Promoting innovation through prizes and challenges has steadily become an accepted policy throughout many US government departments and agencies over the past few years. Consequently, research into what does and does not work, in the development of such initiatives is increasing important in advancing best practice in this area.

Earlier this year, the Case Foundation together with the White House Domestic Policy Council and Office on Science and Technology Policy, hosted a Promoting Innovation Summit to gather lessons and strategies on the use of prizes, challenges and open grant-making.

Benefits to using prizes and challenges

In his opening remarks, Jeff Zients, the nation’s first Chief Performance Officer, pointed to the transformative power of prizes and challenges:

The productivity boom has transformed private sector performance over the past decade, but the federal government has missed out on this transformation and lags far behind in terms of efficiency and service quality. The American taxpayer deserves more bang for their buck.

Earlier this year, Zients’ office prepared a memo giving guidance to heads of executive departments and agencies on the use of challenges and prizes to promote open government. The memo outlines a number of benefits of such initiatives as tools for promoting open government, innovation, and other national priorities. These include:

• The ability to establish an important goal without having to choose the approach or the team that is most likely to succeed
• Enables sponsors to pay only for results
• Highlights excellence in a particular domain of human endeavor to motivate, inspire and guide others
• Increases the number and diversity of individuals, organizations and teams that are addressing a particular problem or challenge of national or international significance
• Improves the skills of the participants in the competition
• Stimulates private sector investment that is many times greater than the cash value of the prize
• Attracts more interest and attention to a defined program, activity or issue of concern
• Captures the public imagination and changes the public’s perception of what is possible

Challenge.gov

The memo also explained, how the federal government would make available a web-based platform for prizes and challenges. This would be used to support agencies in their execution of prizes:

This platform will provide a forum for agencies to post problems and invite communities of problem solvers to suggest, collaborate on, and deliver solutions. Over the longer term, the General Services Administration (GSA) will also provide government-wide services to share best practices and assist agencies in developing guidelines for issuing challenges. Additionally, GSA will develop, as expeditiously as possible, a contract vehicle to provide agency access to relevant products and services, including technical assistance in structuring and conducting contests to take maximum benefit of the marketplace as they identify and pursue contest initiatives to further the policy objectives of the Federal Government.

This platform – called Challenge.gov – recently went live to federal employees, and the General Services Administration (GSA) will open it to the public later this month. GSA explained the concept behind the site:

Challenge.gov is a new platform that allows federal agencies to post challenges, and at the same time, allows the public to find federal challenges. It’s now open to federal agencies to create challenges or showcase challenges from other platforms.

The platform behind Challenge.gov – ChallengePost – is already used by First Lady Michelle Obama’s Apps For Healthy Kids contest site. This has over 40,000 supporters and around 100 apps worth an estimated are worth over $5 million dollars. In exchange it is making $60k available in prizes.

Do’s and Don’ts

The Promoting Innovation report below is a summary of the lessons and shared learning discussed at the conference, and highlights some of the shining examples of the power and pitfalls of crowdsourcing ideas and innovation.

Whilst prizes and challenges can be powerful tools in driving change, the report highlights some definite Do’s and Don’ts. These include:

• Problems must be clearly defined with measurable outcomes and objective rules.
• Agencies must make sure authority and budgets are in place -  The Office of Management and Budget has recently issued guidance for agencies that are considering using prizes and challenges as a part of their fulfillment of the Open Government Directive.
• Challenges should be open and transparent – Agencies should not underestimate the effort it can take to ensure fairness amongst participants.
• Prizes don’t have to be money – The report notes how ‘a non-monetary prize that creates recognition can stimulate innovation – as can a contest that promises winning ideas will actually be used.’ As part of this, it highlights the President’s SAVE award in which the federal employee submitting the winning idea was given the opportunity to present the idea to President Obama in person, and have their idea included in the 2011 budget.
• Use the public for the right purpose – The are stories of inappropriate ideas rising to the surface of contests as the result of groups gaming a voting system or for other reasons. The UK’s Spending Challenge has been plagued by such issues, although it’s outcome is hailed a success by some.  The report suggests “voting systems often result in the most creative solutions being dismissed. It is not clear that making final evaluations is the right use of Web 2.0 tools when it comes to such contests”.

