FTC Gets Crowdsourcing Right, Sets Example for Rest of US Government

When I interned in the federal government in 2010 and 2011, the government was experimenting with crowdsourcing to its employees. Every once in a while I would receive an e-mail soliciting ideas for what the department could do to save money and eliminate waste. The best idea each round would receive some recognition, and the department would implement it. (I can't remember if there was a cash bounty attached.) Submissions usually involved saving on electricity by turning off electronics or reducing paper waste by changing printing policies. I appreciated the idea, but it wasn't generating any landscape-changing policies.

Around the same time, the Government Services Administration (with input from the Office of Management and Budget) rolled out Challenge.gov, an online platform for soliciting ideas from the public. Much broader in scope, Challenge.gov is available for any government department to post challenges to the entire public. Challenges on the site range from video essays on responsible saving to launching nano-satellites to orbit. Again, this idea is an intriguing step, but limited exposure and lack of focus have limited its appeal.

This week the Federal Trade Commission has changed the game, I believe. The just-announced FTC Robocall Challenge has all the elements to get the viral attention a crowdsourcing initiative really needs.

The FTC wants you to "Be a hero." I think people will answer the call.

Space Leadership Act: Innovative Government or Constitutional Minefield?

This week, five members of the House of Representatives introduced a bill that is being called the "Space Leadership Act". The proposal has gotten a lot of press this week, but some basic highlights of the bill include:

• a ten-year tenure for NASA Administrators
• an eleven-member Board of Directors whose duties would involve nominating Administrator candidates and proposing the NASA budget
• a quadrennial review of all NASA programs
• "for cause" removal of Board members and Administrators.

The five Republican authors of the bill claim that the measure will reduce politicization of NASA and provide for long-term stability and predictability in NASA programs. (It is worth noting that at least one Democrat is apparently prepared to cosponsor the bill.)  It should come as no surprise that all of the five representatives proposing the bill come from Texas (John Culberson, 7th District; Pete Olson, 22nd District; Lamar Smith, 21st District), Florida (Bill Posey, 15th District), and Virginia (Frank Wolf, 10th District).

Current NASA Administrator Charles Bolden spoke this week, and, although he didn't address the bill directly, it was obvious from his remarks that he was defensive of the current structure:

“Such talk undermines our nation’s goals at a very critical time. . . The truth is we have an ambitious series of deep space destinations we plan to explore and we are hard at work exploring the hardware and the technologies to get us there.”

It is easy to argue that NASA reform is necessary: over-budget and underfunded programs are frequently in the news, and the Administration's recent challenges have given it a lackluster reputation at best. However, this bill raises a lot of potential problems.