2016
2016 Igniting Innovation Award Overall Winner myUSCIS: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Department of Homeland Security Dynamite Award Winners • Impacter – greatest magnitude of innovation results and benefits. IdentityTheft.gov: Lockheed Martin and Federal Trade Commission • Game Changer – disruptive innovation that creates a new market, significantly impacts an existing one, or results in a major breakthrough on a longstanding problem. HealthMap: Epidemico • Transformer – uses existing technology to transform or extend existing capabilities resulting in new or broadened applicability and use. Ares Mobile Biometric Solution: InCadence Strategic Solutions • Incubator – not–yet-deployed innovation with greatest potential to enhance services to citizens or government operations (must have at least a working prototype). PushButtonPD™: Department of Homeland Security Top 8 Finalists Ares Mobile Biometric Solution: InCadence Strategic Solutions
Federated Person Query:Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security
Flexible Agile Development Services (FADS):U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Department of Homeland Security
Gov2Go: Information Network of Arkansas/NIC
IdentityTheft.gov: Lockheed Martin and Federal Trade Commission
Montana Business Checklist: Montana Governor’s Office of Economic Development and Montana Interactive/NIC
myUSCIS: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Department of Homeland Security
U.S. Decennial Census (2020):SAS Federal, U.S. Census Bureau
| Innovation Name | Agency | Company |
| Acquisition Gateway | General Services Administration | |
| Ares Mobile Biometric Solution | InCadence Strategic Solutions | |
| Biomedical Research Informatics Computing System (BRICS) | U.S. Department of Health and Human Services - National Institutes for Health | Sapient Government Services |
| Blackphone2 | Silent Circle and TESSCO Technologies Inc. | |
| Candor Cyber Intelligence | Aveshka | |
| Capriza | Capriza | |
| Citywide In-Building Wireless Initiative | Government of the District of Columbia | |
| COBRA | U.S. Department of the Treasury | |
| Cognitive Cyber Defense (CCD) | IBM | |
| Collaborative Advanced Analytics and Data Sharing (CAADS™) | Lockheed Martin | |
| PushButtonPD™ | U.S. Department of Homeland Security | |
| Digital Service Contracting Professional Training and Development | ICF International | |
| Digital Signature Initiative | U.S. Department of Agriculture - Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service | eSignLive |
| Electronic Immigration System | U.S. Department of Homeland Security - U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services | Accenture Federal Services |
| Enhanced Perimeter Security System | Hitachi Data Systems Federal | |
| Enterprise Platform for Innovation (EPI) | Innocentive Inc. | |
| FCC Customer Help Center | Federal Communications Commission | |
| Federated Person Query (FP2) | U.S. Department of Homeland Security - U.S. Customs and Border Protection | |
| FEMA Mobile App Weather Alerts | U.S. Department of Homeland Security - Federal Emergency Management Agency | The Ambit Group |
| Fraud Detection System | Pindrop | |
| Gov2Go | Information Network of Arkansas | |
| HealthMap | Booz Allen Hamilton & Epidemico | |
| IdentityTheft.gov | Lockheed Martin | |
| Justice Case Management Solution (“JCMS”). | HP Enterprise | |
| Lead Renovation, Repair, and Painting e-Reporting | U.S. Environmental Protection Agency | CGI Federal |
| Montana Business Checklist | Montana Interactive | |
| my USCIS | U.S. Department of Homeland Security - U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services | |
| Perfect Power Microgrid | Illinois Institute of Technology | OSIsoft, LLC |
| Pesticide Submission Portal | U.S. Environmental Protection Agency | CGI Federal |
| Probation Universal Mobile Application (PUMA) | County of San Diego Probation Department | HP Enterprise |
| RadResponder | Microsoft | |
| ReachOut | Infosys Public Services, Inc. | |
| Real-Time Health System - Infectious Disease Tracking | HP Enterprise | |
| VATracked Item Recommendation Engine (TIRE) | U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs | |
| Trusted Application Broker Service (TABS) | TASC, An Engility Company | |
| U.S. Decennial Census (2020) | U.S. Census Bureau | SAS Institute/SAS Government Solutions |
| Undersea Warfare Rapid Innovation Center Events | U.S. Department of the Navy | |
| VA Enterprise Health Management Platform (eHMP) | ASM Research |
Program Descriptions
Acquisition Gateway, General Services Administration
The Acquisition Gateway is the first element of a vision for a tool that becomes the "desktop for the acquisition workforce. It aggregates government-wide data, curated articles from subject matter experts, and user-centered digital tools in a single site. Gateway users connect through an integrated community. The Gateway is the primary outlet for category management activities in government, with information on contracts and pricing. It also features public access, which promotes transparency and cooperation.