Challenges to implementation

The Promoting Innovation report, also highlights some of the key challenges agencies can face in introducing prizes and challenges. These include how to handle failure if the results are not what was expected, ensuring internal capacity and skills are available to administer such initiatives and managing the internal change associated with using prizes and awards to further policy goals.

While some of these concerns maybe mitigated through the use of Challenge.gov, McKinsey’s research on prizes highlights some of their limits and cautions against their use versus other philanthropic instruments. They explain that prizes are a good fit if there is a clear and achievable goal, and many solvers willing to absorb the risk of the effort:

Are there limits to the effective use of prizes? Of course! Good ones require clear objectives, a rich field of potential problem solvers, and competitors willing to take risks. Prizes work best when a field isn’t already flooded with funded research and the challenge is more to create a clever application of technology than a technology itself.

A rule of thumb holds that prizes are useful tools for solving problems for which the objective is clear, but the way to achieve it is not. By attracting diverse talent and a range of potential solutions, prizes draw out many possible solutions, many of them unexpected, and steer the effort in directions that established experts might not go but where the solution may nonetheless lie.

Along with this, Zients’ memo outlines many legal issues to be addressed by agencies in structuring prize competitions. These include compliance with Federal Advisory Committee Act legislation, Ethical issues and federal endorsement of products or services, Intellectual Property and many others.

Mindful of these concerns, Tom Kalil, Director White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, explained how agencies have the strong support of the President and OMB to use prizes and challenges as catalysts for innovation and policy formation:

I hope everyone who is here from the Federal Departments and Agencies will come away from this with a renewed sense that this is an important tool, that you will go back and talk to 5-10 of your colleagues to get them excited about this, and that if you run into people who say no you can’t do this, show them the OMB memo, show them that this is in the President’s Innovation Strategy, and know that you have not just permission to do this, but a strong affirmation from the Office of Science and Technology Policy, from the National Economic Council, [and] … from the OMB General Counsel’s Office.

Promoting Innovation Doc

Vivek Kundra on Prizes and Challenges

For more check:

• Summit keynote and panel videos, along with other interviews from the event.
• McKinsey report: And the winner is…Capturing the promise of philanthropic prizes
• Peter Corbett on How to create a civic innovation contest

The recently announced UK Government Spending Challenge, has this week, invited members of the public to send in their ideas on how to get value for public money.

The UK Spending Challenge was announced last month, but was initially only open to public servants. As Chancellor George Osbourne explained above, the response from public servants has been impressive. It has yielded over 60,000 ideas in just two weeks:

A couple of weeks ago, I asked people working in our public services for their ideas, and an amazing 56,000 people got in touch. It just shows how people respond when given a chance. We’re already putting into practice many of their ideas.

Now I’m asking the general public for their views. Tell us where’s the waste. What should we cut out. What can we improve. What’s working really well that we should be doing more of. You let us know. You can get in touch via the Spending Challenge website, or by going to the Democracy UK section of Facebook.

Your Government needs you. Please get in touch.

The 60,000 ideas will now be analysed by a central government team who will ensure the best ideas are taken forward as part of the Spending Review. The conclusions of the Spending Review will be published on 20 October 2010.

UK’s Spending Challenge versus US SAVE Award

The opening up of this Challenge to the public coincides with President Obama’s launch of the 2010 SAVE Award. The competition was announced on Thursday with the launch of a new Ideascale site where .gov workers can submit saving ideas and vote on other suggestions from Federal employees.

The site has already received 2,000 ideas, with the current most popular being an expansion of telecommuting, transportable security clearances and the donation of surplus government property to schools.

There’s quite an interesting contrast between the top ideas on the US SAVE Award site – which is currently restricted to Federal employees – and those available on the UK Spending Challenge website which is open to the public. There is however, noticeable similarities between the ideas submitted by UK Public servants and their US colleagues. For example, transferable security clearances are highlighted on the SAVE Award and were also suggested by public servants through the Spending Challenge site.

