About CitizenScience.gov

CitizenScience.gov is an official government website designed to accelerate the use of crowdsourcing and citizen science across the U.S. government. The site provides a portal to three key components: a catalog of federally supported citizen science projects, a toolkit to assist federal practitioners with designing and maintaining their projects, and a gateway to a community of hundreds of citizen science practitioners and coordinators across government as called for in the Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act of 2016 (15 USC 3724). You can learn more about the activities of the Federal Community of Practice on Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science in this two-page overview document.

Through citizen science and crowdsourcing, the federal government and nongovernmental organizations can engage the American public in addressing societal needs and accelerating science, technology, and innovation.

In citizen science, the public participates voluntarily in the scientific process, addressing real-world problems in ways that may include formulating research questions, conducting scientific experiments, collecting and analyzing data, interpreting results, making new discoveries, developing technologies and applications, and solving complex problems. In crowdsourcing, organizations submit an open call for voluntary assistance from a large group of individuals for online, distributed problem solving.

The Implementation of Federal Prize and Citizen Science Authority: Fiscal Years 2017-18 report from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is the first report on crowdsourcing and citizen science activities conducted by Federal agencies. Information about the crowdsourcing and citizen science activities included in Appendix C and Appendix D of the report are available as a CSV data file (this is a raw data set).

CitizenScience.gov was developed under a partnership between the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Wilson Center), a Trust Instrumentality of the U.S. government.

This webinar from April of 2019 overviews the Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science and the resources it offers through our website.