The Opportunity Project (TOP) Seeking Community Participation

The Opportunity Project (TOP) Seeking Community Participation

The Opportunity Project (TOP) from the U.S. Census Bureau is a program that brings together technologists, government, and communities to rapidly prototype digital products—powered by federal open data—that solve real-world challenges through 12-week virtual technology development sprints.

This fall, TOP is collaborating with the EPA’s Office of Community Revitalization on a sprint focused on the challenge of facilitating sustainable rural economic development. The aim of this sprint is to catalyze the creation of digital products to help rural communities evaluate the environmental and health effects of economic development decisions. This sprint is the US Census Bureau’s, university sprint and will be composed of tech teams entirely from academic institutions.

In the sprint process, “user advocates,” who are community/industry leaders and subject matter experts, guide tech teams in designing solutions that are realistic and useful for the target end users. The program is looking for several user advocates to participate in this virtual process to help inform the creation of digital products that address this important challenge.

The project will begin on September 11th. Please reach out to Tim to learn more.