The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is looking for different ways to make airport screenings quicker and more efficient, even offering prize money for new ideas.
$15,000 is being awarded to those who can come up with the best ideas for rearranging the security queue at TSA checkpoints, according to Forbes. The challenge was issued out to the public on the agency's site Innocentive.
While screening methods have changed over time, from traditional metal detectors to full body scanners, the basic layout of the checkpoint has stayed the same.
The TSA has several categories of travelers that it has to screen, which include premium travelers, passengers in wheelchairs, pilots and crew members, and passengers who use the PreCheck program, The Los Angeles Times reported. The program allows those who voluntarily submit background information to go through screenings faster. Confusion and delays have often been caused by putting these groups in the same lines as those without PreCheck.
Ross Feinstein, spokesman for the TSA, said the challenge "is about leveraging innovation and out-of-the-box thinking to find solutions to TSA's most challenging issues."
Participants will have to do more than just write down their ideas, as the challenge requires them to "provide a simulation modeling concept that can form the basis to plan, develop requirements, and design a queue appropriately," Forbes reported. Evidence that the idea will work must also be provided.
Because of the complexity of checkpoints, submissions must consider challenges that come with screening the different groups of people, which still has to be done in the same place for the sake of getting PreCheck passengers through screenings faster.
"InnoCentive is for unique, defined challenges with a guaranteed cash reward for successful solution," Feinstein said. "As such, the current challenge is a targeted request for inventive ideas that allow the agency to crowd source by engaging diverse and non-traditional groups of thinkers and solvers. This is becoming a widely accepted practice in federal government, as most successfully demonstrated and embraced by NASA, and is in line with the Administration's Strategy for American Innocation."
One prize of at least $5,000, as well as others for at least $2,500, will also be awarded for the best ideas, The Los Angeles Times reported.
The TSA is accepting submissions online. The deadline to submit ideas is Aug. 15th, and the agency has so far received over 200 submissions.
