SAVE Award 2011 Ideas

The Hearing Reporters are contracted to record the hearings which determine whether claimants are disabled. They are paid for each hearing when testimony is taken and usually end up doing between 6-8 hearings a day. Over the course of an entire week the cost paid to these individuals adds up.

Rather than pay the contracted Hearing Reporters, it would benefit the Agency to have the Legal Assistants or the Case Technicians... more »

Every time an action is printed in FPPS a job seperator sheet is printed at the beginning and end of that job. This means that a stack of 100 processed actions will print out as 100 print job cover pages, 100 sf-50's, and 100 print job final pages. This creates two sheets of waste for every one printed sheet of useble documentation.
Print jobs of actions that are released to print jointly should process through FPPS as... more »

The cost of paper can be reduced by going to an electronic database. Currently we print and reprint a database for distribution several times a month. This takes away several man hours and uses a lot of paper. This can be reduced if we go to a computer read only file. Most of the places our database goes to have computer access anyway. If we were to go to a computer read only file on the share drive we could have several... more »

I am a revenue agent who upon completion of a case, print all necessary documents to assemble into a hard file and then mail it to my manager who then mails it to the next appropriate place for storage. Hard copy case files are created for LB&I cases and SBSE cases. These files can be quite large and will take up a lot of space to store and be expensive to mail. Let's take a baby step into becoming more paperless.... more »

If ordered in large volumes to replace existing cards and new cards, the paper to plastic migration would only be separated by pennies due the the millions being ordered.

The next generation card would last longer, and your parents and/or grand parents would not have to laminate them!

Newer security features could be incorporated to prevent replication (which can be achieved quite easily with the current paper card),... more »

Printing each immigrants file is very time consuming and great amount of paper and ink is spent. If each file can be transmitted electronically to the courts and judges can utilize some type of smart laptop to view the same file as coordinated with the prosecution, this would alleviate alot of headaches and large amount of money that is being spent on printers, paper and ink. Thousands and thousands of files are being... more »

Every time I passed by the recycling bin next to the office printer, I often see piles of paper in there that are not documents from work but rather the pages with people’s name and the document’s title. This is such a waste of ink and paper because most people just throw them away. I suggest adding an option as we print from the computer where we can choose whether we want that first page of our name and document’s title... more »

The tax code is out of hand. Simplify it, make it difficult to change, and do not allow special exceptions allowing a few to not pay their fair share of taxes. Consider a small national sales tax to supplement some revenues on non-food items. Then supplement any government expenditures with fees for service instead. Inspections of foreign suppliers of food and other goods should pay for itself. As inspections show good... more »

VA doesn't obtain medical records from DoD hospitals and medical facilities electronically. Additionally, VA will order tests that have already been done at a DoD medical facility. Sharing records and tests electronically saves time, money and paper. This should work both ways, i.e. VA to DoD facility and DoD facility to VA.

If you don't have it you can't waste it. More paper is wasted on meetings, weekly reports, gantt charts, phone lists, status updates etc. Instead of providing an endless amount of printing paper, provide finite amounts monthly, once it's gone it's gone until the next ration arrives.

DHS is currently implementing new technology, DHS Connect and Enterprice Collaboration Network (ECN). Newsletters are primarily used to generate interest and increase business - neither of which is necessary when there is no selection latitude.

ECN has sections for announcements, scheduling, photos, content, bios, etc. There is no need for HQ components to create 8-10 page newsletters which are primarily self-marketing... more »

In DHS/ICE we have an online training program called "Virtual University." The concept is sound and having online training saves the govt. money. However, at the end of each training course, we employees are directed to print out a hard copy of the certificate of completion. This is counterintuitive. The whole course is online, the certificate can be viewed online. Upper management is able to access the training... more »