_posts/2014-07-16-midas-a-marketplace-for-innovation-in-government.md
---
layout: post
date: '2014-07-16T11:01:00-04:00'
tumblr_url: http://18fblog.tumblr.com/post/91952641466/midas-a-marketplace-for-innovation-in-government
title: "Midas: a marketplace for innovation in government"
description: "Midas is an online platform that brings to life the vision of an Innovation Toolkit for government. It's a marketplace of skill building opportunities which matches people to projects that they're passionate about. You can think of it as \"Kickstarter for people's time\"."
excerpt: "Midas is an online platform that brings to life the vision of an Innovation Toolkit for government. It's a marketplace of skill building opportunities which matches people to projects that they're passionate about. You can think of it as “Kickstarter for people's time.”"
image:
authors:
- joe
- mattchessen
tags:
- midas
- open opportunities
- platforms
---
[Midas](https://github.com/18f/midas) is an online platform that brings
to life the vision of an "Innovation Toolkit" for government. It is a
marketplace of skill building opportunities which matches people to
projects that they're passionate about. You can think of it as
"[kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com "kickstarter") for people's
time."
The concept of an [Innovation
Toolkit](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/innovationfellows/projects) started
as a [Presidential Innovation
Fellows](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/innovationfellows) project to give
federal employees a place to work on innovative ideas across government
that may occur outside their normal job or management chain. The
[Department of State's Office of
eDiplomacy](http://www.state.gov/m/irm/ediplomacy/) teamed up with [The
White House Office of Science and Technology
Policy](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/administration/eop/ostp) to prototype
a crowdsourced marketplace for innovation.
The history of Midas
--------------------
To understand why the State Department was interested in such a project,
first imagine that you're an enthusiastic federal employee that has lots
of ideas for government to better serve its people and businesses. One
such group of feds is [foreign service
officers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Service_Officer),
especially junior foreign service officers who spend their first few
years performing consular work. They are located around the world and
typically process visas and passports full time. Foreign service
officers are highly educated and trained individuals – often with
advanced degrees and significant work experience. The question was
posed: how can we leverage this untapped potential of the federal
workforce to make meaningful progress on innovative projects? And how do
we provide professional development opportunities to both local and
remote workers that want to build their skills and advance in their
career?
From June through December 2013, through the Presidential Innovation
Fellows program, we conducted numerous user interviews and meetings with
stakeholders at the State Department. We met with foreign service
officers, supervisors, and country desk officers that coordinate
activities in each region. From these interviews, tests, and prototypes
came Midas – a marketplace for projects and opportunities. At State,
they started calling it "crowdworking." (The internal website at State
is officially called "Crowdwork.")
How Midas works
---------------
<span style="float:right; padding-left:1em;"></span>
Midas consists of three main components — projects, opportunities, and
profiles – all of which are connected through **skills** and **topics**
of interest.
When employees sign up, they get a **profile** on Midas (which can be
imported from existing services such as LinkedIn). Profiles contain a
list of skills as well as topics that employees are interested in or
passionate about.
**Projects** are a container that holds the discussions, events, files,
and participants of a proposed activity. Projects also have skills and
topics associated with them. This is where work can be coordinated. A
project doesn't have to be a project in the traditional sense; it can be
a ["tiger team"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_team), a community
of practice, or an interest group (for example, a group of people that
get together to volunteer for a particular cause outside of work).
<span style="float:right; padding-left:1em;"></span>
**Opportunities** are crowdsourced tasks that need volunteers.
Opportunities are also associated with skills and topics. An opportunity
can be part of a project, or a standalone need. These can be
accomplished in as little as 15 minutes, or could be as consuming as a 6
or 12 month full time detail of the employee to another office.
Midas in action
---------------
Midas is currently being piloted by the [Department of
State](http://www.state.gov)
[[GitHub](https://github.com/USStateDept/midas-crowdwork)] and the
[Department of Health and Human
Services](http://www.hhs.gov/idealab/i-want-support/for-hhs-2/)
[[GitHub](https://github.com/HHSIDEAlab/HHSFairTrade-Configs)]. Midas is
also a key component of the Office of Personnel Management's
[GovConnect](https://www.chcoc.gov/transmittals/TransmittalDetails.aspx?TransmittalID=6076)
initiative, which is part of the [President's Second Term Management
Agenda](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2013/07/08/smarter-more-innovative-government-american-people).
Through GovConnect, agencies can experiment, prototype, and implement
new workforce engagement programs, like Midas.
Crowdwork, the name of the Midas system at the Department of State,
received the [NextGen Exemplary Group
Award](http://www.nextgengovt.com/nextgen-awards). The award will be
celebrated at the [NextGen Training Summit](http://www.nextgengovt.com/)
on July 23, 2014 in Washington, D.C.
Midas for you
-------------
At [18F](https://18f.gsa.gov), we are now offering Midas to federal
agencies as a Software as a Service. Any agency can test out Midas
quickly, and focus on the programmatic aspect of "crowdworking" in their
community rather than get bogged down in the details of acquiring and
standing up the technology.
**Strategic benefits of using Midas:**
- Leverage capacity of remote offices to accomplish more within an
agency
- Augment existing teams (both within and outside agency) with
skillsets needed but not currently available within the team
- Provide additional professional development opportunities to
employees that match their interests and passions
- Improve employee morale and engagement
From day one, Midas has been available as open source on GitHub. It's
free for anyone to download, install, and use. All of our issues,
features, and bugs are out in the open. Management of Midas uses agile
methodologies and development is organized into sprints.
Come check out Midas for yourself on
[GitHub](https://github.com/18f/midas), and see how federal employees
are working more organically, across traditional silos, and more
collaboratively to improve government.