SAVE Award 2011 Ideas

Based on the success of the President's SAVE Award, this approach should be replicated within Departments, such as at the Department of Energy, as a way for employees to suggest institutional innovation and to vote on one another's ideas. This could include ideas to save money, promote Department efficiency and effectiveness, enhance transparency, and promote broader engagement with the American people.

One great way... more »

The government lacks a global employee directory. More importantly, without one we struggle to find peers with certain experience or expertise for peer review or committee work, which an optional Facebook-like site accessible just to Feds might resolve. Initial content could come from Fed resumes on USAjobs.gov marked "searchable." This would not only save much time but would help break stove pipes.

Instead of spending massive amounts of money for high end teleconference systems the govt should use webcams when possible. For example my workplace pays for thousands of Tandberg licenses and very expensive VTC equipment instead of allowing us to use a 10 dollar webcam. We already have social network programs installed on the network which allows for webcam collaboration.

How many times have you wanted to find the optimal meeting room, only to find out later that there was a room available on another floor or in another building that you didn't even know about!

That no longer has to be a problem. With a simple project and agreement amongst offices, Outlook can be used to share resources amongst all offices, units, etc.

No longer will we waste dollars with empty meeting rooms being unused... more »

Create a website like this one where agencies can post available training that should permit any Federal employee to attend and/or access. Several Cybersecurity trainings are very expensive, yet different agencies provide the same training and bear individual costs of training. For example Houston, TX has several Federal Agencies and at least two Federal Buildings downtown. If agency heads would determine common areas... more »

Eliminate the costs each agency spends to run internet web sites. Create a single federal “Internet Service Provider” where all agencies have accounts at this one location. This would greatly reduced costs compared to now where each agency individually buys the same equipment, software and services. As another advantage, agency developed applications are available to all agencies as shared add-ons.

Currently each Federal... more »

There are not many government wide video conferencing systems. One is the Tandberg VTC system. The equipment is overpriced, proprietary, and so are the licences. Literally thousands of dollars per unit.

Another services is Defense Connect Online (DCO) which utilitzed web-based adobe connect on the backend. This excellent service is already available to government organizations on multiple networks with NO cost to participants.... more »

Many of us spend hours a day moving paper from one office to another through the clearing process in order to build consensus and input on policy issues. Oten times we are working across agencies and across time-zones with our counterparts across the U.S. and/or at different U.S. embassies around the world.

I propose that agencies engaged in the writing clearance process have a collaborative software developed (similar... more »

Set up workgroups, such as SharePoint groups, where managers from all VHA facilities, can jointly work on policies and procedures.

This will decrease managers' time spent developing policies and procedures, and increase their productivity.

When VHA endoscopy units were mandated to develop endoscope cleaning and disinfection SOPs, each endoscopy Unit manager and SPD Chief developed SOPs. This was a huge duplication of... more »

So often I see colleagues take trips to only be on site for a single day, if not a few hours, and only be traveling there for a single purpose. These flights can be several thousand dollars and it seems like a waste of precious dollars if they are only on the ground for a short period of time. I would like to see a percentage of each division's trips be required to be less narrow minded. This means, a federal employee... more »

There are 3 main benefits from boosting collaboration and increasing transparency within a governmental organization such as NOAA including increase public trust, reduced costs on training new lab members and/or students, and increased 'talk' between labs thus pushing the science forward.

With rising costs of more complicated experiments, increasing scientific collaboration is one of the hottest issues today. There... more »

Here is my idea. The Learning and Training Community in the Federal Government is composed of all, or mostly all, Federal agencies. Each Federal agency provides and delivers the required supervisory training, leadership training, and technical training courses. However, each agency purchases many of these commonly delivered courses separately. The interagency Chief Learning Officer Council has started a trend to share... more »

Agencies have individually assembled tools to manage their acquisition processes, but have based these processes on one set of acquisition rules including the FAR and reporting requirements like those for FPDS. The government should offer a one-stop system that assists with all phases of acquisition, contract management, and disposal of excess property. Acquisition personnel could avoid recreating specifications through... more »

Agencies declare their intentions to introduce or revise programs in the Federal Register. Yet they do not have to publish drawings and specifications for construction or fabrication of real and personal property. This often causes problems because agencies rarely involve the public unless required by local authorities, putting off feedback from a concerned public only after execution, when the construction or fabrication... more »

DOE lacks a document management system that would facilitate collaboration and approval routings across the entire Department. Such a system would save much time expended individually routing documents and soliciting feedback. The right system could replace RevCom, the antiquated directives review system. This would hasten reviews and responses to comments.