Competition Delivers Innovation

Tune into "GSA Does That!?" to discover how Challenge.gov uses prize competitions to turn your innovative ideas into real-world solutions for government. Join us as we explore with Jarah Meador, director of Challenge.gov, how you can participate and make a difference. Don’t miss this chance to turn ideas into action and just maybe win big!

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Are you looking for more information about Challenge.gov? Check out the resources below!

• Challenge.gov

"GSA Does That!?" is the U.S. General Services Administration's first agency-wide podcast, offering listeners an inside look into how GSA and its partners benefit the American people. Hosted by Rob Trubia, the podcast features interviews with GSA leaders, experts, partners, and customers, covering topics such as federal real estate, acquisitions, and technology. The title reflects many's surprise at the scope of GSA's impact. At the same time, the artwork pays homage to President Harry S. Truman, who established GSA in 1949 to improve government efficiency and save taxpayer money. Whether you're a policy wonk or just curious about government operations, you can join the listener community.

For more information about the show visit, gsa.gov/podcast.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:26 Interview with Jarah Meador
• 32:03 Episode Close

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;27;00
Rob Trubia
Well, welcome to another episode of the podcast that uncovers the stories behind the federal agency delivering effective and efficient government. This is GSA Does That!?, and I'm your host, Rob Trubia, and spending some time with us today might just be the most lucrative thing you have ever done, because this episode might just lead you to becoming a millionaire.


00;00;27;08 - 00;00;54;13
Rob Trubia
All right, now that I have your attention, let me ask you, have you ever had one of those brilliant ideas that you know could make a big difference? Maybe something that could change your community or even impact the entire country? What if I told you there's a way to turn those ideas into reality? Now imagine a program where the government is actively seeking your solutions, whether it's designing housing for astronauts on Mars for NASA, or coming up with the best name for a new vegetable for the USDA.


00;00;54;15 - 00;01;20;27
Rob Trubia
Your government wants your ideas. And what if your idea was the one they chose to solve their problem? So suddenly you're not just making a difference, you're potentially making millions. Sound too good to be true? It's not. This program is real and it's called Challenge.gov. And today on GSA Does That!?, we're exploring how this incredible prize competition program works, how you can get involved and what it can mean for you and your community.


00;01;20;27 - 00;01;49;04
Rob Trubia
So stick around. This episode might just spark the idea that changes everything. All right, let's bring in our guest. GSA's own Jarah Meador the director of Challenge.gov. Hi, Jarah. Thank you for being with us. I am so glad to have you on GSA Does That!? and I'm really curious to learn more about Challenge.gov. An absolutely fascinating program. You know, I often ask our guests if they would share a little bit about themselves and how they ended up working for GSA.


00;01;49;04 - 00;01;53;00
Rob Trubia
so, Jarah, I just wondered if you might share a little bit about yourself?


00;01;53;02 - 00;02;22;15
Jarah Meador
Yeah. Thank thanks. It's great to be here, Rob. So I am a Texan who came to my service and the federal government kind of on a winding path. I was I was in the Air Force as a flight medic right out of high school. This work really piqued my interest in science and what I when I came back from my training, I entered a program in biology and became a, cancer biologist.


00;02;22;18 - 00;03;08;28
Jarah Meador
And I was a research scientist for about a decade. And I really wanted to impact how our country is funding science so that I could transform innovation and discovery. And that led me to the federal government through a fellowship for scientists and technologists. And that was about a decade ago. And in that time and my time in government, I've worked at the U.S. agency for International Development, developing prize competitions on purifying brackish water for farm purposes and drinking water to Veterans Affairs, where I helped them stand up innovation programs to reduce suicide to develop platforms for veterans, memorialization and legacy.


00;03;09;01 - 00;03;34;13
Jarah Meador
And then over to GSA for about six years, where I'd been leading, GSA's efforts in connecting with the public to innovate via prize competitions and also to open up science to collaboration between the government and the public through projects that are called citizen science or participatory research. And so that's how I came to be sitting here talking to you today


00;03;34;13 - 00;03;34;23
Jarah Meador
Rob.


