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Tammi Marcoullier

Washington D.C.
tammi.marcoullier@gsa.gov

Tammi Wark Marcoullier manages the Challenge.gov program. It is a federal-wide crowdsourcing platform that offers incentives and prizes for citizens to solve mission-centric problems facing our nation. As of May 2015, there are more than 400 competitions from 73 agencies, with more than $200 million in prizes offered since it launched in September 2010. In 2014 the program received Harvard’s Ash Center Innovations in American Government Award. Ms. Marcoullier is a digital strategist who speaks at conferences, training events, and agency meetings. She provides consulting on prize design, crowdsourcing best practices, solver engagement, policy, metrics, and program development initiatives. She leads strategy for the technical platform development and created the program database for metrics, reporting, and analysis. In her career, Ms. Marcoullier was vice-president of a technology company that created solutions for content sharing and cross-platform integration; led video content strategy, production, and implementation at AOL; has written for USA Today and the Washington Post; and advised government contracting companies in online and customer engagement strategy.

News and Events

Competitions Launch Start-ups and Engage Entrepreneurs

When people hear about challenge competitions, they most often ask about the results. What worked and why did it work? Two great examples are featured on the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy site, which include the “needle in the haystack” solvers for a space mass competition and eleven

Tammi Marcoullier

Apr 23, 2015

USGS, Where Citizen Science Is for the Birds

“I tell the interns: In this lab, we’re all about failure. If you’re not failing, you’re not really doing anything.” –Sam Droege, USGS biologist, in Audubon magazine The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is actively working with citizen scientists to discover, collect, and organize a variety of scientific data that is

Tammi Marcoullier

Jan 20, 2015

Crowdsourcing Month: An Overview

This month we’ll be highlighting articles about crowdsourcing. These are the programs that use a variety of online mechanisms to get ideas, services, solutions, and products by asking a large, diverse crowd to contribute their expertise, talents, and skills. Among the mechanisms are hackathons, data jams, code-a-thons, prize competitions, workplace surveys, open ideation, micro-tasks or

Tammi Marcoullier

Dec 08, 2014

Results Report: Robots Created for Competitions to Help Ebola Response

Challenge competitions were recently highlighted as two potential solutions to help with the Ebola crisis responses. The first is a grand challenge launched Oct. 17, 2014, by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID): Ebola: A Grand Challenge for Development. The goal: To help health care workers on the front lines provide better care and stop

Tammi Marcoullier

Oct 27, 2014

Introducing the New Challenge.gov

Challenge.gov now hosts the full federal-wide listing of crowdsourcing competitions and has a back-end platform for agencies to create and manage their competitions. The site is managed and produced within GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technology (OCSIT) group. The main feature is a complete

Tammi Marcoullier

Oct 02, 2014

USGS Picture Puzzle: Do You See Changes to the Coast?

If you are a coastal resident, go to the beach, or are interested in digital volunteering, you can be a tremendous help in identifying and classifying changes that storms make to our coast after severe storms. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has launched iCoast, a Web application where you can view aerial photographs and help classify

Tammi Marcoullier

Sep 22, 2014

Helpful Hints: Writing RFPs So Real Businesses Can Respond

If you have a hand in contracts for crowdsourcing initiatives and challenge and prize competitions, here are some helpful hints for you. We’ve gathered this list from the expert businesses that provide competition services. Haven’t heard about that? See GSA Schedule 541-4G. Background: Over the last two years, competition providers and consultants have become more

Tammi Marcoullier

Sep 15, 2014

Cheaters, Thieves, Saboteurs & Other Nefarious Competitors

Challenge and prize competitions are competitive and not always squeaky clean. There are a few things we’ve noticed and noted in our experience over the last four years with challenge competitions run by federal agencies and studying others in the private sector.

Tammi Marcoullier

Sep 11, 2014

FTC Awards Five Winners from #DEFCON22 Robocall Honeypot Challenge

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had such great success with their first robocall challenge competition that the agency decided to take a different angle this year—targeting the skilled hackers at DEF CON 22, the annual defense conference in Las Vegas in early August. Five winners earned cash prizes and bragging rights for their creative technical

Tammi Marcoullier

Aug 29, 2014

Deloitte Analysis: Craft of Incentive Prize Design

Federal challenge and prize competitions are in the news again. Our colleagues across government participated in research that resulted in a new report released June 19 from Deloitte University Press, The Craft of Prize Design: Lessons from the public sector. In the last five years, incentive prizes have transformed from an exotic open innovation tool to

Tammi Marcoullier

Jun 26, 2014

This Weekend: Event List for Civic Hacking

Our fabulous colleague Jeanne Holm is ready for the #hackforchange events this weekend and summarized some tips, notes and links to resources on Data.gov. Great things will happen this weekend! Remember, if you hear about great uses of government data, let

Tammi Marcoullier

May 30, 2014

Introductory Call for the Disaster Apps Challenge

The National Defense University (NDU) is hosting a conference call Friday, May 23, to spread the word about the Disaster Apps Challenge Competition, which opened yesterday. This call is open to the public, specifically the people who are interested

Tammi Marcoullier

May 20, 2014

We won’t build the government of the 21st century by drawing within the lines. We don’t have to tell you the hard work of building a digital government doesn’t exist in a vacuum or a bubble. Show us social media without mobile, Web without data and user experience without APIs. You can’t? That’s right—in reality,

Tammi Marcoullier

May 19, 2014

The Federal List of #HackforChange Projects

You should be on this list—the current federal government participants in the National Day of Civic Hacking. There are 15 agencies participating in the event, primarily in and around the Washington, D.C., area. This is a fantastic compilation of what agencies are doing, but it is not enough. We need more widespread participation across the country. If

Tammi Marcoullier

May 15, 2014

New White House Report: Prize Competition Use Increased 85% in 2013

We are thrilled to share an update from our competition colleagues at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The third annual comprehensive report detailing the use of prizes and

Tammi Marcoullier

May 07, 2014

Civic Hacking: Pathways for Participation

The National Day of Civic Hacking is actually a weekend. An awe-inspiring two days of collaborative work where coders, designers, writers, innovative thinkers,

Tammi Marcoullier

May 02, 2014

Defining Ideation in Challenge Competitions

There is some confusion about how “ideation” fits into challenge and prize competitions. Often, we hear from agencies that they would like to ask the public for ideas, to survey them on a specific question, or to request proposals in response to a

Tammi Marcoullier

Apr 18, 2014

Double Digit Crowdsourcing Competitions Launch in February

This is a phenomenal month for federal challenge and prize competitions with 12 new programs launched in February. The challenge.gov platform usually averages four to six new challenges a month, so we’re excited to see the year start off with a big push to engage citizens in creative

Tammi Marcoullier

Feb 26, 2014

Highlights from 2013 #TCOpen Coding Competition

Our team and a few other agencies had the chance to attend the 2013 TopCoder Open this year and meet the best of the best developers, coders, designers, data scientists, and innovative thinkers in crowdsourcing. This

Tammi Marcoullier

Jan 10, 2014

Results Posted: 2012 Challenge Report

This week the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released its second comprehensive report detailing the use of federal challenge and prize competitions. Read it and you’ll find details about the fiscal benefits of more than 300 competitions implemented by 45 agencies. As the report

Tammi Marcoullier

Dec 20, 2013

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