To Challenge or Not to Challenge
Last year the U.S. General S
ervices Administration (GSA) in partnership with ChallengePost launched an online challenge platform, challenge.gov, to aggregate all challenges being offered across the federal government. The intent of challenge.gov is to empower the U.S. Government and the public to bring the best ideas and top talent to bear on our nation’s most pressing challenges.
What is a challenge?
A challenge is a solicitation from one party to a third party to develop a strategy or tangible solution to a particular problem. In other words, a challenge is where an individual/group compete to solve a challenge posed by the solicitor. If selected as the winner by a group of judges, based upon pre-established criteria, the individual or group will receive a prize which can vary between a monetary prize or non-monetary such as being featured at a national level.
One might be asking themselves why the federal government would participate in something like this; shouldn’t it be left up to for-profit corporations? As many people in and outside of government will agree, the federal government does not have the resources or capacity to solve all the challenges that are posed. Challenges provide a unique opportunity to create public-private partnerships and foster innovation in a flexible environment not normally associated with government.
Technology driven challenges are great examples of where soliciting outside expertise is beneficial. SAMHSA is the national expert on behavioral health not the national expert in developing iPhone and Andriod Apps, but as mobile technology continues to grow, SAMHSA recognizes the importance of reaching people through these platforms. By issuing a challenge for the development of app, SAMHSA can connect with some of the best and brightest minds in the IT world while contributing the content necessary (through the challenge criteria) to make a high quality product for the constituencies SAMHSA serves.
What types of challenges are out there? Are they all technology driven?
Now you might be asking yourself what type of challenges are out there and whether or not any are applicable to you. Most challenges vary greatly from each other, so there’s likely one that everyone would be interested in. There are technology driven challenges like HHS’s Apps Against Abuse Challenge currently open for submission which challenges individuals and groups to develop apps that provide college students and young adults with the tools to help prevent dating violence and sexual assault.
However, challenges can also be engagement driven; a challenge that asks individuals or groups to engage the most people on a given topic. An example of this is NIH’s Lessons About Bioscience (LAB) Challenge, which challenges people to develop engaging, inexpensive experiments for students from kindergarten through high school.
Lastly, challenges can also be process driven; both internal government process and external program processes. The age old stereotype is that government processes are cumbersome and bureaucratic; challenges give government an opportunity to look outside government to take advantage of innovative processes from the private sector. For example, a government agency could issue a challenge to help come up with its internal web governance process or a challenge around the external Medicaid enrollment process.
So what now, all the government’s problems are going to be solved by issuing challenges?
Absolutely not, but a lot of great new ideas and innovative products can come as a result that wouldn’t be available otherwise. As SAMHSA continues its mission of reducing the impact of substance abuse and mental illness on America’s communities, it will look to utilize challenges, to have the public do the same.
Regarding the July 20, 2011 SAMHSA Blog “as SAMHSA continues its mission of reducing the impact of substance abuse and mental illness on America’s communities” one must ask: what reduction?
Since 1992 (when SAMHSA was created), the only winners regarding US alcohol and/or drug policy have been the consumers of alcohol and/or drugs and the alcohol and/or drug industrial complex. The losers of course are those affected by the disease of addiction and taxpayers footing the bill.
And, adding insult to injury, it is upsetting to those of us that applaud the spirit of the 1970 Hughes Act to accept that SAMHSA is the foremost culprit and funding source (enabler) for the development and preservation of an escalating industrial complex permeated with bureaucracies that are not doing what they are supposed to be doing. The issue should be reducing a cancer that is eating away at the economic and social fiber of our society, not development and preservation of the prevention, research and treatment industries.
Coupled with political science degrees and political experience, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is a consummate politician and former lobbyist for the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association. Unfortunately though, she has inherited a massive bureaucracy that may talk the talk but fails to walk the walk. Leadership (defined as doing the right thing) is what’s needed within the jurisdiction of US alcohol and/or drug policy – not political correctness or more doing the same thing while expecting different results as evidenced by the long list of SAMHSA endeavors and ineffective War on Drugs efforts.
The new thing for government is to challenge government (http://challenge.gov/). Ironically, Secretary Sebelius and I were freshman legislators together in Kansas and we have the same graduate degree (MPA) from the University of Kansas. Because of these commonalities, and as a member of the Recovery Community and advocate for recovery, I am comfortable with challenging Secretary Sebelius and SAMHSAS to walk the walk – to be accountable for the billions of taxpayer dollars expended each year on alcohol and/or drug policy that doesn’t appear to be reducing much of anything.
Jim Russell, Founder
The Spirit of Recovery Foundation, Inc.
spiritofrecovery@cox.net
A lot of of the things you claim happens to be astonishingly accurate and it makes me wonder why I had not looked at this in this light previously. This article really did switch the light on for me personally as far as this particular topic goes. However at this time there is actually one issue I am not too cozy with so while I try to reconcile that with the core theme of the position, permit me observe what all the rest of the readers have to say.Well done.
Thank you for your observation and I hope all is well with you.
I do know that this is a delicate issue to discuss for anyone whose paycheck is dependent upon taxpayer monies … which surely accounts for the majority of SAMHSA spin readers. However, I recognize that we have all chosen public service because we like to help others.
Unfortunately though, bureaucrats, bureaucracies and politicians
seem to have forgotten all about the concept of public service.
Whether as an elected official or appointed administrator, my concept of public service was to serve the public. However, in reviewing some 47 years of my own career I recall far too many bureaucrats and bureaucracies preoccupied with organizational/personal egos, job security and organizational survival at the expense of those in need and those footing the bill. So, as a practitioner, researcher and student of organizational theory, I’ve always been fascinated with organizational theory comparisons, i.e. between Christianity and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). For example: why is it that the Achilles heel for Spirituality seems to be formal Religion and the Achilles heel for recovery seems to be bureaucracy? Or, as Nez Perce Chief Joseph so fittingly said:
“We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel about God, as the Catholics and Protestants do. We do not want to learn that. We may quarrel with men sometimes about things on this earth. But we never quarrel about God. We do not want to learn that.”
Granted, AA is not for everyone … but recovery certainly is! Like Chief Perce exemplifies, we may quarrel among ourselves but we do not quarrel about recovery. In contrast, the alcohol and/or drug industrial complex can’t seem to agree on the time of the day let alone appropriate policy and action to do something about a cancer that is eating away at the economic and social fiber of our society. Unfortunately, that lack of leadership drains billions of taxpayer dollars that are needed elsewhere from the American economy each year.
So, should you ever wonder why there is never enough money to go around for health care, education, infrastructure and so forth, let me know and I will gladly explain it to you.
Actually, it’s pretty simple and we can thank John D. Rockefeller for literally preventing AA and its singleness of purpose concept from becoming just another bureaucracy competing against thousands of others for limited resources.
“In 1938, Rockefeller refused to loan money to fund AA missionaries and treatment centers; stating that money would spoil things and Alcoholics Anonymous should be financially self-supporting and that the power of AA should lie in one man carrying the message to the next, not with financial reward but only with the goodwill of its supporters.”[52
Personally, I think a due diligence of American alcohol and/or drug policy is long overdue.
Jim Russell
The Spirit of Recovery Foundation
spiritofrecovery@cox.net