Welcome to Our Community!

Welcome to Our Community!

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), a number of external partners, and federal agencies are undertaking a series of initiatives to support and grow the momentum of citizen science and crowdsourcing projects across the federal government. There are two primary groups within the federal government currently working to advance crowdsourcing and citizen science use and practice. These are:

• The Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science: a grassroots community open to all federal practitioners working on, funding, or just interested in learning more about crowdsourcing and citizen science.
• Agency Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing Coordinators: a group of federal employees designated by federal agency leaders to be responsible for implementing various tasks outlined in a September 2015 memo from OSTP to the heads of federal departments and agencies.

If you have questions, please email citizenscience@gsa.gov.

Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science

The Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science (CCS) works across the government to share lessons learned and develop best practices for designing, implementing, and evaluating crowdsourcing and citizen science initiatives.

The community is open to all federal practitioners working on, funding, or just interested in learning more about crowdsourcing and citizen science. Anyone with a .gov or .mil email address can join our listserv by emailing the listserv. The message should have no subject and the body should say “subscribe FCPCCS.” Be sure to remove your signature from the body of the e-mail, so that the message remains blank.

The community meets on the last Thursday of every month from 2:30 – 4:30 pm E.T., hosted by member agencies. Listserv members receive invitations automatically. Recent panel topics include Oceans and Coasts, Crowdsourcing Outside the Sciences, and Citizen Science for Agriculture & Rural Communities.

What the CCS Does

The CCS seeks to expand and improve the U.S. government’s use of crowdsourcing, citizen science, and similar public participation techniques for the purpose of enhancing agency mission, scientific, and societal outcomes. The CCS seeks to create a nurturing ecosystem for federally supported services, the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines, and sciences that draw on public participation and partnership. They support these efforts to generate participatory discovery, knowledge generation, and understanding.

The CCS focuses on crowdsourcing and citizen science, and their synergies with other participatory approaches, such as do-it-yourself development of low-cost sensors for citizen science.

The CCS encourages the development and use of a wide range of appropriate and accessible methods for gathering and aggregating input. The community actively explores and supports the development of improved apps, low-cost sensors, and other tools that expand the range of information that can be provided and processed by volunteers. The community also seeks new ways of using better established, often low-tech methods, to increase everyone’s ability to contribute to, and benefit from, participation in STEM and government services.

Leadership and History

The CCS community was founded in 2012 by Lea Shanley (co-chair Emeritus). Five people came to the first meeting; the group has since expanded to almost 300 members. Current leadership includes:

CCS Co-Chairs (as of 4/1/2016):

• Jay Benforado, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• Sophia B. Liu, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)

CCS Steering Committee (as of 4/1/2016):

• Bill Brantley, U.S. Patent and Trade Office (PTO)
• Ben Butler, Forest Service (USFS)
• Jennifer Couch, National Institutes of Health (NIH)
• Ruthanna Gordon, contractor, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA)
• Amy Kaminski, NASA
• Amanda Kaufman, EPA ORISE fellow
• Ellen McCallie, National Science Foundation (NSF)
• Alison Parker, EPA ORISE fellow
• Holli Riebeek, NASA

Agency Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing Coordinators

The Agency Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing Coordinators are a group of federal employees designated by federal agency leaders to be responsible for implementing various tasks outlined in a September 2015 memo from OSTP to the heads of federal departments and agencies.

In addition to outlining the principles agencies should apply to achieve the greatest impact using citizen science and crowdsourcing, the memo directed agencies to (1) identify a coordinator for such projects and (2) catalog all citizen science and crowdsourcing initiatives in an online database.

What the Agency Coordinators Do

Today, appointed by their agencies, these coordinators are:

• Working with OSTP and GSA to develop requirements for a citizen science and crowdsourcing database, to serve as a catalog for all such projects across the U.S. government;
• Collaborating to increase interagency coordination and to participate in future policy-development discussions on this subject; and
• Teaming to encourage public awareness of and participation in citizen science and crowdsourcing efforts.

As coordinators, these individuals will advocate for citizen science and crowdsourcing where possible, and provide a support network and mentoring for each other and their respective agencies for future projects.

Additionally, they will be instrumental in making the citizen science catalog as useful as possible for members of the federal government community and citizens everywhere.

Agency Coordinators (as of 10/27/2016):