Some of the most commented upon public ideas, however, on the UK site relate to benefits, immigrants and membership of the European Union. These ideas relate to larger strategic policy areas, rather than the relatively nuanced ideas on improving government efficacy proposed on the SAVE Award site and by UK public servants.

One of the top public ideas on the Spending Challenge relates to the website itself and suggests it should itself be ‘shut down’ to save money. In this vein, it’s interesting to look at the government’s collaboration with Facebook and their involvement in the Spending Challenge.

Facebook: ‘public engagement for free’

On announcing the Facebook tie-up Prime Minster Cameron participated in a video chat with Facebook co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg. He said :

We are really excited about having Facebook involved in the Spending Challenge…

There’s enormous civic spirit in this country where people want to take control and do things in a different way. We are giving people an opportunity with Facebook and I am sure that they will take it.

He went on to echo some of the thoughts outlined by the idea that the Spending Challenge site itself should be ‘shut down’ to save money:

Normally if Government wants to engage with people we’d probably spend millions of pounds, even billions, on our own website, and with your help we’re basically getting this public engagement for free.

That’s quite a good start for saving money.

The Spending Challenge site is based on an Open Source theme and Delib’s Plone-based Dialogue App platform. While this emphasises the government’s reuse of Open source code, the site is not without its criticisms and failings.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes has described the collaboration as “the largest public engagement project ever launched by the British Government”. As part of this the social networking site will ask its 23 million members in the UK to submit and vote on ideas for where cuts can be made.

The Downing Street press release is vague on Facebook’s specific involvement, however, except to say:

The social networking site will support the Treasury’s Spending Challenge by providing a dedicated space for Facebook users to come up with ideas on how to make savings in public spending.

Along with this the government says Facebook will be its “primary channel” for communicating with the public about spending cuts. Interestingly, the reference to WikiLeaks on the Spending Challenge site (highlighted in a previous blog) is no longer active. The entire paragraph where it says it will “monitor a range of blogs, social networks, forums”, has been removed from the site suggesting perhaps that Facebook will be the only platform upon which the debate over spending cuts will be monitored.

The primary question regarding the tie-up with Facebook is whether it provides an appropriate platform for informed debate on government spending and how to improve its efficacy.

Facebook comments

Many commentators have pointed out that the tie-up with Facebook is rather nebulous and currently very limited. In a blog post on techPresident, Nancy Scola notes how their current involvement appears simply to be a link to a government website: “Somewhat confusing matters: Facebook’s involvement in the Treasury Spending Challenge seems limited to, at this point, linking from its Democracy UK page to, yes, a custom-made official British government website.”

Andrea Di Maio, a Gov 2.0 analyst at Gartner, suggests that adding a Facebook channel will not broaden the debate:

So at the end of the day Facebook will be no more than a channel to point to the Chancellor’s Spending Challenge site. Whoever believes that the sheer presence on Facebook will broaden and rebalance participation of UK citizens in this contest is wrong.

People who have an interest (and often a vested interest) in participating in the Spending Challenge will do so with or without the Facebook page.

The quality of the comments and debate on Facebook regarding the Spending Challenge launch does not instill confidence in its use as a debating platform. The Register notes the number of “bewildering” comments and “spam posts” the page has already received.

Reading through the 491 comments this has already received, highlights the difficultly the coalition will have in stimulating constructive debate on such sensitive issues as spending cuts.

Difference in Ideas

There is a clear and noticeable difference in the ideas on the SAVE Award site, in comparison to those on the Spending Challenge site.

The SAVE Award site is only open to Federal employees and consequently has a strong focus on operation efficiency within agencies. As Jeffrey Zients, OMB deputy director noted:

The basic premise here is that many of the best ideas exist on the front line. Those doing the work on the front lines have the best ideas on how to make changes.

George Osborne published a sample of ideas put forward by public sector workers in the first phase of consultation. These ideas represent many good suggestions for improving back-office services for public sector organisations. They include merging back-office services for public sector organisations, switching off office computers over the weekend and better mobile phone contracts (an idea President Obama highlights in his SAVE Award video and expected to save the Government $10m).