Ares Mobile Biometric Solution, InCadence Strategic Solutions
The combination of Ares software, IB fingerprint sensors, and commercial Androidbased smart phones and tablets, provides the most cost-effective, light-weight, small-footprint capability in the marketplace. The business space for this innovation includes any local, state, and Federal law enforcement personnel who come into contact with potentially criminal suspects during the course of their jobs. It will enable agents in the field to receive near-real time identity information on a suspect wherever they have cellular service or WIFI access to the Internet, worldwide.
Biomedical Research Informatics Computing System (BRICS), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services - National Institutes for Health and Sapient Government Services
Biomedical Research Informatics Computing System (BRICS) is a collaborative and extensible web-based bioinformatics platform to support the collection of research studies and clinical trials, using a set of modules that cover all stages of the research life cycle. These provide a combination of web-based functionality and discrete, downloadable tools designed to work together or in isolation supporting research requirements like data definition, submission, search, security, and access throughout the research life cycle. BRICS is used within the NIH community, the extramural research community and the DoD, supporting global research efforts related to Parkinson’s disease, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Global Rare Diseases.
Blackphone 2, Silent Circle and TESSCO Technologies Inc.
Silent Circle is delivered through a revolutionary platform of devices, software and services, built on its proprietary ZRTP technology, a fundamentally different, cloud-based, mobile architecture. Calls made from Silent Phone user to Silent Phone user offer complete end-to-end encryption, which means that no one - not even Silent Circle - can listen in on your calls. Silent Circle's Blackphone 2 smartphone is the most secure Android smartphone there is. With its built-in encryption, Spaces virtual phones, fine grain application control and commitment to fast software updates, Blackphone 2 is the smartphone your CISO will want your CEO to use.
Candor Cyber Intelligence, Aveshka
Enterprises are spending millions of dollars on proprietary cyber tools without an integrated view of risk. These tools range from threat monitoring, SIEMs, intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, network traffic analysis, and log analysis. Aveshka’s Candor™ Cyber Intelligence platform integrates, enriches, correlates, analyzes, visualizes, and shares cyber threat, asset, vulnerability, and risk information from one unified interface. It fuses open source, corporate, and third-party data sets and tools in both structured and unstructured formats. Candor™ applies natural language processing and custom analytics to monitor cyber attacks in real-time and identify risk trends and proactively address them before they result in compromise.
Capriza modernizes businesses by simplifying and mobilizing legacy applications. Capriza's end-to-end simplification platform enables IT and lines of business to mobile-enable critical business workflows in a matter of days without any coding, APIs, or integration. The solution is applicable for packaged applications such as SAP, Oracle, Salesforce as well as custom built solutions. Capriza disrupts the speed and economics of the journey by extending the capability of legacy applications, in a simple and useable way, onto any smartphone, tablet or desktop.
Citywide In-Building Wireless Initiative, Government of the District of Columbia
The District of Columbia’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) DC-Net program created the Citywide In-Building Wireless Initiative (C-IBW) to positively impact the wireless capability within the District of Columbia. Specifically, C-IBW ensures optimal wireless signal coverage with minimal “dead spots” that inhibit mobile communications. This initiative has gained measured success by creating public-private partnerships that promote technology procurement competition and measurable cost reductions.
