SAVE Award 2011 Ideas

Warfare is changing and we are currently acting like the British did during our Revolutionary war, claiming that the enemy is "cheating" by not playing by the same rules of engagement as we do. For this reason, we need to change the way we fight our enemies. One major step would be to merge the R&D and Logistics of all services into one DoD-level service. Then we can truly look at redundant systems, obsolete systems... more »

The Army, Navy, and Air Force each have their own research laboratory. These three research laboratories share many of the same objectives, such as:

Directed Energy
Information Technology
Propulsion
Munitions
Human Research
Sensors
Space Vehicles
Materials

By bringing these three labs under one DoD Research Laboratory, redundancy in research objectives could be eliminated. Furthermore, many of the directorates and programs... more »

Currently Treasury components such as the Mint, BEP, FinCen, IRS and others have separate enforcement and security functions. It would be better create a Treasury Law Enforcement and Security arm to standardize equipment, training and policy; consolidate patrols; and use economy of scale thinking to reduce costs and achieve better efficiency with implementation of security measures.

Recommend OSD consider co-locating non-geographical commands. Co-location of USSTRATCOM, USTRANSCOM and USSOCOM would generate savings by eleminating duplicative staff support functions.

Within the Washington, DC or National Captial Region (NCR), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), through its varies agencies and sub-components, operates several disparate operations centers to manage workflow needed to protect our national security. In many instances, this workflow is duplicite and causes "stove piping" of information. By consolidating these operations centers, DHS will save millions of dollars... more »

We need to start taking a close look at consolidating resource components throughout government. We need to develop score cards for how well one agency does business and begin reducing redundant systems creating 'exclusive delegation agreements' for services and administrative processing functions. For instance, Bureau of Public Debt is streamlining the process how Delegated Examination Unit and Classification functions... more »

There are many, many regional offices across the country. Why not follow the recent lead of the Census and start moving to a 21st century model that relies much more on telecom (which is more cost efficient for taxpayers and convenient for consumers) rather than brick and mortar. Let's make as many regional offices "virtual" as we can -- and where we need a physical presence let's merge various agency regional offices... more »

The Department of Justice (DOJ) could save from $300,000 to $500,000 from consolidating anti-virus software purchases. Currently DOJ uses at least 5 different anti-virus software products across the DOJ Component organizations. If that were replaced with 1 or 2 enterprise licenses, the advanatages would be significant cost savings as well as standardization of software.

Require the Intelligence Community to consolidate it's business IT systems to a common platform. Right now, CIA, NGA, NSA, NRO, and others maintain their own unique (and often un-interoperable) IT systems. This could carry-over and expand to include financial management, ERP systems, etc. The agencies will claim they have unique requirements, but they aren't so unique that we cannot resolve and consolidate these requirements... more »