Social Courage in Reverse

Wow. I was excited to learn about a new crowd-sourcing, social collaboration launch from the government’s new Chief Innovation Office – Challenge.gov. After my initial visit, I was dismayed. And after repeated visits and consideration, I’m really disappointed. First, the easy stuff. The look and feel of this new site looks like a copycat of idea exchanges that Pepsi, Dell and Starbucks have been doing a much better job with for years. The site is driven from the center of the government with agencies submitting programs that they want help to solve. Really? In case they haven’t noticed, it might be helpful for citizens to have a voice and introduce & vote about the ideas and problems they would most like to see solved.

After doing a bit of digging, I noticed that the GSA acquired this site for free. And it shows. If you’re serious about this, give it the resources and attention it deserves.

So take a quick stroll through the site and you’ll see challenges for a National Radon Poster challenge or GovGab – a project to source stories about how you’ve used government information in your life. Again, wow. Somewhere, during one of the most difficult economic climates we’ve experienced, government employees are working on these pressing challenges.

It seems to me like spending some time automating the Census process and bringing it into this century or reducing those annoying statements you get from the Social Security Administration would be much more innovative than this. And that’s just fixing old problems, not innovating and thinking about future ones.