SAVE Award 2011 Ideas

Eliminating mandatory FULL FARE REFUNDABLE airline tickets would save MILLIONS. I understand not booking with third party vendors (expedia, etc), but allowing employees to book directly with the airline would save big. Even if the employee changes the ticket 10 times and pays 10 change fees, it's still MUCH cheaper than some of the fares. I just paid $3,000 for a roundtrip from Anchorage to Atlanta. I called one airline... more »

Current policy allows employees to claim a small amount for telephone expenses. This is unnecessary because national long-distance is included in all mobile phone plans, and family members can generally call for free. If an employee has a personal mobile phone, this benefit is unnecessary.

Millions of dollars are spent each year on travel for Federal employees to give face-to-face presentations. For example, many agencies have Speakers Bureaus. Individual speakers travel to classrooms, community groups, and other local events to engage with their audience. The use of Skype would still allow for experts to present talks via the internet and engage with audiences. This would save a great deal of Federal employee... more »

Every year, thousands of dollars are wasted on travel for airfare, per diem, hotels, taxi fare, etc. for meetings, or training, consultation etc. The majority of the junkets are to resort areas. In this recession, we can not afford to send upper management officials to vacations under the guise of "training". Send the book or DVD. Do a free teleconference on Skype. If you need a vacation, use your own funds and leave,... more »

The mileage rates for private motorcycles (definitely) and private airplanes (possibly) should be reduced, and the policy under which they are used or reimbursed should be reevaluated and changed. As of now if you take a personally operated vehicle (POV; i.e your personal car or truck) when a government vehicle (GOV) is available, you are rightly reimbursed for mileage at a smaller rate (something like 19 cents versus... more »

Recently, Airline companies changed their policy to one checked bag only, when reserving a flight.
This has caused a drastic increase in overall fees for travel. When travelling on American Airlines, and probably other companies, this is causing a 100-300 dollar markup.
For those at overseas locations, this can literally double the cost. For instance, on a recent trip through USAFE, I incurred a 400 Euro fee for my... more »

Given that there are fixed upper limits on the allowable per diem costs for a hotel, allow government travelers to save part of the difference between their actual hotel rate and the limit for that location. Allowing those on travel to save 10% of this difference would provide a financial incentive to look for lower hotel rates. The government would save the difference.

At the military base I work on dozens of people take a private car from the base to the airport per week for official travel. There is nothing wrong with this, its allowed in the Joint Travel Regulations, but there's significant opportunity for savings here. I think every military base & every other government facility that sends more than about 10 travellers per week to the same airport could save thousands of dollars... more »