00;03;34;28 - 00;03;53;28
Rob Trubia
Wow. Well, thank you for sharing. That is fascinating. You have, quite the background. It's really impressive. And I how we, GSA found you, I have no idea. But we're very blessed to have you on the GSA team and for you to land in this position Challenge.gov that we're going to talk about today. It just seems like a perfect fit to me.


00;03;54;00 - 00;04;19;29
Jarah Meador
I say that I have the best job in government because I get to engage with all federal agencies and help them innovate on their mission, and also in citizen science to help them open their science to participation with the public. And so, yeah, I feel like this role brings all my experience together into one amazing job that I get to do every day.


00;04;20;04 - 00;04;29;18
Rob Trubia
Well, I think I'm excited to learn about Challenge.gov. So maybe you could just start off by telling us a little bit about Challenge.gov, what is it and what is the mission?


00;04;29;20 - 00;05;02;08
Jarah Meador
Yeah for sure. So Challenge.gov is is a program and also a platform. You know we have the.gov name which is a URL name. This program was established during the Obama administration, about 11-12 years ago. And that administration, they really they really saw a need to help federal agencies engage with companies and individuals who the government has not typically worked with before, but who we definitely need to work with to move forward important areas of innovation.


00;05;02;11 - 00;05;25;02
Jarah Meador
And so they decided to stand up a program that would allow agencies to use prize authority, which was a new authority. You know, the government can do grants, we can do contracts. But this authority prize authority, it came about in 2010, and that gave every federal agency the authority to run prize competitions. And so Challenge.gov was born.


00;05;25;02 - 00;05;42;21
Jarah Meador
In the past 10 years, we've helped agencies run about 2000 competitions in total. These competitions have awarded about $1 billion in prize awards to the public. And most of those, awardees are entities that hadn't worked with the government before.


00;05;42;25 - 00;05;51;01
Rob Trubia
Wow. That's fascinating. So Challenge.gov is a prize competition. So that means people can just enter to win a prize. What are the prizes look like?


00;05;51;03 - 00;06;28;15
Jarah Meador
So Challenge.gov is really the platform that is a central hub where at any given time the public can go there and they can see prize competitions on any topic that they can imagine that aligns with the mission of the federal government and these competitions, some of them have specific eligibility, some maybe they're open only to students that are age 13 to 18 or their technology focused competitions, where they're asking the public to develop a new way of keeping time on the surface of Venus, for example.


00;06;28;18 - 00;06;55;15
Jarah Meador
Or they're trying to get help from scientists in the public, around eradicating white nose bat syndrome. I'm saying that wrong. But these competitions really kind of represent, a diversity of topics that are maybe of interest to, to anyone at any given time in the public. And the federal government runs these competitions when they they have a specific needs.


00;06;55;15 - 00;07;17;18
Jarah Meador
They've looked inside their agency and they've determined that the solution for this problem, we have lives outside of the walls of government. And we're asking you that innovator, that expert, that entrepreneur out in the public to come to this problem, present your solution and and possibly win an award.


00;07;17;20 - 00;07;29;18
Rob Trubia
Okay. Help me understand, why does this live inside GSA and also help me understand the mechanics of, say, I'm NASA and I've got something I want to do a prize competition. What are the mechanics? How does it work?


00;07;29;20 - 00;08;08;23
Jarah Meador
Yeah. So I'll answer the first part of that. So so why GSA? Well, the General Services Administration is kind of the general store for the federal government. We are that agency that helps the federal government source, solutions, innovation services to meet their needs. And so within GSA, there's a division called the Federal Acquisition Service, or FAS. And within FAS, there's a Technology Transformation Services division we call it TTS and TTS’s mission is to create a federal government, digital government for and with the American people.


00;08;08;25 - 00;08;36;17
Jarah Meador
And so that is why Challenge.gov lives within, TTS because we're a digital platform that puts forward opportunities kind of as a form of open government that allow the government to connect with with anyone in the US to solve a problem. Types of of innovative kind of competitions. There are so many wonderful examples. One that comes to mind is the Lunar Habitat Challenge.


