The Marine Corps has officially opened a second Innovation Challenge to the force. Marines and Department of the Navy civilians can now register on the service’s Innovation Challenge Portal, form teams, and build unclassified software tools against problems submitted by commanders and staff, according to Marine Administrative Message (MARADMIN) 411/26, signed Sept. 11 by the Deputy Commandant for Information.
The message follows MARADMIN 401/26, released Aug. 28, which named the first-round winners. Most of those tools came out of II Marine Expeditionary Force (II MEF) and were built to kill routine staff work: readiness charts, training trackers, duty rosters, and sourcing boards.
The second round is already live. Headquarters is prioritizing problems tied to the Commanding General’s Inspection Program (CGIP), though other issues can still be submitted at a lower priority.
The move sits alongside other recent attempts to push new kit and new processes into units, including a plan to add more than 6,500 billets and a new robotics and small-drone training group.
This challenge has a narrower focus: It is not a request for a new vehicle or a new weapon, but rather a request for working tools on the Marine Corps Microsoft 365 (M365) tenant that other units can actually copy and use.
What the First Round Produced
The Innovation Council received first-round submissions on technical accomplishment, reach, and whether the idea lined up with the campaign. The named winners were:
Captain Robert Werner of II MEF won the Commander’s Readiness Dash challenge with OverSight, a daily-refreshed analytic tool that pulls Global Combat Support System-Marine Corps (GCSS-MC) data and flags calibration, modification, preventive maintenance, and property problems instead of making small-unit leaders hunt through raw reports.
Sergeant Jalen L. Taite of II MEF won the Automate Training Statistics challenge with Marine Education and Training Statistics, or METS. The dashboard takes standard Marine Corps Training Information Management System (MCTIMS) reports, fuses them with Marine Online roster data, and shows a commander whether a section, platoon, or company is actually meeting training requirements.
Sergeant Blake Owen won the duty-roster challenge with DutyNext, a Power App that builds and maintains a roster while accounting for leave, approved non-availability, exercise sourcing, and rank rules.
Team iMPACT, also from II MEF, won the personnel and equipment resourcing challenge with SourceIt. The app pulls authoritative data from Marine Online, GCSS-MC, and MCTIMS so a unit is not tracking a Training Exercise Employment Plan on a shared spreadsheet.
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Brandon Russell of II MEF was listed for a notable achievement, not a win, after a 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance team automated a material-readiness brief in Power BI for both desktop and government phones.
MARADMIN 401/26 listed prize money for some of those categories, including $1,000 for the OverSight win and $450 for METS. Every first-round select also received an achievement endorsement letter from the Deputy Commandant for Information, routed through the chain of command for award consideration and an Official Military Personnel File entry.
Prize money in round two, according to MARADMIN 411/26, still depends on the Innovation Council, technical merit, reach, and available funds.
How Round Two Works
Round two opened the day MARADMIN 411/26 was published. Marines, Department of the Navy civilians, commanders, and staff register through the USMC Innovation Challenge Portal. Commanders and staff can sponsor a problem for other Marines to solve. Sponsors have to be at or above the grade of major or master sergeant.
Participants may work during duty hours and use government resources if their commander approves it. There is no centrally funded temporary additional duty.
Virtual work is the default. Solutions have to stay unclassified. They have to run on standard enterprise connectors inside the Marine Corps M365 tenant. Premium connectors, custom extensions, and reverse engineering are out.
Intellectual property on a submitted solution transfers to the Marine Corps and is delivered to the Deputy Commandant for Information. That is the point of the program as the service describes it: the Corps wants a unit-level fix it can scale, not a private project that dies when the builder executes orders.
The MARADMIN sums up the idea as follows:
The challenge is about the Service solving service problems and the Marine Corps effectively scaling those solutions for employment across the service.
What Marines Should Know Before They Enter
The portal is open now. Assessment dates are not fixed on the message. They will be set by the director of the Information Command, Control, Communications, and Computers directorate based on how many submissions actually arrive.
Marines who want a problem worked should get a sponsor first. Marines who want to build should read the first-round write-ups on the portal before they start. Headquarters is telling the force it will take a Power App that cleans up an inspection functional area over a broad concept.
The constraint is the same one that showed up in the first results. The winning tools were dashboards and roster apps that used data Marines already have permission to use. If a proposed fix needs a special license, a classified network, or a contractor add-on, it is not a fit for this challenge.
Interested Marines should register on the portal, pick a problem a commander will sponsor, and build something a battalion can run without waiting on a new program of record.
