SAVE Award 2011 Ideas

The government is supposed to be paper free yet we spending alot of money every on paper, printing paper and recycling paper. If the government is paper free why is there so much paper? There is no need for paper anymore with scanning and print to PDF technology.

There are many good ideas to save money by altering usage of postage, office supplies, paper, etc. I propose two different and specific avenues to save money, at least within FSIS.
First, there should be a revamping of the FSIS Field Supply Center so that quantities for all products are listed on the website. In this way, if a person orders 10 reams of paper, 10 cases of paper reams are not sent or one dozen gloves... more »

Double sided printing and copying can save 50% of paper used for informal printing. By instructing employees to use doubled sided printing and copying or changing the default status of printers and copiers to double sided, a huge amount of paper can be saved! Files will also, as a result, become smaller and will save space in file cabinets.

For court proceedings we are CONSTANTLY printing 145 page Mexico packets to submit to the court. We also do this for other country packets that are even larger! My propsal is to digitize country profiles and reports and have a set copy already at the courts. We go through boxes and boxes of paper at our office and i'm positive that we would be able to reduce paper costs dramatically if the courts had a disk with country... more »

Eliminate Newspapers Delivery to Federal Offices Each morning all throughout the federal government, offices are receiving thousands of copies of multiple newspapers and magazines. The vast majority of these subscriptions can be eliminated; only the agency public affairs office might possibly require these publications. These public affairs offices in many case already employ the best practice of compiling relevant... more »

Many people pick up paper government calendars from the supply room out of habit, even though the government has already purchased them a computer with a sophisticated calendar application (often Outlook). If employees really insist on having a paper calendar, they can buy their own; the government doesn't need to supply you with both an electronic and paper calendar.

You can reduce the amount of printers that are used throughout the Federal Government. I see people complain because they have to walk 10ft to get a printed document. Some will use the excuse that nobody can see what I am printing. To resolve that would be to purchase larger copiers that require codes to be used for each employee to print. This will reduce the TCO and should see an immediate ROI. It will reduce paper... more »

As stated in USAID 2012 propsal, DHS/CBP and all government agences should consider following their lead and implement the following: Reduction of office supply costs by incorporating limitation on printing and copying, in part by: 1) requiring duplex as the default setting on all network printers; 2) consolidating printers by reducing the number of local printers in favor of network printers; 3) standardizing the printer/copier... more »

With move to paperless offices, it is astounding how many people print and then scan hard copies back to make them into e-documents. Users are often not aware that they can "print to PDF" format direct from their desktops, and have the "scanned" document immediately available.

What a waste of time and paper, not to mention additional hardware support and maintenance to the required scanners and printers.

Save paper... 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 »

Government contract files currently consume vast amounts of paper! There is no reason contract files are not almost exclusively electronic. A good first step would be to require all documents, including emails saved as PDF, be managed on the computer until contract award. At that time, the contract itself is the only document printed with original signatures; all other documents can be burned to CD/DVD and included... more »

Eliminate requirements for hardcopy presentations and travel authorizations when electronics versions can be distributed. Also eliminate the numerous hardcopy fliers that are distributed, esp. to those employees that have access to online versions. As an example, for an installation of 10K employees, conservatively assuming an average of 3 fliers per week would mean a savings in paper of over $10K per year. Besides toner,... more »

I can think of more than a few ways we could reduce paper in our work environment with regard to FOIA. I believe I would make one or two copies instead of making four copies of the FOIA responses or as you said, "send it via email" to the appropriate parties. However, I notice when I view edits it makes more sense to see it when it's tangible when you can sit and discuss your changes and edits.

The wonderful part... more »

We all tend to use a lot of paper, which costs money and clogs up the environment - and much of it is completely unnecessary. Most of us use databases every day, which can be used to house the documents we need without printing, yet many of us insist on printing anyway. The National Archives has put forth the requirements of record keeping (see "Agency Recordkeeping Requirements"), which tell us only that we must keep... more »

Provide all federal employees that complete significant amounts of computer based research and writing with a dual monitor work station. I do most of my research and writing on my computer, but given the lack of screen real estate, end up printing my research materials so I can reference them quickly and easily while I draft documents. A dual monitor set up would allow me to leave research tasks on one screen, with... more »