00;08;36;17 - 00;09;11;29
Jarah Meador
And so NASA, why does NASA run competitions? With exploration in space and, kind of reach goal, spending long using longer duration missions for discovery. They've realized that there's a need, for astronauts to have habitats on locations like the moon. And so NASA developed a competition to really incentivize innovators to come up with a way to build habitats safe and stable habitats on the surface of the moon, using only locally available resources.


00;09;11;29 - 00;09;38;23
Jarah Meador
Right. Because at NASA, you you have an up mass problem when trying to get to space. And so we can't take building materials to space. So how might we build habitats using materials that are available like regolith on space. And so they developed a competition. And the winner of that competition has gone on to develop terrestrial based 3D printing technologies.


00;09;38;23 - 00;10;09;22
Jarah Meador
And they're building whole communities of houses here in Texas. Other competitions are are targeted toward students. Like I mentioned earlier, there's a challenge, an annual challenge from, Health and Human Services called the Fent Alert Challenge. And this challenge, engages youth, I believe, between the age of 14 and 18. And they ask youth to come up with ideas and strategies for raising awareness among youth about the dangers of exposure to fentanyl.


00;10;09;24 - 00;10;34;29
Jarah Meador
And so agencies are using prize competitions to engage with, with solvers in ways that create value for those solvers. When we ask them, you know, why did you compete in this competition? They'll say, well, I wanted to help. It's my form of service. I have the talent, the technology, the idea that could solve this problem. And this was my opportunity to help.


00;10;35;01 - 00;10;58;10
Jarah Meador
They'll say, I want to win. I think I'm the best at this. And it here's a chance for me to test my skills and improve the value of my innovation in a in a broad pool of talent. They really there's there's kind of a it's a diversity of reasons for why agencies use prize competitions. But usually it's because there's an important problem to solve.


00;10;58;13 - 00;11;09;24
Jarah Meador
They're not sure how the solution needs to be made, and they're not sure who can solve that problem. And so they run a competition to find out.


00;11;09;26 - 00;11;23;27
Rob Trubia
It seems like it could be a little humbling for these agencies to decide. You know, we can't figure this out. We don't have the talent in-house or the time potentially. We've got to put it out there. It seems like a humbling experience.


00;11;23;29 - 00;11;49;07
Jarah Meador
Sure. You know that that's a really good point. You know, and a lot of agencies like NASA, for example, they have an external innovation program like prize competition, and an innovation grant funding. They also have an internal competition and innovation program where they incentivize employees to come up with, with new solutions that may even be outside of the job that they're hired for.


00;11;49;10 - 00;12;14;27
Jarah Meador
Because we find that most transformational innovation comes from those who work in adjacent fields. And here's their opportunity to apply some knowledge they have over here to a new problem in this other space. But what we found with agencies is that a lot of times, the prize competitions that are developed, especially around science and technology, are developed by those internal subject matter experts.


00;12;14;29 - 00;12;41;06
Jarah Meador
And what they've realized is they have pieces of the solution, but they need some expertise that’s outside of the walls of government. And so, you know, it could be that you would run a grant program to develop research in that area or but that can take many, many years. And in those cases, you're, you're hoping to get to, an innovation or a new finding.


00;12;41;08 - 00;13;07;20
Jarah Meador
But but you may not or you can run, issue a contract, but in a contract situation, you're, you're paying in a milestone based approach. With the prize competition, you're paying for success. And so the federal government only provides the award when that innovation has been developed and delivered. And so it's a new way of thinking for federal agencies.


00;13;07;20 - 00;13;10;03
Jarah Meador
And it doesn't fit all use cases.


00;13;10;05 - 00;13;16;23
Rob Trubia
It seems like it really could be a very good deal for the government, honestly, because like you said, they're only paying for what they're buying.


00;13;16;25 - 00;13;39;01
Jarah Meador
Yes. And the federal government is able to see a diversity of approaches and solutions because with the prize competition, when you're developing the competition, and this goes to one of the questions you asked before Rob, when you're developing the competition, you start with a problem and you do analysis to determine what is this problem, what's the state of innovation in this field?


00;13;39;08 - 00;14;00;25
Jarah Meador
Why hasn't this problem been solved? What would it take to solve this problem? What are the different technologies or approaches we could develop to to solve this problem? But you're not sure which approach is the very best. So with the price competition you can develop the requirements for how you're going to what it needs to do at the end.