COBRA, U.S. Department of the Treasury
COBRA is a financial/budget workflow tool which aims to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of organizations by centralizing data and work processes related to budget formulation, pricing, billing, collections, and the movement of funds within the financial system of an organization. COBRA was built to serve the Treasury Shared Services Program but its benefits can extend to a variety of budget environments.
Cognitive Cyber Defense (CCD), IBM
Cognitive Cyber Defense (CCD) is a big data and analytic innovation that employs advanced analytic techniques to detect cybersecurity threats in real time. It is an integrated solution with proven machine learning models from IBM with the ability to build new families of cyber models to react to the ever changing Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) environment. It is intended to address threats that traditional security mechanisms are unable to detect.
Collaborative Advanced Analytics and Data Sharing (CAADS™), Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin’s Collaborative Advanced Analytics & Data Sharing (CAADS™) platform makes data science tools accessible to subject matter experts, scientists, executives, researchers and others through a single interface with minimal training and no coding. This fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) piloted CAADS to support the response to the largest recent HIV outbreak in the USA. The CAADS analysis allowed CDC officials to reduce the analysis time by a factor of six, while enhancing the interaction between data scientists and officials, and generating insights that can be used to prevent or mitigate future outbreaks.
PushButtonPD™, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
The DHS PushButtonPD™ is a self-contained, Excel Macro workbook capable of drafting a Federal Position Description (PD) and its associated Human Resource (HR) forms without extensive training; shortening the current process from weeks/days to days/hours. It is designed to present language from multiple authoritative sources and standards for duty, task, and KSA (knowledge, skills, and abilities); rapidly capture the position requirements; and present them in a package that can be easily integrated into the agency’s current HR processes; and also capable of local customization without tech support. The tool is currently available for federal-wide pilot under OMB Memorandum 16-04.
Digital Service Contracting Professional Training and Development, ICF International
Digital service acquisition, including improving and simplifying how citizens and businesses engage the government, is a major challenge. Acquisition professionals who buy digital services must be technical experts as well as change ambassadors. To build a cadre of professionals with these skills, we created a training program that integrates the foundational principles from modern design and development practices—like Agile and human-centered design—and adapted them for learning. We regularly assess and gather feedback from learners in an iterative fashion and tailor the program accordingly to meet their evolving needs and to keep pace with the constantly changing technology landscape.
Digital Signature Initiative, U.S. Department of Agriculture - Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and eSignLive
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is the government agency responsible for keeping U.S. livestock and poultry healthy and protecting the nation’s food supply, agriculture, natural resources and rural development. USDA APHIS implemented electronic signature technology to speed up its ability to identify an animal’s location and prevent and contain animal disease incidents. It’s through this online permitting and secure authentication that USDA APHIS is able to protect the nation’s food supply.
Electronic Immigration System, U.S. Department of Homeland Security - U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Accenture Federal Services
In 2012, USCIS and DHS determined that the architecture and processes used to develop the original Electronic Immigration System (ELIS) were too unwieldy and inflexible to continue. A new approach was needed. Commercially proven Agile methodologies and lighter weight open source architectures were beginning to transform the way select government systems were developed and deployed. Led by CIO, Mark Schwartz, and Chief of the Office of Transformation Coordination, Kathleen (Kath) Stanley, the new architecture and Agile approach were used as underpinnings for an innovative strategy that became a model for performance-driven contracting for Agile services in the government.
Enhanced Perimeter Security System, Hitachi Data Systems Federal
The Hitachi Enhanced Perimeter Security System incorporates advanced facial recognition and UAS detection in a cloud-based visualization application, Hitachi Visualization Suite (HVS). This solution was developed for the San Francisco 49ers and demonstrated at Levi’s Stadium in 2015 to mitigate emerging threat vectors. The solution substantially enhances public safety by reducing response times and improving detection and is especially effective for large public venues. This unique solution architecture reduces both CAPEX and OPEX costs related to security operations. It is a scalable solution developed from open source technologies and may be readily customized and expanded to meet multiple use cases.
