About
The Opportunity Project (a.k.a. ‘TOP’) engages technologists, government, and communities to prototype digital products that solve real-world problems with open data.
It operates through 12-14 week technology design sprints, focused on the nation’s toughest challenges, from the opioid crisis and disaster relief to improving STEM education and workforce development. To date, over 200 digital products have been created, using open data to serve families, businesses, local leaders, and communities nationwide.
TOP addresses broad national challenges as well as specific community and regional challenges, such as those facing Puerto Rico or Indigenous Communities.
TOP is led by Census Open Innovation Labs (a.k.a. ‘COIL’), an office at the U.S. Census Bureau, with a portfolio of award-winning projects that continue to raise the bar for open innovation across government.
Meet the COIL TeamOur Vision
Collaboration, Simplified
TOP brings together government, technologists, problem solvers, and communities. Our tested innovation framework can be used by any government agency to encourage collaboration and ensure the public is at the heart of the results.
Federal Data, Explained
TOP unlocks the potential of open data. We believe that government data is a significantly under-tapped resource that can be transformed into products that solve important problems.
Federal Agencies can also lead their own TOP sprints using the TOPx Toolkit – a step-by-step guide to the TOP sprint model.
Check out the TOPx ToolkitOur History
TOP launched in March 2016 as a White House initiative to put data and tools in the hands of the American people to help them navigate critical issues facing the nation. In 2017, the U.S. Department of Commerce took up leadership of TOP, led by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Census Open Innovation Labs. Since then, the program has grown in scope and impact, and is now a widely used model for collaborative problem solving through open data, technology, and human-centered design.
Since its launch, TOP’s participants have created hundreds of digital products. Today, TOP has been referenced as a best practice in policies like the Federal Data Strategy, President’s Management Agenda, performance.gov, Department of Commerce’s Strategic Plan, Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity Report, and many others. It is a key mechanism supporting implementation of the Foundations for Evidence Based Policy Making Act (“The Evidence Act”).
Our Initiatives
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