00;14;00;25 - 00;14;20;26
Jarah Meador
Right? But not how it's built or how it's made. And you can put forward the criteria you're going to use to select the winners or to grade or score these submissions. But all of these come in. And the benefit to the government isn't just pay for success. The benefit is that you get to see this diversity of approaches.


00;14;20;29 - 00;14;49;16
Jarah Meador
You get to see prototypes, demonstrations. You get to understand the ideas and the thinking and this diverse pool of innovators. And then the benefit to the innovators is that you can be new. And so with grants and with contracts, part of the selection criteria is almost always your history, your publication history, your patent history, the, the resumes of your team because the government's making, they're doing a risk calculation.


00;14;49;18 - 00;15;12;09
Jarah Meador
Is this a team that's likely to solve the problem if they receive the funding? But with the prize competition, we don't look at that. We don't know what expertise and experience you brought to the table. We're just looking at the solution that you put forward so you can be new to a field. You can be new to working with the government.


00;15;12;12 - 00;15;16;20
Jarah Meador
We just really look at the best idea that’s put forward.


00;15;16;22 - 00;15;27;22
Rob Trubia
So not only is the government benefiting from the one that they award the prize to, but they're seeing all of the submissions and they're learning from all of those as well?


00;15;27;25 - 00;15;28;23
Jarah Meador
Absolutely.


00;15;28;25 - 00;15;35;26
Rob Trubia
That's pretty brilliant. It makes a lot of sense. Is it only individuals that can enter these or so do sometimes companies enter them?


00;15;35;29 - 00;16;07;25
Jarah Meador
Although some competitions limit their eligibility to a specific sector, most prize competition positions are open to individuals, to teams, to private sector companies, academic institution and nonprofit entities. If you're using the the legal prize authority that all agencies have, which is called the America Competes Act, then eligibility is limited to U.S. citizens and those with a primary place of business in the United States.


00;16;07;27 - 00;16;20;03
Rob Trubia
So some of these can be extremely profitable from my understanding. Can you talk a little bit about some of the prize awards, and maybe give us some examples of some of the biggest awards you've seen?


00;16;20;06 - 00;16;53;06
Jarah Meador
Sure. So, Health and Human Services ran an antibiotic, or antimicrobial resistance challenge a few years ago. I believe the prize purse for that challenge was around $20 million. Veterans Affairs ran Mission Daybreak, which was a competition that had a total prize purse of $20 million. I believe that was in the last year and a half. BARDA recently launched a vaccine innovation competition program with, an overall budget of around $100 million.


00;16;53;08 - 00;17;25;08
Jarah Meador
And so we're seeing agencies put forward increasing investment in the use of prize competitions to drive innovation. But it's not just the overall prize purse like the Mission Daybreak challenge that I mentioned. And this goes to kind of who participates in the eligibility. In that competition structure, a need that they had was that they needed more veteran service organizations, more small businesses, more nonprofits working in the veteran mental health space.


00;17;25;11 - 00;17;52;04
Jarah Meador
And they needed a broad geographic distribution of these entities, and they needed entities that were using a diversity of approaches to to helping veterans who are in in crisis. And so with Mission Daybreak, they were able to award dozens of entities with, a relatively large amount of funding based on their concepts, their strategies, the ideas that they put forward.


00;17;52;04 - 00;18;16;17
Jarah Meador
And what's really different in this case, on the award side is typically with grant funding and contracts, there's an administrative burden on the recipient of the award to provide regular reporting, to have somebody on their team that is really kind of the the reporting in person, the data person, the communication person for activities with the government, with prize competitions,


00;18;16;17 - 00;18;38;08
Jarah Meador
when you are selected as the winner, you receive the award and you get to go do the work that you were awarded for and so there's a decreased administrative burden and allows those great entities to get to work and not be, you know, having to rely on on processes that are going to slow them down in some cases.


00;18;38;10 - 00;18;51;08
Rob Trubia
Is it GSA or the agency that decides this prize is worth 5 million, 10 million, 20 million? And then who decides the allotment? I mean, if you win, do you get it all up front? Do you get a percentage? How does that work?