Enterprise Platform for Innovation (EPI), Innocentive Inc.
InnoCentive enables great thinkers within an organization or agency to do things in a way that could never be done before. By connecting your internal resources not only with each other, and reaching out to the power of the best minds, the best thinkers, and people you did not know outside of your agency or organization, you are able to solve the most important problems quickly and efficiently.
FCC Customer Help Center, Federal Communications Commission
The Zendesk powered FCC Customer Help Center leverages AudioEye’s Ally+ Web Accessibility Solution to optimize the site’s access and reach. This combination of solutions provides users an assistive-technology agnostic mechanism to customize the user experience to meet their individual needs. These cloud-based tools provide a reliable, accessible mechanism to enable the public to learn about common telecommunications issues as well as file complaints with the FCC.
Federated Person Query (FP2), U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Before the implementation of the Federated Person Query (FPQ2), US Border Patrol agents had to perform various searches in multiple systems, slowing down the time required to process a subject. For example, agents would perform both biometric (e.g. fingerprints) and biographic (e.g. name) searches. FPQ2 allows US Border Patrol agents to submit a single query to perform a search using both biometric and biographic information across a variety of law enforcement systems; marking the first time this capability has been available at DHS. FPQ2 returns a consolidated list of results from the connected systems, saving agents significant amounts of time.
FEMA Mobile App Weather Alerts, U.S. Department of Homeland Security - Federal Emergency Management Agency and The Ambit Group
The FEMA mobile app helps minimize loss of life and property through a variety of innovative features. Its newest innovation, the Weather Alerts feature, allows users to select and receive informative National Weather Service alerts on severe weather happening in up to five U.S. locations. The app also contains disaster safety tips, an interactive emergency kit list, storable emergency meeting locations, and a map with open shelters and open FEMA Disaster Recovery Centers. In addition, the app’s Disaster Reporter crowdsourcing feature allows users to take and submit GPS photo reports of disasters that can be viewed on a public map.
Fraud Detection System, Pindrop
Pindrop FDS protects large contact centers by analyzing the audio portion of a phone call to assess the risk that the caller is a fraudster or other threat. Using Pindrop, our customers are able to identify over 80% of risky calls, avoiding fraud losses and improving customer experience.
Gov2Go, Information Network of Arkansas
Gov2Go is a citizen-focused “digital government assistant” that learns about its users then curates and delivers relevant, personalized Arkansas government services and information. It’s a secure platform that knows and tracks users’ government deadlines, alerts them when it’s time to do something, and answers their government questions through an SMS agent. Gov2Go is available everywhere citizens are – on the Web, native iPhone and Android apps, and the Apple Watch.
HealthMap, Booz Allen Hamilton & Epidemico
HealthMap is an online tool with the mission of early outbreak detection. It automatically aggregates more than 200,000 data sources including news aggregators, eyewitness reports, expert-curated discussions, official reports, and social media to monitor disease outbreak and provide real-time surveillance of emerging public health threats. Via natural language processing and proprietary algorithms, alerts are tagged, filtered, analyzed, validated, and visualized by our system and public health experts. The result is an interactive, user-friendly, and publicly available Web and mobile tool providing a global overview of disease outbreaks, in 15 languages and updated hourly 24/7/365. HealthMap has strong government sponsorship with unique, strategic collaborations (including FDA, USAID, DoD, CDC, and WHO). It has contributed to global public health through demonstrated early detection of critical outbreaks, including the ongoing Zika outbreak and recent Ebola outbreak.
