Podcast: The Ideation Community of Practice
How is iCOP supporting ideation practices across government?
You’re listening to The HHS Center for New Media podcast, where new and innovative media projects are introduced, shared, and discussed.
The way government agencies solve problems is changing. Ideas for innovation are now being shared openly online. The Ideation Community of Practice, or iCOP, was developed to help improve the process for solving those problems.
“ICOP is an interagency group comprised of federal employees from over 30 agencies that meets monthly to discuss shared topics of interest.”
Elizabeth Kittrie of HHS is a leader behind iCOP, which is working to improve the way those agencies use ideation.
“And that is where iCOP has been very helpful, to help us understand best practices or how ideation can be used in those different contexts.”
So what is ideation? It was born from the term, “idea generation.”
“Ideation is the creative process of generating, developing and communicating new ideas, and ideation can serve as an important driver for innovation by harnessing the wisdom of the community, be it an employee workforce or a group of stakeholders in helping to develop and refine ideas that can solve problems.”
Ideation platforms such as UserVoice and IdeaScale are web based tools that allow users to submit and discuss ideas.
“Users can post questions or challenges or ideas and then others in the system using a crowd-sourcing technology can interact with the ideas through commenting and voting.”
The ideas with the most votes float to the top.
Last year, Elizabeth joined other members of HHS in attending a White House Innovation and Information Policy Group. HHS presented a white paper on the use of ideation tools, which sparked interest across government.
“There were many agencies across the federal government that were interested in the development of these tools and all had similar questions but there was sort of no central place to go to share information.”
In the coming months, iCOP will focus on how to best recognize idea submitters on ideation platforms and how to turn shared ideas into action.
The Ideation Community of Practice is open to any federal employee. If you’re interested in learning more, you can email Elizabeth at Elizabeth.kittrie@hhs.gov.
You’ve been listening to The HHS Center for New Media podcast, where new and innovative media projects are introduced, shared, and discussed. If you have a project, media tool, or idea that you want to share with other HHS employees, please contact newmedia@hhs.gov.
Thanks for listening. I’m Nicholas Garlow.