It’s been a few years since I covered gamification in government. The concept of gamification comes from using game theory, and ultimately gaming technology, to educate or inform players.
It is one of the best ways to train people in areas where there is a lot of complexity, such as cybersecurity, or for skills like firefighting or soldiering where hitting the real world without sufficient experience can be deadly. It has been used to help solve impossible scientific problems by enlisting millions of volunteer players to “work” on a solution, although the players are just having fun. The most successful example of that is probably the FoldIt Game. Gamers successfully mapped a protein used to combat the AIDS virus in just three weeks, even though the same task had vexed scientists for over a decade.
At one point, the federal government was all in on gamification projects. Today, it’s mostly game over for that level of innovation. Where has all the government gamification innovation gone? Find out, only in NextGov Magazine.