00;18;51;10 - 00;19;14;13
Jarah Meador
Woo, that's a great question. That's a hard one to answer, but I'm going to do it. So it is not GSA unless it's a GSA sponsored competition. So if you go to Challenge.gov you're going to see a variety of agents, agencies that are sponsoring, you'll see NIH, you'll see NASA, you'll see Department of Energy, all all sorts of agencies are sponsoring competitions. For those competitions


00;19;14;13 - 00;19;43;17
Jarah Meador
GSA isn’t determining the amount of the award or the structure of selecting winners or finalists, that agency that that funded that competition developed it. That's their decision to make for for prize competitions that GSA has developed and designed and is sponsoring. Then GSA does do the the development of kind of the award structure. But to answer your question about how do we determine what what to award for a prize competition?


00;19;43;20 - 00;20;07;11
Jarah Meador
There's a bit of an art to that. What agencies will do is in their analysis, if it's a technology, for example, they'll look out to the marketplace and they'll determine what would it take to have something that's commercially available. Okay. Well, what's the role of the government in this development? Are we one part of the pipeline? Are we the total pipeline for getting this technology to market?


00;20;07;18 - 00;20;36;12
Jarah Meador
What amount of funding would it take to be a forcing factor in accelerating the timeline for this technology to get to market? Oftentimes that's where price competition comes in. And so they'll determine that amount through, requests for information where they ask innovators these questions. What's the appropriate funding level. But mostly they determine it based on conversations, discovery interviews and analysis in the field.


00;20;36;15 - 00;21;02;00
Jarah Meador
But the other part you asked about is how do we determine the structure? With some competitions, they'll be it's not just a one phase winner takes all, because in reality, most, you know, innovation shops know that there's no single solution that's going to be out there. And so they want to award, for example, to the top three based on the score according to the evaluation criteria.


00;21;02;00 - 00;21;29;26
Jarah Meador
First prize might get a larger, amount and then it'll be tranched, in a decreasing fashion. Some competitions want to award as many innovators as possible, like Mission Daybreak. And so in that case, they may have multiple rounds where round one is tell us your idea and then we'll select the top 25 or top 50. And then you'll each receive an amount of funding, an equal amount.


00;21;29;28 - 00;21;50;25
Jarah Meador
And the opportunity to continue in the competition. But we're going to ask you to to do more. Maybe it's a prototype, maybe it's a full proposal, maybe it's, a pitch in front of an audience, and then they'll determine in those multiple phases it'll be a funnel. They'll go from a larger group down to the very best, and then they'll select the top winners.


00;21;50;25 - 00;22;00;03
Jarah Meador
After that. But the amount of funding depends on what you're asking them to do, the funding that's available, and the appropriate level of funding to move forward the state of the art.


00;22;00;05 - 00;22;18;19
Rob Trubia
That's interesting. I never thought about that they have multiple award winners at different phases of the competition. Do they ever award like does an agency ever say first prize, second prize, third prize. And sort of it goes down like this one's 20 million, 15 million, 10 million. Does that ever happen?


00;22;18;22 - 00;22;44;08
Jarah Meador
Yeah, sure. That does happen. And that is generally the way it happens unless you're not picking absolute winners. So in the case like these prize competitions that are designed to really build capacity in a certain field and they want as many winners as possible, right. That's the goal is to have excellence everywhere that can be scaled and diffused in those different regions.


00;22;44;11 - 00;23;15;28
Jarah Meador
In those cases, you'll generally see that it's, a standard amount that all of those top performers receive. But most competitions do have sort of like the Olympic podium, right? Gold, silver and bronze. But what competitions, what we're seeing them, do more and more is they're so surprised about the quality that they receive in these competitions that they'll make changes and they'll say, okay, we're going to have our top three, like we said, but we also have honorable mentions.


00;23;16;00 - 00;23;44;03
Jarah Meador
And so we found these other five that were exemplary in different aspects of the evaluation criteria. And so being an honorable mention in a nationwide competition does have great value for some of these entities, you know, going forward. But one thing I didn't mention is it's not all about money. Some prize competitions, some of the most interesting prize competitions are starting to look at awards differently.


