Just like the commercial world, the government is drowning in data, and accessing that data to discover the insights hiding within it remains difficult. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Disparate Data Challenge encourages participants to offer solutions that can demonstrate effective capabilities that enable access to data that is wildly disparate in its formats, schemas, interfaces and locations, so that it may be available for search, business metrics and data and information analytics.

This is a multistage challenge open to U.S. and foreign citizens, or and U.S. or foreign entities. Please be advised that while foreign citizens and foreign entities may participate, they are not eligible to receive cash (monetary) prizes (see full eligibility requirements below.)

STAGE 1: Stage 1 requires solvers to implement functioning capabilities that can demonstrate access and retrieval to analyze either part or all of the provided representative datasets that approximate the difficulties associated with accessing and using NGA’s disparate restricted-access holdings. You may access the data through the following link: http://disparatedata.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/.

Stage 1 solution submissions must be actual working capabilities (not just white papers, but working code) that can perform their functions against the representative datasets specified above.

As part of Stage 1, NGA reserves the right to make up to twenty awards, or no award at all. Award decisions will be based on the solutions’ potential to work well when applied to the restricted-access data holdings. NGA will award up to 15 cash prizes in the amount of $10,000 each to the top 15 eligible awardees. The total amount available for cash prizes is $150,000. All Stage 1 awardees will also receive invitations to participate in Stage 2 of the challenge. Stage 1 awardees will be announced on September 30, 2016.

STAGE 2: Stage 2 of the challenge is restricted to Stage 1 awardees. Stage 2 of the challenge is a demonstration (Demo-thon) of the Stage 1 awardees solutions in the Washington, D.C. area. Execution of Stage 2 is dependent on extension of NGA’s challenge authority into fiscal year 2017 (FY17 starts OCT 1, 2016). The Stage 1 awardees will be notified via email if and when the Government receives authority to proceed with Stage 2.

At the Demo-thon another panel of judges will use participants’ solutions to access, retrieve, and examine the representative datasets used during Stage 1. Participants will have an opportunity to demonstrate other special features that they believe address the challenge. Participants will be asked to connect to additional datasets in preparation for the demo. Stage 2 participants will have a chance to improve their solution during Demo-thon and will have the opportunity to re-demonstrate before the judges make a final decision. Additional NIST data sets will be added during the second stage and used to test technical effectiveness. To get a feel of the type of NIST data that will be added at Stage 2, a sample collection of data can be obtained http://trec.nist.gov/data/reuters/reuters.html by signing up for access at the site.

As part of Stage 2, NGA reserves the right to make multiple awards, or no reward at all. Award decisions will be based upon the solutions the judges determine to be most responsive to the challenge and most likely to be effective when applied to part or all of NGA’s restricted-access data. Although there is no limit to the number of Stage 2 participants that may be declared winners (i.e., have meaningfully met and addressed the challenge), NGA reserves the right to award up to three additional cash awards to the three highest rated eligible awardees (highest rated ($25,000), second highest rated ($15,000) or third highest rated ($10,000)). The challenge concludes upon announcement of the Stage 2 winners.

HOW TO ENTER: By 5 p.m. local time (Washington, DC) on September 19, 2016, please submit the following items through www.challenge.gov:

• Name
• Organization
• Contact information, email and phone number
• Description of your solution written in English (maximum 1,000 words). In your description you must describe which of the representative disparate data sets your solution will access effectively (partial solutions are totally acceptable!). You may also want to describe how to demo your solution. Please provide either a link to a working product or provide us with something else that can be used to effectively assess the technical aspects of your submission.
• Instructions for accessing your submission — in other words, how can our judges get access to the functioning solution to use against the representative disparate data? This can be appended to your project description and does not count toward the 1,000-word maximum.
• To assist in judge’s ability to understand and assess your solution, it is recommended participants link to a YouTube video demo of the product (maximum of four minutes in length). If authentication is required to access the video, please provide this in your submission.

All questions from participants relating to the contest must posted to the discussion board. All answers will be posted to the discussion board and will be viewable by all participants.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Response to this Disparate Data Challenge is completely separate from the GEOINT Search and Retrieval (GSR) Request for Proposal. Please refer to our memo for more details.
• Participants are not required to travel to compete in Stage 1. If you’re selected as a Stage 1 winner, and if you desire to participate in the Stage 2 Demo-thon, you will be required to travel to the Washington, D.C, metro area to demonstrate your solution live on October 20 and 21, 2016 (Notional). NGA is not responsible for and will not pay any costs associated with attending the Stage 2 Demo-thon.
• NGA will confirm execution of stage 2 as soon as possible. Invitations to Demo-Thon will be emailed to the Stage 1 awardees if and when the NGA’s Challenge authority is extended.
• Stage 2 winners will comprise the competitive pool for a potential prototype project.
• The prize money will be transmitted by electronic funds transfer to the bank account of the eligible private entities or individual awardees as determined by NGA. If the awardee is the leader or member of a team of participants, it is the responsibility of the awardee, not NGA, to determine the subsequent division of any prize money.
• Tax treatment of prizes will be handled in accordance with U.S. Internal Revenue Service guidelines. The recipient must provide an appropriate U.S. taxpayer identification number (e.g., social security number, employer identification number, etc). The recipient should consult a tax advisor to ensure that winnings are handled properly and reported accurately for tax purposes.
• If NGA is unable to contact the winning participants within 72 hours after the announcement of the awardee, NGA reserves the right to withdraw the award.