In opening up the idea platform to the public, however, the UK government has shifted the focus away from those ‘working on the front lines’ of government services. Thus, the ideas posted by the public have primarily focused on major public policy questions e.g. reform of the welfare state or immigration policy. These are not ideas for which governments will change course because of an online debate. Rather they represent principles upon which political parties are elected. There is a danger, therefore, that public involvement in the Spending Challenge will morph into a policy debate, rather than the operational efficiency debate for which I believe it was intended.

Generating great ideas in the Public Sector

As part of the doing what works program, the Center for American Progress (CAP) recently released a report called Capital Ideas: How to Generate Innovation in the Public Sector. It analysed 24 ways in which Governments and Organisations are generating great ideas in the Public Sector. These were arranged under five themes:

1. Unleash the creative talents of government employees
2. Setup dedicated teams responsible for promoting innovation
3. Divert a small proportion of your budget to harnessing innovation
4. Collaborate with outsiders to help solve problems
5. Look at an issue from different perspectives to notice things your wouldn’t otherwise

The Spending Challenge was initially focused on unleashing the creative talents of government employees to suggest ideas to cut spending. However, its current focus on collaborating with outsiders risks diluting the initiative from producing concrete frontline ideas that could reasonably be implemented, to a policy discussion the outcome of which may-be too nebulous to result in any government action. This has the potential to increase public cynicism in such endeavors if no specific ideas are acted upon.

The essential difference between the Spending Challenge and the outside collaboration examples CAP highlights, is the absence of any specific problem for the public to solve. The challenge of how to ‘re-think government to deliver more for less’ is far too broad and can result in a paradox of choice with the effect that ideas representing the lowest common denominator rise to the top.

The Capital Ideas report highlighted Innocentive, DC’s Apps for Democracy, and Social Innovation Camp as successful examples of collaboration with outsiders. All these focused on specific challenges, for which an experienced minority could focus on.

The real opportunity to collaborate with outsiders and transform the way that the public sector does things, requires posing concrete problems requiring specific outcomes. These can be affected through either product or service innovation, but where possible should be substantiated by evidence-based reasoning. The worry is that opening up the Spending Challenge initiative to the public without reference to clear problems, degenerates it into an idea free-for-all with all the associated online comments we’ve come to expect from such initiatives.

For more check:

• Spending Challenge
• From Small Innovations to Social Transformations (CAP event)
• The £105m website
• Another week, another major consultation
• Facebook and the deficit: Can crowdslicing work?

A new government website called Your Freedom was launched today, offering members of the public the opportunity to voice their ideas and comments to reduce pointless regulation and unnecessary bureaucracy. The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg explained how this provides a real chance for the public to influence government policy:

It’s a totally new way of making policy. A totally new way of putting you in charge.

Announcing the initiative on his YouTube channel, Clegg encouraged the public to get involved and tell the government if they feel their rights have been infringed :

Be demanding of your liberty. Be insistent about your rights.

Every time you have had to fill out three versions of the same form, tell us about it. Every time you have felt snooped on by the state, tell us about it. Every unnecessary law, every mind-numbing rule, every time your rights have been infringed – now is the time to tell us about it.

Public input

The Your Freedom project asks citizens three questions:

• Which current laws would you like to remove or change because they restrict your civil liberties?

• Which regulations do you think should be removed or changed to make running your business or organisation as simple as possible?

• Which offences do you think we should remove or change and why?

In his video address Clegg cautioned that the government would not be able to respond to every suggestion – the site already crashed due to heavy traffic, and received 2,000 ideas in the first day  – but he promised that every comment would at least be read.

The site explains that its part of the Programme for Government and its aim to ‘create a more open and less intrusive society through the restoration of Britain’s traditions of freedom and fairness’. The site allows the public to submit, comment on, or vote for ideas on how to “free our society of unnecessary laws and regulations – both for individuals and businesses.”

Users of the site will be able to comment on and rate their favourite ideas and relevant departments will then respond to the most popular workable ideas.:

Your ideas will inform government policy and some of your proposals could end up making it into bills we bring before Parliament to change the law.

So if there are any laws or regulations you’d like us to do away with, then submit your idea. If you see ideas here already that you like the look of, then rate them and get them moved up the list. And if there’s more you’d like to say, then talk to others in the comments section for each proposal.