00;23;44;05 - 00;24;12;17
Jarah Meador
And so instead of offering a monetary award, they'll offer something else. Perhaps it's, NASA had an artists inspiring astronauts challenge that where they were looking for art that would be displayed in the astronaut crew quarters, where they were in quarantine before leaving for a mission at Kennedy Space Center. And in that case, the winners, what you won was that your art was displayed for astronauts to inspire them before they went into space.


00;24;12;20 - 00;24;48;23
Jarah Meador
For an artist that might be the ultimate award. We're seeing, prize competitions and technology that are offering for testing, independent analysis and testing at a government facility. If you're an innovator, a technologist, having that opportunity can be worth, you know, way more than a than a certain monetary award at your level of development. And so agencies are really starting to see the value that the government has for access, for opportunity and offering those in addition to monetary awards or instead of monetary awards.


00;24;48;25 - 00;24;59;13
Rob Trubia
Oh, that's interesting. So maybe some of it's just bragging rights, not so much paycheck. And that's great if you put that on your resume or your company and you can share that you even received an honorable mention. That's huge.


00;24;59;15 - 00;25;28;08
Jarah Meador
Well, and think about, students like we were, you know, talking about earlier, if I'm a high school student and I'm my goal is to enter into a top level university, I really need to stand out. And so being a winner of a national competition, like a data analytics challenge, AI challenge, and showing that your skill sets are have been tested in a field of talent and you are a solid performer.


00;25;28;10 - 00;25;33;28
Jarah Meador
That might be what you need to. That might be what is the greatest value for you.


00;25;34;00 - 00;25;40;10
Rob Trubia
I'm curious if you've got any stories of any really fun ones, or a little bit off the wall, or just a little bit different.


00;25;40;13 - 00;26;06;04
Jarah Meador
I believe it was last Christmas holiday, USDA came to us because they had developed pepper varietals and the pepper varietals looked like the old sort of old timey Christmas lights. And they were in different colors and slightly different shapes. And so they came to us to say, hey, is this is this a prize competition? We want to ask the public.


00;26;06;06 - 00;26;27;19
Jarah Meador
We want to raise awareness about the development of these new varietals. They're fun, they're interesting. They serve a purpose. But we want the public to know about them, and we want them to name these peppers. And so they they ran a competition to name these ornamental peppers. There was a tremendous response from the public. People had a lot of fun with it.


00;26;27;22 - 00;26;45;18
Jarah Meador
And, and USDA achieved their goal. And it was, it was sort of a communications goldmine because now you could engage with the public. They're excited to see if they won. And it's something where the government can kind of step out, have a little bit of fun, engage the public.


00;26;45;20 - 00;27;04;13
Rob Trubia
Yeah. This does come from a different angle. It must be really fun for the agency is fun for everybody really, and just fascinating to watch it play out. So it sounds like Challenge.gov is about 14 years old. What's the future of Challenge.gov I mean it sounds like things are going great. I don't know how much there is to change, but what do you see as the future?


00;27;04;15 - 00;27;29;08
Jarah Meador
One thing that we're working on right now is we're developing this innovative evaluation system. And so when you think about prize competitions, there's you have a variety of stakeholders. You have the agency that has developed the competition, they're sponsoring it and they're managing it. So you have a challenge manager. And then you have the public solver that is participating in the competition and submitting their entries.


00;27;29;08 - 00;27;53;19
Jarah Meador
And they're they're going for the gold. You also have evaluators. And so, you know, one of the most important parts of a prize competition is the selection process. And so we're creating this new evaluation process on our platform. That's going to allow federal agencies to engage with individuals and evaluators that may not be part of their existing ecosystem.


00;27;53;21 - 00;28;22;01
Jarah Meador
It's going to allow agencies to tap into the potential of evaluation across the entire federal government. So if I'm a challenge manager from, USDA and I'm running a competition on, a certain topic, agriculture, water purification, or for agriculture, then there may be an expert at USAid or at, National Science Foundation that has expertise or energy in this focus area.


00;28;22;01 - 00;28;49;17
Jarah Meador
And now I can tap into them to provide an evaluation on this innovation submission. And so we're going to use this platform to really innovate in evaluation processes to reduce bias in evaluation, and to hopefully create a kind of community of experts in the federal government, kind of go into one of your original questions that you had about how does it feel in the government to put the hard problems out to the public?


