SAVE Award 2011 Ideas

Though GSA negotiates rates for airlines, hotels and car rentals, Federal agencies pay outrageous amounts to a variety of travel managers, such as SATO and Omega World Travel to merely book these accomodations and to be available in case of an emergency. Instead, the Government should create its own central travel agency, operated as a revolving fund, which books travel for all agencies at cost. To save costs further,... more »

Insist that supervisors be individuals who have a minimum of 5-6 individuals reporting directly to them. Reduce the number of supervisors where this span of control isn't achievable and save money by having fewer and less feather bedding. My new supervisor is implementing an arrangement where he has only 3 people reporting directly to him --- this pushes staff further away from him and dilutes the direct first level employee... more »

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 »

3000 political appointees means 3000 career federal employees without a chance at promotion or even doing their job. Slash the number to three per agency.

In looking at all the entries in many cases there seems to be repeats and what appears to be alot of great suggestions on how the government could save overall. I would suggest that the agencies, departments and organizations listed on this website review the top 25 to 50 suggestions from their own departments. There can be an overall Save Award winner, but I think if we (the government) want to get serious about... more »

This will help streamline and buffer changes that incoming Commanding Officers require. Some changes that new officers want to make not only result in significant changes, but also cost a lot of money and do not improve the mission. Having a second in command civilian can help buffer this.

At my agency, managers scoff at Presidential Executive Orders and ignore them. Nobody enforces them. What's the point of issuing them then? Every Agency should have a COO who is responsible for managers toeing the line on the President's initiatives.

Federal managers suffer no consequences for being bad managers. The number of grievances and EEO suits filed is a red alert that something's going wrong in the office. These should be part of a manager's record, and a grievance/suit lost or settled by the agency should automatically result in a suspension of management duties.

If you don't manage at least 8 people then you should not be a manager. I report to my boss who directly supervises 4 people. Her boss directly supervises 3 people. This goes up the chain about 7 levels (each supervising 3-6 people on average). This makes getting higher level approvals very time consuming and flow of information poor. It also provides too much justification for abundant meetings for "managers" at... more »

A significant reduction in government salaries can result in substantial cost savings. Ask employees if they would like to volunteer for a reduction in hours.

This is a win-win situation for employers and employees. I would want to work for an employer that offered this opportunity. Of course the employer and employee would have to consent to the time off and it would be dependent upon the workload.

I have worked... more »

In the Corps of Engineers, we are required to operate based on our business processes as published in the Project Management Business Plan. However, there is a missing step between the "process" and the work. This step is called a "practice." If we can standardize how these practices are documented, we can train new employees faster. USACE is a relatively high-turnover organization. Our productivity dips with every rotation... more »

Within HHS-ACF, we have been able to reduce the amount of time we have spent with admin duties regarding the on/off boarding of employees, manage user accounts & contact information and reduce the amount of paperwork we deal with by 100% with the use of the ACF Contact List System (CLS).
Not only have we been able to reduce the time spent on administrative functions & paperwork but we have been able to control costs by... more »

Adopt and Create a lead/manage up as well as down mentality/philosophy. Leadership and Management is everyones responsibility. No matter our position, title or level. The most effective and efficient companys and orgs realize this and champion this on a daily basis.

 

This coupled with a sense of ownership and pride will help you development unstoppable and successful teams.

To improve the civil service over all departments and agencies, guarantee competence.

GS-15's get to a salary ranking at the 98%ile on the distribution of compensation published by the SSA Actuary (http://mwww.ba.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2009). Just add one sentence to Title 5, the Civil Service statutes:
"As of 1 year from date of enactment, no person shall be appointed to, NOR REMAIN encumbering any management... more »

In private industry, if your team, branch, division, etc. is not making money or otherwise performing poorly or not contributing to the organization, the issue likely shows up rather quickly in the form of profit loss, decreased product quality, or increased customer complaints. Corrective action is usually implemented in likewise fashion, rather quickly. The main point is that private industry uses profit and loss... more »