IdentityTheft.gov, Lockheed Martin
For the first time, identity theft victims can go online and securely establish a free personalized identity theft recovery plan using FTC’s new IdentityTheft.gov website. This new one-stop website enables consumers who are victims of identity theft to rapidly file a complaint with the FTC and then get a personalized guide to recovery that helps streamline many of the steps involved. The site, which is mobile and tablet accessible, offers an array of easy-to-use tools, which enables identity theft victims to create the documents they need to alert police, the main credit bureaus and the IRS among others.
Justice Case Management Solution (JCMS), HP Enterprise
JCMS is a new technology solution designed for courts case management systems that provides an innovation user experience while increasing efficiencies for each of the constituents that participates in our courts and justice systems. JCMS refines court processes and expedites the judicial system through automating previously manual functions, simplifying often redundant case processing functions, providing improved information sharing capabilities and creating data analytics specific to the needs of the user.
Lead Renovation, Repair, and Painting e-Reporting, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and CGI Federal
The EPA’s Renovation, Repair, and Painting Rule requires firms that perform lead abatement work to certify and train their works in the use of lead-safe work practices and to recertify every five years. Since Rule commencement in 2010, the certification process (including submission and payment) has been largely paper-based. The RRP e-Reporting initiative aimed to eliminate costly and time-consuming paper-based processes through a simple, easy-to-use, web-based, mobile-ready solution developed using agile processes in advance of a four-fold increase of certification submissions.
Montana Business Checklist, Montana Interactive
The Montana Business Checklist is an easy to use and powerful tool that brings together all of the State of Montana's business permits and licenses in one location. This service will help users navigate through the State of Montana's permitting and licensing and help develop businesses into Montana success stories. The Montana Business Checklist can be used for new or existing businesses.
my USCIS, U.S. Department of Homeland Security - U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
myUSCIS is a new digital service that is a major paradigm shift from traditional call centers to digital services. The purpose of this service is to offer USCIS customers a wider range of online services. myUSCIS is device agnostic and can be used anytime, anywhere, and on any device. At myUSCIS, you’ll find up-to-date information about the application process for immigration benefits, tools to help you prepare for naturalization, and resources to find citizenship preparation classes and doctors in your community.
Perfect Power Microgrid, Illinois Institute of Technology and OSIsoft, LLC
Illinois Institute of Technology is developing the nation’s first Perfect Power microgrid designed to provide both energy efficiency and demand response (electric usage by end-use customers from their normal consumption pattern). Designed for the main campus, this microgrid will provide:
• A self-sustaining electricity infrastructure • An intelligent distribution system and system controllers
• Onsite electricity production
• Demand-response capability
• Sustainable energy systems and green buildings/complexes
• Technology-ready infrastructure
• Innovated microgrid controller based on data from PMUs (phasor management unit).
This flagship system will serve as a model for other universities, municipalities, developments and any facility looking to establish a more self-sustaining, efficient operation.
Pesticide Submission Portal, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and CGI Federal
When pesticide producers sought to distribute a pesticide product, request a permit for testing pesticides under development, report product safety concerns, or file a petition for establishing tolerance with EPA, industry used an electronic dossier to build registration materials, compiled the materials into a zip file, saved the file to a compact disc, and mailed that disc to the government. No electronic means existed for agency-industry collaboration and data-sharing to support registration, resulting in a cumbersome, time-intensive process. The development and launch of PSP changed the pesticide submissions paradigm, introducing a web-based, mobile-ready process for registration requests.
Probation Universal Mobile Application (PUMA), County of San Diego Probation Department and HP Enterprise
PUMA is a HPE developed mobile case management application used by San Diego County Probation Officers to efficiently manage their offender caseloads in the field; thereby, enhancing their operational effectiveness while controlling costs. The application was partially developed in response to California legislative changes to reduce the state’s prison inmate population by reassigning low-level offenders to be supervised at the local county level.
