The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has set aside seed money for pushing employee-led innovation projects aimed to promote the agency’s policies and priorities, Information Week reports.Elena Malykhina writes that under the HHSignite initiative, staff who can execute a proposed project, idea or plan for improving HHS’ current processes, technologies and services can get as much as $10,000 in funding.
The agency will accept proof-of-concept proposals starting April 1 and pick eight projects that can be implemented within a six-month timeframe, with the winners to be announced in June, Malykhina reports.
HHSingite’s beta version was launched last week as a complementary program to HHSinnovates, which has been celebrating innovative achievements in the agency since 2010, according to the report.
“There are no shortage of ideas, but for ideas to have real value there must be evidence that it can work,” Bryan Sivak, HHS chief technology officer, wrote in a blog post.
“Supporting this idea-validation step of the larger idea-to-solution process is what this program is about,” he added.