The views expressed through the site will be taken into account in the Freedom Bill later this year.

Criticism

The site has already received a wide range of ideas, including as Simon Jeffery notes, calls to legalise cannabis and magic mushrooms. These topics also appeared prominently in US Open Government dialogue last year, but are unlikely to be seriously considered by a Conservative led government.

Clegg’s claims that this initiative represents “a totally new way of making policy”, however, could be countered by Labour’s highly successful Downing Street petition website launched in 2006. It is described as the:

largest non-partisan democracy site by volume of users ever, with over 8m signatures from over 5m unique email addresses, representing something like 10% of the entire UK population.

Jeffery notes some cynicism about the site launch on twitter:

When @GdnPolitics asked its Twitter followers what they thought about the Clegg initiative, replies came back along the lines of “I’m disappointed. I thought it was going to be a campaign to liberate Clegg from this ridiculous pseudo-coalition” or “FREE THE SHEFFIELD ONE“. When the question was re-phrased, people were still cynical. “A few token gestures to compensate for the coming pain, always goes down well…reminds me of the dentist’s lollipop,” said one.

This month has now seen the coalition’s launch two interesting online exercises – this, and the one asking public sector workers for ideas on ways to reduce government spending. Your Freedom seeks to build on the Conservative election pledge to try to open up the legislative process through providing citizens with an easy means to input into proposed policy. This is not without risks, however.  Ideas on legalising soft drugs are already some of the most popular suggestions on the site. If these prove to generate the most comments and approval, then the Government’s response will be an interesting test of how to manage online citizen feedback where diverges with government policy.

Further reading:

• Your Freedom
• Guardian article on Your Freedom launch
• ‘is [Your Freedom] the silliest new govt website or the most inspired?’
• BBC Newsnight discussion on Your Freedom

Earlier today, UK Prime Minister David Cameron kicked off a consultation exercise on ways to reduce government spending. Together with Nick Clegg he has written to public service workers asking them to share their ideas on where to make spending cuts.

A Spending Challenge website has been launched to solicit suggestions from Britain’s 6 million public sector workers. The challenge states that “Every single idea will be considered and the best ones taken forward by departments, the Treasury and the Cabinet Office”. Ideas will be analysed through a five step process:

1. All ideas considered by cross-government team
2. Serious ideas go to ‘champions’ team in Cabinet Office/Treasury
3. Most promising ideas sent to departments and Treasury spending teams to be worked up
4. Selected ideas reviewed by Ministers
5. Spending Review announced October 20th

The rational for the challenge is laid out in Cameron’s letter:

The biggest challenge our country faces is dealing with our huge debts – and that means we have to reduce public spending.

Reducing public spending will require innovative and challenging ideas, best developed by those working on the frontline of public services:

We want you to help us find those savings, so we can cut public spending in a way that is fair and responsible. You work on the frontbench of public services. You know where things are working well, where the waste is, and where we can re-think things so that we get better services for less money.

[...] Don’t hold back. Be innovative, be radical, challenge the way things are done. Every serious idea will be considered: by government departments, by the Treasury, by our teams in Number 10 and the Cabinet Office – and passed to Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee to make sure we don’t miss anything.

While the website states the government “will look at every single idea that comes in”, however, there is no guarantee any of the suggestions will make it through to the final Spending Review report in October. This will set detailed spending plans, with budget cuts of up to 25% over four years for many government departments.

The Spending Challenge will be opened to the general public from 9 July. A summary of all submissions will be published later this year.

Partner with Wikileaks

The Spending Challenge site will also monitor social media as a means of fulfilling its mandate to find innovative ideas for saving money. This represents a recognition that some of the most “out of the box” suggestions may be outlined by on blogs and forums, rather than a newly created government website:

Although this process allows you to submit ideas anonymously, we respect the fact that some people will not want to contribute directly to a government website.  As part of this exercise, we will monitor a range of blogs, social networks, forums and also http://wikileaks.org.

Save Award similarities

The UK Spending Challenge has many similarities to the Obama Administration’s SAVE (Securing Americans Value and Efficiency) Award. On launching last year’s competition President Obama called for “a process through which every government worker can submit their ideas for how their agency can save money and perform better.”

