Save Award 2010 Ideas

Agencies should begin to orient all IT spending toward consolidated sysetms which are better secured and better managed, and which provide logical access to data and systems from a variety of end-point computers. Being able only to access data from your desktop is untenable and does not allow for telework, nighttime or emergency access. Having to carry a laptop back and forth is risky and very difficult and costly to... more »

Junk Email. I recieve more junk email from the government than from outside the government (vendors, etc.). There need to be guidelines and monitoring that prevent this. Countless man-hours are wasted just deleting senseless emails that either do not apply to me and are sent globally because someone is too lazy to think through who should be getting the email or because administrators are spreading the word about the... more »

At FDA, we still accept paper submissions which require huge paper storage, scanning, and snail-mail acknowledgment systems and a large number of personnel. Electronic submissions are available but the digital signatures that are required to allow one computer to "talk" to another securely are a major deterrent for adoption.

My idea is to use web technology SSL (secure socket layer) to allow firms to send submission... more »

Most Agencies have Blackberry email services for Management, Executive, or those deemed necessary based on role criticality. However many employees would benefit and be more productive if they had mobile access to their corporate email. Many employees have, at their own expense, smart phones with unlimited data plans i.e. iPhones and others and would like to be able to access their work email. The idea is to provide a... more »

Email has got to be my biggest waste of time each day. The distraction of a constant flow of emails renders many unable to stay adequately focused on their tasks at hand.

First off, in the FAA, get rid of the Lotus Notes application... it is an over bloated, slow, non-user friendly app that most of industry has long ago discarded. Find a better email application (or other similar workflow application) that integrates... more »

create a process that minimizes the sending of mass inter-governemental emails.

not only do mass emails generate a lot of time waste by people reading them (when they are unimportant), but they also generate traffic on the network, and require storage on email servers.

considering the volume of these emails, and the fact that all government emails have to be kept for a certain amount of time, the actual cost is high.... more »

Convert all government departments and agencies to
Google Apps. This would save the government
*millions* in hardware, software and maintenance costs
while providing increases in efficiency, productivity,
and innovation.


Google Apps (Premier Edition for Govenment) consists of Google
email (gmail), Google Docs (Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation),
Google Calendar, Google Sites (web pages, intranet) and Video... more »

Get rid of LotusNotes. It is difficult to use, not standardized with macros, web, calendar, directories, etc. Select something more web compatible, current, standard.......

I suggest that all Taxpayers should have an IRS.gov eAccount. Taxpayers will be able to see a history of letters sent to them by the IRS, and refund information. Also the Taxpayers will be able to change their postal address and submit payments with their credit cards or bank accounts. This is a Facebook/Twitter/eMail generation. The IRS will saved milions of dolars in postage by giving acces to current and previous letters... more »

Switch all email and Microsoft Office application to software provided by Google. Gmail and Google Docs allow for secure online storage of email and documents. Also, documents could be available anywhere and easily shared between employees. Calendars would also sync with documents and emails receieved.

We current use Lotus Notes for our email system. Wouldn't it be cheaper to use something like Yahoo Mail or Google Mail. I currently use Yahoo mail for free and it works better than Lotus Notes.

Create one web-based email and calendar service that is manditory for all Federal agencies that send and receive unclassified email (similar to gmail, hotmail, yahoo, etc.). This would allow Federal Government Employees to access their email and calendars through any Internet browser, as well as apps for a variety of smart phone operating systems. This would allow agencies to get rid of their own email servers and would... more »

This idea will save money and increase productivity for the entire federal government and it is a really easy solution.

Email with vanity images imbedded in them (logos, photos, etc) take up a great deal of space on servers and in bandwidth when sending them because they are so common.

Disallowing the use of images and html format emails for all federal employees would save millions of dollars on storage space and... more »

Most of federal employees lose 10 to 20 minutes daily deleting broadcast emails that are neither mission essential nor relevant to our position or duties. Navy has had a longstanding practice of requireing subject lines in broadcast messages to begin with a keyword such as URGENT, INFO, ACTION, ROUTINE to speed communication. Requiring keywords on all federal broadcast/list serve emails would enable using Outlook Rules... more »

Give veterans the option of receiving email, phone or text reminders in place of our current appointment reminder and "it's time for your follow up, call us to schedule" notifications. At Cleveland alone, we send out well over 400,000 letters to NE Ohio each year. At 41 cents a letter, that adds up. A combination of RECALL, AudioCare, HealthEVet, and the email/cell phone data we are collecting should make this a possibility.... more »