Federal Government Launches New Citizen Science Website

This April the federal government launched CitizenScience.gov, a new 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 assets for federal practitioners: a searchable catalog of federally supported citizen science projects, a toolkit to assist with designing and maintaining projects, and a gateway to a federal community of practice to share best practices.

The CitizenScience.gov catalog contains descriptions of federally funded citizen science projects, which are tagged according to project topic, agency sponsor, agency partner, participant age, and intended outcomes.

The CitizenScience.gov toolkit provides resources to guide citizen science practitioners through the project development process, including how-to guides, case studies, and law and policy considerations.

The website also links to the Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science (CSS), which works across government agencies to share lessons learned and develop best practices for designing, implementing, and evaluating CSS initiatives.