David Cameron’s recognition that public sector workers often have the best ideas was outlined by Jeffrey Zients, chief performance officer and deputy director for management in the Office of Management and Budget, when he said it was important to listen to the voices of those on the front lines:

In the government and in the private sector, it is often those in the front lines that have the best ideas and who know the most… We are looking for ideas that save money, improves the way the government operates by lowering costs, simplifying processes, streamlining processes, getting rid of unnecessary red tape and that has an impact on citizens’ lives. It could be a wide range of ideas.

The competition was seen as a success with over 38,000 ideas being submitted in the three weeks of the competition. Given this, the SAVE Award was turned into an annual event with President Obama issuing his own “spending challenge” to government workers:

I’ve issued a challenge to every man and woman who works for the federal government:  If you see a way that government could do its job better, or do the same job for less money, I want to know about it

Saving through Open Source

The twitter reaction to the launch of the new site has been generally positive. The initiative is one of the latest examples of the coalition seeking to harnessing the collective ideas and experience of those working outside of central government.

As a nod to this the website itself is based on a WordPress theme developed by Simon Dickson for the recent Programme For Government site. Seeing the government use Open Source tools for the website, and reusing previous themes, demonstrates the spirit of the spending challenge.

The extension and reuse of such open source technology throughout government could help to bring down the cost of government websites. The axing of many government websites has already been proposed by Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, but ideas from the public on reducing the costs of current sites e.g. through using free templates such as Govfresh’s Gov 2.0 theme, would be welcomed – especially when some current sites have a per visit cost of £11.78.

The winning idea from the US SAVE award is expected to save $2 million for 2011, and $14.5 million between 2010-2014. Any similar savings arising from the UK Spending Challenge should help establish the power of consultation with the public as a means of saving money and improving government efficiency.

Further reading

• Emergency Budget, Deficit and Cuts: Visualized
• Measuring Government Website costs
• Government to axe hundreds of ‘unnecessary’ websites
• Technology in a Cold Climate
• Govfresh Gov 2.0 theme
• SAVE Award

Over 9,000 proposals have been received in the Your Country, Your Call competition, which closed for entries late last month.

The competition sought to “identify and reward two proposals so big that, when implemented, they can help to secure prosperity and jobs for this and future generations”. It was intended to “rekindle our sense of creativity, our capability to take positive action, and thus generate hope and confidence”.

At Dublin’s Ignite 3 event, Padraig McKeon, Director of Drury Communications and a member of the competition’s steering group, explained what they were looking for in a proposal. The focus should be on ‘new models, types of business or service, or new opportunities within existing industries or service areas’. The Irish Financial Services Centre (IFSC) and the co-operative movement were suggested as representing game-changing ideas exemplifying the radical thinking being sought through the competition.

The two winners will get €100,000 each and a development fund of €500,000 to implement their idea.

The competition has received widespread media coverage over the past few months, and has been advertised extensively in the national press, on radio, television and online. It has been featured on national tv – see RTE’s feature below – and has generated much heated debate in blogs and discussion forums.

As mentioned in the television feature above, not all of the debate around the competition has been positive. Criticism has been expressed online and in the national press surrounding aspects of the competition website, terms and conditions and public funding of the initiative.

Website Controversy

The domain itself (yourcountryyourcall.com) was registered by Allied Irish Bank (one of the largest banks in the country). Padraig McKeon, a member of the competition’s steering group, states in the interview below that this was purely for administrative purposes. Nevertheless, it does seem strange that a financial institution would be registrar of the competition and so closely linked to its inception. Many people feel it ironic the bank would be supporting a competition aimed at economic recovery, when it is so closely associated with the Irish economic collapse, and has had itself to be recapitalised by the government.

Also, Cisco’s involvement in the competition has been questioned. The website was provided free of charge from Cisco and appears to be hosted on their servers – see http://www.cisco.com/web/IRE/yourcountryyourcall/index.html. As the site -  and the Brightidea platform – were provided as a gift, McKeon admits they were constrained by the technology and infrastructure made available to them. ‘The website was provided to us for free by Cisco’ he says, adding that if they had designed the technology themselves they would have done many things differently.

