FEDweek IT

The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University has announced GSA’s Challenge.gov website has the winner of its latestInnovations in American Government Award from among some 600 applicants.

GSA launched Challenge.gov in 2010 in partnership with ChallengePost to help find novel solutions to tough government problems. The website has reportedly been used by 59 federal agencies to crowd-source solutions andsolve over 300 scientific, engineering, design, software and other challenges.

One notable example was a contest posted by the Department of Veterans Affairs last year to develop an open source medical appointment scheduling solution that could seamlessly integrate with VistA, the department’s electronic health record system.A previous large-scale procurement to develop this solution failed. Instead, using the platform, the department selected MedRed LLC as the winner of a $1.85 million prize. Runners up took home over a million dollars as well. More on the MedRed solution and agile development process here:

http://www.openhealthnews.com/articles/2013/health-etime-scheduler-winning-solution