SAVE Award 2011 Ideas

Standardize the management of our vehicle and equipment fleets. Currently, each agency, writes policy/regulation and has software, procedures, and management policy for their fleets. Conversely, we're all doing the same thing; tracking utilization, right-sizing, greening, tracking fuel, training, etc. On top of that, each agency is writing directives, regulations, policy, and even creating separate forms. Standardizing... more »

The USG holds about $2.5B in used Naval Reactor Fuel that it intends to store in containers that will cost about $0.5B plus the cost of pads and surveillence etc. This fuel could be reprocessed in existing buildings at Idaho and either saved for future use by the Navy or downblended and sold as commercial reactor fuel. Its a 1000 or more jobs for twenty or more years, it reduces by 10 or more the volume of material that... more »

Go the E-book way.

 

Than having the same hard bound reference book in every office, go electronic. Subscribe/pay for the group access and distribute the log-in info to all employees. The 'Physicians Desk Reference' and the Dictionaries comes to mind! How about Kindling it?

Some reservists draw $1,500 for a single weekend - the equivelant of a mortgage payment for many Americans. Many of these senior people are in only administrative roles often duplicating others in nearby units. Particularly in the Office of Naval Intelligence reserve units. Most intelligence reserve units are not assigned in direct support of any actual missions; realign them to associate units so they draw resources... more »

Case files are a waste of paper with all the consistent printing and discarding of reports in the case files. That is an obvious waste, but what most don't realize is that we also have case file rooms or storage rooms that we rent in order to hold these case files. There is additional waste in funds that go to renting these storage rooms. And then lastly, after 5 years of a case being closed, the case is mailed to a... more »

Mandate that the office space for every LoB with eligible telworkers is reduced to a ratio of 4 employees-3 workspaces. This would not only reduce the amount of GSA leased space, but it would also force the subatomic micromanagers to implement a teleworking policy.

On occasion, government travel is scheduled for employees to meet at non-government (e.g. hotels) sites to conduct business with their government peers. This should be eliminated. GSA has already leased buildings to the government, so therefore, the meetings should occur on the grounds of the federal property that is leased to the Department/Bureau/Agency. Offsite meetings tend to be an excuse for going on a vacation... more »

Institutions print out call-outs / change sheets for inmates to view every day. One copy may contain up to 25 pages of entries. As many as 75 copies are made each day for posting in various areas for inmates to read. This accounts for as much as 13125 pages of printed material for one week at one institution. If you two side print the document, it still amounts to 6563 printed pages of material per week for one institution.... more »

Working at an executive level, I notice an abundance of paper waste. Our leadership and service line chiefs have many face to face committee meetings each month. For each meeting an agenda is created, provided to members, who in turn have their administrative staff print out and bind the agenda/attachments. Each leadership member and service line chief has their own government issued laptop. Instead of printing out... more »

Every month the VA Financial Services Center teaches various accounting classes to employees across the country. The classes are taught through PowerPoint slides while the employees follow with the exact same printouts. The problem with the current process is that it takes nearly one ream of paper to make just one single copy for the student/employee, and the students/employee are actually given a link to where they... more »

Currently, policy requires that Publication 1 and Notice 609 are sent with the initial contact letter and the appointment confirmation letter during an examination. If these letters were rewritten to include the highlights from the Publication 1 and Notice 609, and then add a reference to the IRS website and the publications online. This would eliminate about four pages of material in every exam, and would only require... more »

Providing each employee with a small portion of the money their agency saved will drastically change the way they spend. Sort of a bonus for not wasting, and available to all federal employees, supervisors, and office holders. Many agencies already have bonus funds. Maybe we could add 20% of their savings to the bonus pot.

Currently federal employees actually have an incentive to spend. The average federal employee’s... more »

PROBLEM: typical Construction Documents Sets (like drawings, specifications, contracs, bid packages, etc.) are very large and heavy weight in nature, consuming a lot resources and money from the agencies & customers.

SOLUTION: to establish a centralized Digital Vault, so all sets can be submitted, saved & shared in a digital manner, reducing cost of production, cost on filling, shorting access time to all their users,... more »