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 »

Turn off lights that are not in use. This can be done manually, with sensors or by utilizing daylight. This will save money, energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Instead of contracting patients out or hiring fee basis, allow providers to earn overtime seeing clinics in off hours. The costs to pay the providers will be less then what a community provider is getting paid or their recommended treatment.

ENERGY STAR refrigerators pay for themselves and start saving money in a short period of time.

The pager system especially for physciains is an outdated system that no longer serves a purpose especially when almost all of us have cellular phones or smartphones. Eliminate the pager system and work phones and allow employees to use their own mobile phones.

Eliminate all unneeded travel. Training should be attended locally or online when available. Meetings should be held at central locations, at a relevant site or via phone.

T-12 and incandescent lamps can be replaced to initiate cost savings quickly. Any of these lamps that remain should be replaced as soon as possible. Old products should be recycled.

Install programmable thermostats to make sure that energy use reductions occur when buildings are not in use. Reducing energy used for building space conditioning can result in significant cost savings.

Building insulation greatly reduces space conditioning costs. Insulate outside walls, ceilings/roofs and other areas of building envelopes to reduce energy use and save money. Seal cracks to provide a complete insulation barrier.

Repair broken window panes to save energy and money. Broken glass, and leaking windows are very wasteful of energy from space conditioning.

Days of productivity are lost cleaning up unexpected side effects of IT software changes. This lost productivity translates in many ways to higher labor costs and delays in processing the Government’s business, which can also be translated to lost revenue. This is often due to the lack of knowledge of what an IT enterprise has running in its production environment and the dependencies between the software tools. Changes... more »

To my surprise a government employee can call in sick on Monday, work a double on Tuesday and collect overtime for that shift even though his total number of actual work hours is only 40. I know that this will be met with great resistance, but the amount of money and time used astonishes me. At the same time to cover that sick shift someone else will get overtime?
It should be made policy that overtime will NOT be paid... more »

INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNTABILITY IS THE KEY TO REIGNING IN COSTS
Want to increase accountability and simplify things at the same time? Give every employee their own credit card with a yearly limit for travel and office purchases.

Sound crazy? Individual accountability is the key to reigning in costs. Reward those employees that spend the least. If they want to go over their personal limit the office director has to take... more »

Energy Audits are complete for a large number of federal facilities. These energy audits produced numerous recommendations that can produce savings at a rapid rate. Some of these measures will pay for themselves in less than a year and begin saving money after that point and far into the future.

All measures with a payback of less than five years should be implemented immediately. These energy savings measures will reduce... more »

Combine all the federal agencies data under one roof. Build a data powerhouse a state-of-the-art facility that provides secure data processing services to federal agencies. The data powerhouse manages mainframe and server operations, monitors the wide area network and provides key service desk, technical support and disaster recovery services for many of the federal governments mission-critical applications.
The Federal... more »