Competition Terms and Conditions

There have also been issues over the apparently contradictory claims relating to Intellectual Property (IP) in the competition’s Terms and Conditions. Who eventually owns the IP of all ideas submitted is unclear. While questions relating to this have been answered by Mr McKeon, it does leave suspicion around the status of ideas put forward on the platform and the involvement of those running the initiative i.e. An Smaoineamh Mór, the company behind the initiative .

Competition funding

What is striking from the interview above is the number of people involved in the project. McKeon mentions (4.12 – 5:28) there are about 60 people working on the project, primarily in the communications area. These range from people involved in advertising, media, television production and social media.

Given the large numbers of people involved in the running of the competition it’s not surprising that the costs are upwards of €2m. Estimates suggest the entire project would have cost €5m if organisers and advertisers hadn’t waived fees (organisers  insist all advertising has been given free).

Simon McGarr and others have raised questions regarding how the funding for the competition has been raised. In response, Padraig McKeon – outlined some of the funding sources for An Smaoineamh Mór Ltd, which is the company running the competition.

A cash fund of just under €2m has been accumulated via donations from 13 parties (companies and individuals) which has been lodged in the accounts of the company, An Smaoineamh Mór, which is a registered charity…

There is no government or political involvement in either setting up or operating the competition. However YCYC is not merely ’suggesting’ it has Government support. The project explicitly has that support. Specifically, the promoters formally presented the project to government late last summer and asked for support in three ways – a contribution to the fund referred above, a request that the competition would have access if it needed it to the services of the state enterprise agencies in the evaluation process (if such help were required) and a commitment that government would engage with the process of developing the two winning proposals, particularly with reference to any legislative issues that might need to be addressed.

It agreed to all three requests – it will be contributing 15% of the fund; there has been no requirement to this point for the involvement of the state agencies and clearly there is no need for development support at this point.

These questions over the finances of the competition were outlined in the Irish Times, with a response from the organisation clarifying a couple of important points:

• The Government agreed to contribute €300,000, but has no direct role in running the competition or determining the outcome. (Full details on this are vague as in March the Minister involved suggested her Department was simply examining this proposal)
• An Smaoineamh Mór Ltd will not exploit or commercialise any intellectual property for its own financial benefit, or the benefit of anyone associated with running the competition who is giving their time on a pro bono basis.

Daragh O’Brien, a blogger on Information Management questioned whether this government money would have been better invested in county enterprise boards and campus incubators with a good track record of establishing new companies:

Perhaps a hybrid of the current competition and the existing structures is what we actually need — but YCYC as a stand-alone event strikes me as a potential waste of taxpayers’ money.

Quantity and Quality of ideas

The competition has generated a significant number of proposals, and this week the organisers have started running advertisements in the national press, thanking people for their participation in the competition. The announcement reads:

To the 177,000 visitors, from 176 countries and for the 9,000 plus proposals, we’d just like to say Thank you

Along with these proposals, there were over 11,000 comments and 35,000 votes submitted by over 20,000 registered users. In the last day alone some 1,800 proposals were submitted.

It is now up to the judging committee to filtering these proposals, and come up with a shortlist of feasible ideas by June.

The current crop of proposals contains a mixture of the good, the bad and the bizarre. Genuine game-changing ideas, however, are difficult to find amongst the rash of proposals that state the obvious e.g. we should cycle more, recycle more, encourage entrepreneurship, set up talent banks and promote Ireland as a green, organic country.

There are some genuine brainwaves, but few that provide a direct path towards ‘helping secure prosperity and jobs’. Many proposals are clever, if quirky, such as teaching children Mandarin or removing 1c and 2c coins from the mint. Some of the oddest ideas include:

• Invite diaspora back to Ireland for a massive homecoming
• Become Europe’s Easter Island
• Setup an Irish theme park – Leprechaun Land

One interesting suggestion that got coverage in the national press surrounded the building of a Monorail. The idea came straight out of a Simpsons episode in which Lyle Lanley suggests that the town construct a monorail. To this, Mayor Quimby replies:

Just tell us your idea and we’ll vote for it.

