GSA is continuing its rollout of a new 18F digital incubator program and recently held an event in Washington, D.C. where it said developers and designers demonstrated how the 18F team builds solutions, works with partners to provide additional expertise and needed core capacity, and consults on how to build and buy user-centric interfaces most effectively.
In announcing the program in March, GSA said it combines the Presidential Innovation Fellows program with a digital delivery team to import development practices found in the startup world into the federal government. The program intends to help agencies innovate in-house and rapidly deploy working prototypes.
At its demo day, GSA noted two projects in particular:
Midas Innovation Platform: Midas is an open source software platform developed in partnership with the Department of State that facilitates innovation and collaborative work. Any agency, office, mission, or individual can post projects or tasks online to collaborate with other federal employees.
FBOpen: FBOpen is a set of open-source tools to help businesses search for opportunities to work with the federal government – and its website (fbopen.gsa.gov) can be used to search for available federal contracts, grants, and other opportunities. A widget maker and API enable any website to build custom query pages into their site to feature opportunities.
Website: https://18f.gsa.gov