RadResponder, developed in response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, is a collaboration between FEMA, DOE, and EPA. It is a cloud based system that enables a self-assembling, just-in-time emergency response across all levels of government. Through freely available mobile apps, RadResponder’s 1,000 Federal, State, and Local emergency response organizations seamlessly collect, analyze and share radiological data through an open Microsoft Azure Government Cloud environment that automatically surges to support a disaster. In less than two years in full production, this innovative approach has established RadResponder as the national standard and whole community solution for the management of radiological data.
ReachOut, Infosys Public Services, Inc.
Infosys ReachOut leverages the power of mobility and analytics to connect the people-in-need with assistance and basic services in real-time. It enables agencies to help people-inneed access basic services in a timely and cost-effective manner, engage volunteers in service delivery, and generate actionable insights to optimize operations and costs.
Real-Time Health System - Infectious Disease Tracking, HP Enterprise
Modern Electronic Health Records (EHRs) do not provide all the data necessary to provide complete and optimal healthcare. The real-time health system (RTHS) fills the data gaps for connected patients (patients using health metric and location detection and tracking devices) by integrating data from multiple data sources into traditional EHR systems. Leveraging Internet of Things (IoT), analytics, mobility and cloud technologies, the RTHS provides greater situational awareness to improve patient outcomes by detecting medical events and intervening early. To showcase the power of the RTHS, we implemented an infectious disease tracking use case on our demo RTHS platform.
VA Tracked Item Recommendation Engine (TIRE), Department of Veterans Affairs
The largest cost in the time it takes to complete a Veteran’s disability claim is the process of collecting the evidence needed to support the Veteran’s claims, a process driven by complex policies and procedures that claims processors are legally required to know and follow. The Tracked Item Recommendation Engine (TIRE) uses machine-learning algorithms to mine Veteran Affairs databases to “teach” a computer how to recommend to a claims processor the evidence that will be needed to complete the disability claim. The optimal result: reduced claims processing time, speeding critical benefits to our nation’s Veterans.
Trusted Application Broker Service (TABS), TASC, An Engility Company
Bringing Innovation into the government is a consistently difficult problem with many past failures and few successes. The result, great ideas don’t see the light of day, depriving users of critical capability and costing companies time and money attempting to do business with the government. TABS is a broker service that finds great innovation for the government, provides application developers with an understanding of government mission needs and technical environment, supports the developers in accessing government data, tests the capability and then recommends to the government that the capability be added to the government’s AppStore.
U.S. Decennial Census (2020), SAS Institute/SAS Government Solutions and ConnellyWorks
The upcoming 2020 Census will span an increasingly diverse U.S. population of over 330 million people across 140 million households. The Census Bureau has committed to conducting the Census at the same or lower cost-per-housing unit as occurred in 2010. The Census team is creatively developing and applying innovative business processes to existing technologies in order to maximize cost savings and minimize risk, while maintaining high quality results. This approach drastically reduces the cost of expensive in-person follow-up visits with households and is estimated to save over $5 billion from the cost of repeating the 2010 Census design.
Undersea Warfare Rapid Innovation Center Events, U.S. Department of the Navy
In 2015, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Division, Newport opened its Rapid Innovation Center (RIC) where it hosted several innovation events. Based on similar innovation spaces created by industry leaders such as IDEO and Google that offer modern workspaces proven to spark creativity, the RIC is fully furnished with state-of-the-art technology and is equipped for innovators to hit the ground running. More important than the space itself, however, are the events and activities taking place in the RIC. Hack-a-thons and design thinking workshops are beginning to reinvigorate the innovative culture upon which the Navy’s Warfare Centers were founded.
VA Enterprise Health Management Platform (eHMP), ASM Research
eHMP improves clinical care for our nation’s veteran population as a cornerstone in modernizing the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA). Beyond providing an integrated inpatient and outpatient electronic health record to optimize quality medical care for veterans and their families, this platform strengthens and expands Veteran healthcare services, enables greater interoperability of systems and healthcare information, and meets the highest security standards of patient data.
