Open Innovation: Practices to Engage Citizens and Effectively Implement Federal Initiatives, GAO-17-14: Published: Oct 13, 2016. Publicly Released: Oct 13, 2016. “How can the federal government better engage citizens? Federal agencies are using “open innovation” tools to leverage the knowledge and skills of people outside government. Using dedicated websites and in-person outreach, agencies have worked with the public to rebuild communities after Hurricane Sandy, improve methods to find asteroids that could threaten the Earth, and reduce the amount of time required for highway construction projects. We identified 7 practices that agencies can use to effectively engage the public when using open innovation tools.”