U.S. General Services Administration
GSA’s 10x program unveils new cohort of investments
Post filed in: Technology
GSA’s 10x program – the federal government’s premier venture studio – wants to transform how the government delivers public services. 10x invests in technology ideas sent from civil servants across the government to achieve this transformation.
We believe civil servants are uniquely positioned to imagine and identify new ways the government could use technology to deliver better public services. This fiscal year, we evaluated nearly 200 ideas submitted by federal employees working across more than a dozen agencies. We removed the authors’ names and agency affiliations in our evaluations of their ideas to ensure fairness in our investment process. We selected 16 ideas to invest in for technology projects that we believe will have the highest impact on the public.
The projects
Our FY24 investment priorities centered on ideas for reimagining public engagement and promoting equity in delivery. We also emphasized “Moonshot” ideas: the biggest, boldest, and most ambitious ideas to transform digital public services.
We’re eagerly anticipating the kick off of our newest projects at Phase One to learn which ones will deliver massive impact for the public.
This round, ideas for artificial intelligence projects emerged as a standout category. Nearly one fifth of all the submissions we received were related to AI. We selected a few of these ideas for Phase One funding, such as how federal agencies can improve their users’ search experience by using LLMs – or Large Language Models – tools that have exploded in use over the past few years in support of AI programming.
We believe the buzz around the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence within the federal workforce may have contributed to this, as it was released at the height of our idea submission outreach.
Other highly represented categories included:
- Accessibility tech.
- Public-to-agency communication innovations.
- Better data sharing.
Those topics are consistent with the past few years, since agencies are searching for new and innovative ways to deliver services to underserved populations. Our new Phase One project called Improved Service Delivery to the Newly Disabled is a great example of this. This explores ways the government can use technology to serve people who are experiencing a new disability for the first time, when the emotional, physical, and logistical challenges in their everyday lives are most acute.
What’s next?
We are preparing to kick off our Spring 2024 Phase One projects and are assembling the cross-functional teams of technologists who will do the work.
In Phase One, our teams answer the question: “Is there a there there?” They investigate the problem, get a sense of how and if this idea could impact the public, and explore whether a technology solution is possible.
We use the Phase One findings to guide our investment decisions as we decide whether or not to move a project into subsequent phases.
Only a handful of the original 16 projects receive funding through Phase Four — when we scale our solutions to deliver impact for as many users as possible. For 10x, users include the entire American public.
Learn more
- Want more from 10x? Check out our website to learn about our current and past investments, as well as for news on our most recent projects.
- Let’s talk! You can contact us at 10x@gsa.gov.