SAVE Award 2011 Environmental Protection Agency

Scientific Integrity includes, but is not limited to, people engaged in the combination of transparency in the preparation, identification, use of scientific information in policymaking, and strict adherence to: policies; peer-review guidelines; procedures; ethics; and the concept of continuous improvement resulting from scientific assessments; audits; and evaluations. Since 2004, the US EPA has been using contractors... more »

Prohibit international travel or programs that support other countries. We have enough to do in our own country.

Integrate leave slip (webforms) with time keeping (People Plust). Automate systems so you don't need an administrative person to print and verify. Integrate travel comp time into People Plus to avoid separate system. Replace GovTrip with a more modern system that is quicker and intuitive and doesn't generate so many error messages. Integrate telecommute annual recertification with performance review to cut down on... more »

Simple mechanical 7-day timers can be installed on each printer/copier to turn the machines off at 7 pm, on at 7am, and off on the weekends. These devices are available for about $5 (or less) each retail, and are simple to program and install. Even though printer/copiers technically have "sleep" modes, they still use power in those modes, and the mode has to be properly set -- I have found the machines still at full... more »

My office sends out many business letters to vendors who have incorrectly submitted invoices for payment. Some of these invoices are received by mail, but many are received electronically. Instead of mailing these return letters, I feel we should email them to all vendors and companies. This would save money not only on postage, but it would also reduce paper and toner cartridge usage, which would benefit our environment.... more »

Federal agencies should evaluate a potential grant recipient's past performance on any previous or existing Federal grant awards and on how they are leveraging their grant request with another Federal grant award. To obtain this information, I recommend that all potential grant recipients include a list of any previous or existing Federal grants on the Application for Federal Assistance SF-424. This question could... more »

Many federal employees may not be knowledgeable about most of the public transit available in the areas where they live and work. This could include employees that commute to work using public transit, but they may only be familar with the transit lines they are using. Federal employees learning more about public transit services in their town, city, metro area may lessen the need or derire to use a government car on... more »

In my regional office each Division is assigned an available server to store shared documents. Servers or some sort of electronic storage space needs to be available to all employees, across Divisions within the region, and across the entire agency. This would prevent the need to send E-mails, particularly E-mails containing large file attachments. E-mails require servers to store a record of the message AND the attachment.... more »

Streamline records management requirements so that only signficant documens are retained in hard copy. Currently, we are required to label EVERYTHING even 'non record' records (waste of time, labels, and storage), rather than making a clear distinction about what is important and what is not. In addition, many files can be retained in a well managed electronic record system - currently we are required to print and retain... more »

A number of facilities that are regulated that must comply with environmental rules and regulations, ( think RCRA, CAA, CWA) are issued permits. Within these permits are operational requirements. In today's day and age of electronic reporting, the EPA’s desire to increase public awareness about the environment, and the EPA’s decreasing budget being afforded to compliance and enforcement programs, let's begin requiring... more »

Establish Regional conferencing and Televideo centers for use by federal agencies. When a national meeting is organized, participants can travel to a nearby locaton that is connected to other televidio centers. This would combine the benefits of meeting face-to-face with a subset of participants while reducing travel costs as well as the cost of renting conference facilities. The centers coud have a set-up that also... more »

All agencies can benefit from secure document collaboration spaces, similar to Google Docs. The collaboration space could be made more secure for classified or sensitive documents. This would save server space required for E-mails, as people would no longer have to E-mail large files to eachother. The cost for purchasing, housing and maintaining servers would significantly decrease. This would also prevent printing of... more »

Toilet seat covers are ineffective at their job at best. They are wasteful in terms of resources and money at worst. People often use more than one at a time, and toilets must be flushed more than once to dispose of them - adding to water and energy usage.

If air travel arrangements could be arranged for government travelers without making air reservations through a negotiated contractor, and dealing directly with the airlines involved, I think a lot of money could be saved. The negotiated contractor charges the federal agency more money when changes have to be made in case the traveler can't travel at the last minute. Rather than paying a change fee to the contractor,... more »

In R6 we burn 1000's of overhead lights on 8 floors that are totally unneeded because we have excellent lighting in the cubes under the overhead storage bins. This same situation probably exists in other Regions, HQ, & other agencies. Eliminating the use of all of this unneeded lighting would result in a very large saving in electricity & the money it costs, & result in a large saving of energy. A by-product of eliminating... more »