The Final State of the Union
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Summary:
The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently blogged about the creation of its Innovation Lab, a flagship Open Government initiative. The Innovation Lab adopts ideas that foster intra- and inter-agency innovations as well as partnerships, and sees them through implementation.
Ed. Note: This post was originally posted on the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development blog.
The spirit of innovation is spreading throughout the Federal Government, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is no exception. Greater government-wide focus on transparency, collaboration, and participation has opened new pathways for innovation and invigorated those that already exist. The government’s newest challenge is fostering cultures within individual agencies that facilitate innovation around their unique mission priorities without unnecessary rigidness.
New initiatives that support innovation, such as Data.gov, Challenge.gov, and Teach.gov must allow both internal and external users to collaborate and leverage their efforts to foster positive change. This seamless integration of different groups will allow government agencies to take advantage of the best ideas not only within government but also from private citizens. For example, the recently unveiled Apps.gov NOW combines the tools employees need to foster engagement with integrated services that will ensure compliance with Section 508 requirements while monitoring traffic and providing analytical reporting.
At HUD, we are looking to foster both inter-agency innovation as well as innovation via partnerships with external organizations and NGOs. The goal is to ensure that all good ideas receive a fair hearing. To this end, one of our Open Government flagship initiatives is the creation of an Innovation Lab that will guide new ideas from design to launch. HUD’s Innovation Lab will not only incubate technology ideas, but will also examine policy changes and process improvements. The Innovation Lab’s first two projects demonstrate the diverse paths to innovation allowed by HUD’s flexible approach. One project involves modeling and simulating prospective changes to HUD policies, while the other empowers local governments by predicting future patterns of homelessness through the use of predictive data analytics.
In my role as CIO, I have been a strong advocate for looking at innovation outside of a strict IT perspective. Good ideas don’t always require technology, and wherever technology can serve as an enabler of innovation, an agile approach to solution development should be practiced. The goal of this approach is the swift production of utility and the simultaneous minimization of security, privacy, and other risks. HUD’s approach to innovation will help the Department leverage the wealth of knowledge inside and outside its walls, and enable it to solve mission-critical challenges in new and creative ways.
Jerry Williams is the Chief Information Officer, Office of the Chief Information Officer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