00;28;49;25 - 00;29;34;09
Jarah Meador
Well, in the federal government, we want these innovators and experts that we have to know that they're part of a larger innovation ecosystem so that they can kind of enable collaboration and knowledge sharing. So this evaluation capability that we're building is going to do that. We're also improving our, kind of user experience on the landing page. We want to be able to highlight not just prize competitions that are happening, but if I'm an innovator, technology innovator, maybe I want to know that Department of Energy has a hold technology innovation program and so that they can, in one place, be able to access a variety of open innovation opportunities across the federal government, not


00;29;34;09 - 00;29;43;17
Jarah Meador
just prize competitions. And so that's the those two things I mentioned here are things that will definitely be in the works in the next year and a half.


00;29;43;20 - 00;30;14;12
Rob Trubia
That makes a lot of sense because you've got people that are innovative coming to Challenge.gov. Why not show them more? Yeah. And you're I love what you said about bringing in folks from other agencies to evaluate, because now you're getting a fresh perspective on the evaluation, not just a fresh perspective on solving a problem. So if someone out there listening is going, I’m interested, obviously they go to Challenge.gov about how many competitions are going at any given time.


00;30;14;15 - 00;30;38;22
Jarah Meador
Yeah, at any given time, it kind of varies throughout the year because of government funding cycles and things. But what we tend to see is that at any given time, you'll see a minimum of 24 or 25 competitions on our site. And those are competitions. They're not closed, they're open, they're active. You can participate in them. We do not display competitions that are just for informational purposes on our landing page.


00;30;38;29 - 00;30;49;14
Jarah Meador
These are ones that you can dive in and you can do something, at any given time, you might see up to 45 competitions on the site. It really fluctuates across the year.


00;30;49;21 - 00;30;54;05
Rob Trubia
So definitely go check it out if you're listening. Challenge.gov.


00;30;54;07 - 00;31;20;17
Jarah Meador
Yeah check it out there. But also you can subscribe. We have a newsletter that we release every month. Also if you subscribe to the newsletter we release bulletins as well about sort of late breaking activities events that you can engage with. We're active on LinkedIn and, and also X  and so you can follow us there and but yeah subscribe create an account on the platform.


00;31;20;19 - 00;31;42;17
Jarah Meador
The platform is free to use. It's free for federal agencies to use. It's free for the public to use. Obviously we really are just a platform that is here to create that bridge between the public and federal governments for innovation. So come to the site, join our community. If you're a federal employee, you can join our community of practice for prizes and challenges.


00;31;42;23 - 00;32;03;17
Jarah Meador
We have over 700 federal employees that are a member of our community. We engage regularly. We hold office hours once a month where you can meet the friends you haven't met yet, in innovation across government and, join our community, meet other innovators in federal government, and grow your innovation practice at your agency.


00;32;03;20 - 00;32;14;05
Rob Trubia
This is fantastic. Thank you Jarah. This has been a great conversation and you've got an amazing program. And I think you might be right. You definitely at least have one of the very best jobs in government.


00;32;14;07 - 00;32;15;11
Jarah Meador
I agree.


00;32;15;13 - 00;32;37;21
Rob Trubia
Well, as we close today's episode, a huge thank you to Jarah for sharing GSA's amazing prize competition program with all of us. I want to encourage everyone out there to explore, Challenge.gov and discover how your innovative ideas might align with exciting competitions currently underway. Your idea could be the perfect fit, and I bet you didn't know GSA does that.


00;32;37;28 - 00;33;00;07
Rob Trubia
Join us next time when we discuss the humble beginnings and the significant growth of 18F, GSA's tech startup that's building a 21st century government. And as always, thank you for tuning in to GSA Does That!? Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform, and consider sharing this episode of friends and colleagues. To suggest a topic or guest, drop us an email at .


00;33;00;07 - 00;33;16;22
Rob Trubia
gsadoesthat@gsa.gov. I'm Rob Trubia, joined by our executive producer, Mr. Max Stempora. This episode was brought to you by the General Services Administration, Office of Strategic Communication. I hope you have a great rest of your day.