosting agency. The award varies from cash prizes to public acknowledgements.

"Because the barrier to enter a challenge on Challenge.gov is so low, we really do hope that it'll accelerate government's ability to hear about and understand innovative ideas," Munz says.

The DeWulfs entered the Apps for Healthy Kids Competition, a challenge in collaboration with First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move initiative. The USDA's challenge required that participants use their nutrition data set to 1) educate through engaging the user in an entertaining experience or 2) empower users to access, visualize, sort, mash, track, or otherwise better understand data in ways that will inform user behavior.

Marta DeWulf, a nutritionist with a private practice who also teaches nutrition in public schools, had been working on nutrition games for kids when she found out about the competition. Frederic DeWulf, a former Microsoft employee, saw the potential to use technology to spread the message of proper nutrition to millions of families. The couple had already been talking about their concept for some time, but the competition deadline in June pushed them to take action. In May, the couple started Octave Media International, LLC and Frederic DeWulf spent 100 percent of his time developing the app.

"There's nothing like a good deadline to get very focused very quickly on the concept, and you don't waste a lot of time explaining a lot of different ideas," he says. "It just goes right to the essence of it."

The couple created the free Flash-based game Smash Your Food. Users enter their gender, age, and level of physical activity. They then guess the nutritional content of a given food (i.e., pizza) before it gets smashed to reveal the true value and the USDA recommended values based on the data set the user provides.

"We saw this as an opportunity to bring our product forward in front of judges for inspection, validation, and comments," Marta DeWulf says.

Of the 160 apps entered, Smash Your Food was one of 11 winners. The couple received a $1,000 prize along with a trip to the White House.

The validation they received came from industry giants such as Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak and Mike Gallagher, president and chief executive officer of the Entertainment Software Association. Both were judges of the competition. Marta DeWulf adds that Smash Your Food was also tested by kids, nutritionists, educators, and USDA professionals -- true proof-of-concept acknowledgement.

That's not to say you can't win serious money. Li-Ion Motors, a North Carolina-based small business, won $2.5 million in the U.S. Department of Energy's 2010 Progressive Insurance Automotive X-Prize competition for zipping around a racetrack while covering 100 miles as fast as possible without exceeding 70 miles per hour nor going any slower than 45 mph. Li-Ion Motors' battery-powered WAVE II won the race while averaging the equivalent of 125 miles per gallon.

Challenge.gov has created an ecosystem of innovators who can return again and again to solve challenges, says Munz.

The DeWulfs say they'd compete again if they saw an opportunity. They also had advice for other businesses thinking of flexing their competitive muscles.

"Read the rules very carefully and understand them well and don't hesitate to contact the contest administrator with questions," Frederic DeWulf says. "They were very forthcoming with clarifying questions upon submitting, upon obtaining results, even about the voting process and all the way through to after we won," adds his wife.

President Obama's Strategy for American Innovation states, "While our economy remains the most dynamic, innovative, and resilient in the world, we cannot rest on our laurels while other countries catch up. We must redouble our efforts to give our world-leading innovators every chance to succeed. For this purpose, government has a key role to play. A modern, practical approach recognizes both the need for government to lay the foundations for innovation and the hazards of overzealous government intervention."

With Challenge.gov, the administration has done its part. The question now is, "Are you up for the challenge?"

Wireless Business Solution Zee Tawasha