Two federal programs snare top public service awards
Winners receive $100,000 to help replicate creative ideas in government.
Two federal programs were among the 2008 winners of awards designed to recognize and promote creativity and innovation in the public sector.
The intelligence community's civilian joint-duty program and the Transportation Department's global maritime domain awareness program received the Innovations in American Government Award at a Tuesday dinner in Washington, along with four programs at the state and local levels. The seven winners were selected from 15 finalists across the country and more than 1,000 applicants.
The awards, which are administered by the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, honor projects that are creative, show measurable results and can serve as models for other jurisdictions. The $100,000 in prize money supports the replication of innovative ideas to other areas of government.
"We're in the business of actually spreading the innovation, not just awarding the innovation," said Kate Hoagland, communications coordinator for the Ash Institute.
The intelligence community's joint-duty program promotes cross-collaboration and knowledge transfer by requiring personnel to serve a period of duty outside their parent agencies as a prerequisite for senior-level promotion. The program was developed in 2007 by the National Intelligence Directorate to address unique threats detailed in the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act and by the 9/11 commission.
"Knowledge-sharing between our federal intelligence agencies is key to improved national security," said Stephen Goldsmith, director of the awards program. "The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has developed an innovative solution for improving cross-agency understanding, while at once creating a more rewarding professional experience for intelligence community personnel."
Eugene Bardach, a public policy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a policy evaluator of the joint duty program, said on Monday that while it was hard to measure the results of the joint-duty program in terms of its major goal -- preventing terrorist attacks -- buy-in from junior and mid-level intelligence employees showed the overall success of the program.
"These people think it's terrific," Bardach said. "They could tell you about knowledge-sharing and networks of people who could help you out when you had a strange problem."
The Global Maritime Domain Awareness program was honored in part for its innovative safety and security information system, a scalable and accessible Web platform that consolidates information transmitted from commercial ship transponders with data from shore-side receivers. Users can access information about vessels including speed and direction, cargo type, location and destination, ship type and responsibility, and any anomalies that could signal suspicious activity.
The program, called a "wiki on the waves," also has facilitated cooperation among participating countries. Since the program's inception in 2006, its membership has expanded from five to 40 countries with another 40 nations currently weighing participation. The system also has spurred unlikely collaboration among nations such as Turkey and Greece and Pakistan and India.
The program "practices not only advance security on international seaways, but also shows how innovation can arise from the creative and collaborative use of existing assets," Goldsmith said.
Mark Fagan, a senior fellow at Harvard's Center for Business and Government and a policy evaluator of the domain awareness program, said on Tuesday that the program has great potential to expand domestically, specifically for use at the nation's ports of entry.
"This has the potential to help ports really manage the flow of ships coming in and has great potential to sequence and manage that process," he said. "I would look domestically and see how this information set can become a powerful tool for domestic safety and security."
The other five award winners were: the New York City Acquisition Fund; the Missouri Division of Youth Services; Arizona's Getting Ready: Keeping Communities Safe program; and North Carolina's Learn and Earn program. A full description of the programs can be found on the Ash Institute's Web site.