Our challenge to you

You’re smack dab in the middle of it all — your vantage point from within public service makes you uniquely qualified to see what we can do to create new good-for-government technology that enables good-for-people services.

We bet you’ve looked at something during your daily routine and thought, “There has to be a better way to do that!” Now’s your chance to share that problem or idea and see if it’s the next big thing to improve how we serve the public. And if you don’t have an idea today, start looking around for opportunities to make things better. Be on the lookout for things that:

Will improve the public’s experience with government through technology

Will create a new product or service that’s good for government

Make your good idea great

A great idea can get buried behind a lot of words, but we can help you turn word salad into a clearly communicated vision.

Here are some suggestions for how to turn a good idea into a winning concept.

Clearly state the problem or opportunity, and keep it simple (under 1,000 characters!). Tech for tech’s sake isn’t what we’re about. Let’s solve a real problem!

Explain who the solution benefits. Government employees? Medicare recipients? Wild bird enthusiasts? Be specific.

Outline the benefits. Does it make something faster, more accurate, clearer, easier? Tell us why it matters.

It helps to structure the concept as if you’re filling in the blank spaces on a Mad Libs-like game.

I’ve observed [problem or opportunity] and believe that if we [do this] it’ll result in [this benefit] for [this group of people].

A little more inspiration, a little more action, please

Need something to kick off your aha moment? Here are some ideas that 10x has funded.

Simplifying Benefits Process for Bereaved Survivors

When people experience a death in their family, they are overwhelmed with grief, which is compounded by confusion about survivor benefits and next steps. Benefits.gov was created in 2002 as a mechanism for people to "pull" information about possible benefits, but with the structured data available today, 10x will explore whether this could become a "push" notification or guidance instead. Documented survivor customers could get a specific and detailed notification once an official death certificate is created to proceed with claims, and help them through these processes when they need the government’s assistance most.

Life Event Information for Seniors

Turning 65 is an important milestone for American adults: it comes with new access to health insurance (Medicare), changing eligibility rules for common benefits programs (SNAP), new health recommendations (additional vaccinations and health screening), and important decisions about when to retire and start accepting Social Security retirement benefits. Information about these decisions come separately from multiple Federal agencies (SSA, CMS, CDC, USDA, etc.) at different times depending on the program’s schedule. 10x will investigate a one-stop solution aimed at older adults, that connects them to important information and resources about their health, benefits, and retirement decisions in a coherent and streamlined way that makes decision-making easy and intuitive, and takes into account how these decisions interact with one another.

Monitoring Uptime for Government Services

Government digital services are occasionally offline and unavailable to the public due to system errors or planned maintenance, but members of the public do not have visibility into when these critical services may be unavailable and do not know when they will be back online. There is an opportunity to monitor and collect uptime and availability statistics on various government services to help users plan ahead. 10x will investigate the creation of a government service uptime and availability monitor to provide transparent statistics.

Navigating Public Records

Across the government, hundreds of online FOIA Libraries contain a wealth of information, yet these libraries are disconnected and lack a centralized search capability to allow the public to easily navigate the records. 10x will investigate a centralized search capability that would allow the public to search across all agency FOIA Libraries, enhancing the public’s interaction with government by facilitating the discovery of records already in the public domain, and creating efficiencies in agency FOIA operations as resources are directed to processing FOIA requests for information not previously disclosed and available to the public.

SUBMIT AN IDEA

Need some help?

If you’d like help putting together an idea or have questions about what we’re looking for toss an email our way at 10x@gsa.gov. We’re happy to review what you have and make sure your idea is on point.

What happens to my idea after I hit “Submit”?

Timing is everything. We evaluate submissions at least once a year. We’ll let you know we received your idea right away, but we might not evaluate it for a while. But you’ll definitely hear either way when the time comes.

To find out what happens after that, learn more about how we select and fund ideas.

What did you get yourself into?

While the ideas come from federal employees across the government, those folks aren’t ultimately involved in the selection process. We intentionally leave them out to get a clear, unbiased assessment of the project’s potential success and need.

But we do look to the idea submitter (hopefully, that’s you!) as a domain expert to suggest resources and research for us to consider. They’re an integral part of the Phase 1 kickoff and can attend phase close-out meetings to keep tabs on how (or if) the project is progressing.