The amusing idea gathered widespread coverage on discussion boards and was humorously declared the best suggestion to date. Unfortunately, the idea has been removed from the Your Country, Your Call site, but this one idea probably got more young people talking about the competition than any other single advertising initiative during the campaign.

While it’s easy to be amused at some of the suggestions, others note that many are not just stupid, but illegal, and sometimes dangerous.

Interestingly, Padraig McKeon, admits that the quality of entries varied depending on whether they are submitted during the day or late at night. “That’s the nature of crowd sourcing,” he said. “But all we really want is to get 20 good ideas that can be whittled down to a final five and, eventually, two winners.”

Roisin Ingle analyzed the top ideas with the most support and asked experts for their views on whether these ideas could work. She also looked at comments from the public as to their appreciation of the feasibility of the ideas. This analysis makes for interesting reading as to the quality and viability of the top rated proposals. Top five by user votes are listed below:

1). IDEA: HELP SAVE THE HSE AND MILLIONS OF LIVES

John Donnelly proposes that low-dose naltrexone (LDN), a drug used in other countries to treat auto-immune-related illnesses such as multiple sclerosis (MS), Crohn’s disease and cancer, should be introduced and prescribed at low levels “by every doctor in Ireland”.

This proposals is not supported by the Irish Times expert, however, it’s received nearly 2,000 votes and hundreds of comments. While it maybe worthy of investigation, its not clear how this proposal would generate jobs or prosperity for the country.

2). IDEA: Ireland West 2020 – A Bright Green Future

The Engineering the West team proposed an Ireland West 2020 partnership which, working from a “sustainable framework”, would unlock the potential of the region in terms of natural and human resources.

The expert view – from Eddie O’Connor, chief executive of Mainstream Renewable Power – is that it is a “great idea”. There are many other ideas along a similar vein, but such themes of promoting renewable energy are already government policy and it’s uncertain how the competition funding resources would make a significant impression in this area.

3). IDEA: Work for Welfare payments

TP2010 proposes to force those in receipt of certain social welfare payments to work in under-resourced areas of government. It’s suggested this would improve workers’ skills and offer an alternative to “becoming depressed sitting at home”.

Brid O’Brien, head of policy with the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed explained how uninformed this idea is: “This idea shows a complete lack of awareness of the work already done by unemployed people within the voluntary and community sector in areas such as community employment schemes”.

Csullie, a commenter on the idea, agrees and says this “Harks back to the days of the workhouse and puts people out of work. Why employ people on a reasonable wage when we can get free slaves from the welfare system.”.

4). IDEA: Steal the UK’s computer games industry

DamienDamien suggests reclassifying developers of computer games as artists and thus exempt them from income tax under current rules.

Dave Gargan, vice-president of engineering with games developer Havok, offers cautious support for the idea but the challenge would be to build critical mass in this area. However, it’s unlikely the government would offer such incentives for one particular industry, over many others.

5). IDEA: An International Healthcare Services Centre (IHSC)

This involves the creation of an International Healthcare Services Centre (IHSC) dealing with exporting healthcare services overseas. The proposer, Joe Dalton, explains how smarter methods of healthcare delivery, such as telehealthcare and independent living systems could help alleviate rising healthcare costs associated with ageing populations and the rise of chronic diseases.

Experts such as Dr Muiris Houston pronounce this as “a brilliant idea,”. The concept is modeled on the Irish Financial Services Centre which was setup in the eighties under legislation designed to boost activity and employment in the Irish economy.

Next steps

Over the coming months, the judging panel will whittle down the entries to 20 semi-finalists and then select five finalists before the winners are announced. The two winning proposals are due to be announced on September 17th.

The judging panel, chaired by former EU Commissioner David Byrne, said it would be looking for ideas that had the potential to transform the economy by creating sustainable jobs and opportunity.

However, no-one is under any illusion that any single idea will have the potential to ‘transform the economy’ or make serious inroads into the country’s serious unemployment crisis. Ireland has the third highest unemployment rate in the OECD, and it’s difficult to see many of the ideas above significantly impacting this.

While it’s easy to criticise many aspects of the competition – and many of the proposals – it has a least generated some enthusiasm and creativity amongst the public for new ideas to get the country ‘back on its feet’.