SAVE Award 2011 Ideas

Practically everyone working in the government has both a desktop phone and a high-speed internet connection. It would be cheaper and more efficient if all phones used the internet with a VOIP device. The retrofit for this would be simple and inexpensive, and all conventional phone line costs and maintenance would be eliminated. As a bonus, calls could be encrypted, making every telephone a virtual secure phone, and... more »

Synchronize Gov-Trip and ITAS so that it is easier to request, approve and document travel compensation time, rather than having to complete and route hard copy forms to various offices.

Limit web sites that federal employees are allowed to visit. I can’t fathom the number of hours/dollars/productivity lost by allowing government employees to “surf” the web during working hours. Suggestion: Require supervisory approval to browse non-government web pages.

Reimburse teleworking employees for internet service. This will not only encourage more teleworking, but also encourage those employees who have to pay extra for high-speed service to do so, in order to save time in sending/receiving internet correspondence. For example, a document that one rural employee recently had to upload remotely to the workplace server took over an hour; with higher speed internet, this would... more »

Thousands of dollars are spent each year to print and bind hard copies of NEPA documents. Move to burning electronic CDs copies for distribution and limit hard copies to those copied out by Xeroxing and spiral bind rather than using glue binding to save money. Only copy out the minimum number needed to satisfy requests. Post the document on the internet for people to print out themselves or to read it electronically... more »

Across the government, millions of productivity hours are lost each year by using Internet Explorer. Switch to a better browser such as Chrome or Firefox to eliminate these losses.

1. Eliminate superfluous manpower.
A. Review internet history of all employees. Those with more than one-hour of personal website use per day are expendable and should be reviewed for dismissal. Military should be reassigned to an operational unit.
B. Review frequent traveler miles/points accrued during business travel. Those with trends on a specific airline or hotel chain (particularly luxury chains)... more »

Require Binder and Binder to file their appeals and initial claims on-line rather than using paper forms.

My idea is for government departments and agencies to promote the use of GoodSearch.com in lieu of Google or Bing as their default internet search engine. For example, if there are 50,000 employees at an Air Force Base, this would generate an estimated $365,000 per year (assuming a minimum of 3 web searches per day.) Additionally, whatever purchases a government agency needs to make (i.e. specialized software, books,... more »

If we had much faster internet and server access, we would be able to get more work done in the same amount of time. Our level of productivity heavily depends on how fast we can access data, but our download speed is only around 20 kilobytes per second, which is like 30 to 50 times slower than an average cable internet access speed. We waste so much time waiting for documents and other data to load. I would rather... more »

Currently CPUs are used to log on to the VA network in the hospital medical center. These machines are outdated and have performance issues limiting productivity. The bulk of functioning already occurs at a server level which results in server lag time and delay compounded by limits of the CPU processor the user is working from. By removing this CPU from the data usage network and logging in to the server from a monitor... more »

SSA deals with many overpayments due to beneficiaries not reporting when they work over SGA. Often these beneficiaries claim that they did not know it was his or her responsibility to report their earnings. They assume that SSA automatically knew about their work or that it was the employer’s job to report.
Technology can help avoid these overpayments. Most states now have laws that require the use of the E-verify program.... more »

Social Security is pushing the employees to advocate the use of iClaims. This service can be very effective if some changes are made. Currently, a claimant can submit a disability iClaim without any of the supporting forms (3368 - Disability Report), and the claims representative still has to either send out the long disability report through the mail, which we are paying to print as well as mail, and oftentimes we... more »

I propose that the Gov't either gets completely out of the unclas cell phone/laptop/desktop business; or they get completely into the business.

This may sound contradictory, but please read on.

Conservatively, 95% of government employees have a personal cell phone and a personal laptop and/or desktop computer. Similarly, this same population has a monthly bill for cell phone and internet service.

Many U.S. gov't... more »

When Someone currently fills out the Disability Application online or the Disability Report, rarely do they file and submit the same day. If the website did not give them the option to do one or the other but made it into one application this would reduce phone calls, letters, along with wasted time and resources. Not only that many attorneys will only submit the Application and will mail or fax the Adult disabilty report... more »