Save Award 2010 Ideas

Require mandatory work from home days during inclement weather days (for a portion or all of the work force in the affected area) as a means of testing COOP plans and reducing waste.

Install noise masking or white/pink noise software over the speaker system. The majority of staff offices are cubes. Presently, it is not uncommon for staff to hear every conversation and phone call up to 7 cubes away. This is extremely disruptive to the workday. Noise masking software would reduce those distractions significantly. There are suggestions for people to adhere to cube courtesy, wear earplugs or earphones,... more »

My Idea is to cut down login loading time for employees. Every morning, my computer spends 10 to 15 minutes logging in to the only computer server in Virginia (For IRS). I suspect this is also happening to all the other departments within the US government. If we can improve the login time for all the government employees, each minute we save will have a huge impact on productivity. That will translate into large saving.... more »

Block the IP address on government owned computers/networks for Facebook (and similar), Youtube (and similar), and Hulu (and similar). Quite a bit of on-the-clock time is wasted on these sites.

I suggest you...Hold training classes in 3 parts of the country, (each coast and midwest) and geographically schedule participants where closest. Will increase productivity and decrease travel costs.

I propose we form focus groups within each District and Field Office to analyze work flow, identify and reduce or eliminate unneccessary paperwork to streamline operations, improve productivity and reduce backlog.

Recommendation: Automate New Employee (payroll forms processing i.e. Direct Deposit and State/Federal tax withholding certificates) during new employee orientation sessions.


The objectives to be met as an outcome of the recommendations included in this proposal:

1. Reduce time and labor required for payroll processing of new hire paperwork (direct deposit and state/federal tax withholding certificates), improve accuracy,... more »

Doing business with inter-office IT groups like security, telecommunications, operations, etc. should be similar to working with outside customers/vendors. Work tickets/contracts should be completed within a timely manner and communication should be performed to let the customer know the status. Currently, we waste valuable time ($) waiting on other work groups to finish tasks because there is nothing pusing them to... more »

Implement 360-degree feedback for employee reviews. The success of an employee should not only be judged by those above, but should also include those who work closest with the employee, including and especially direct reports for managers/supervisors. A managers effectiveness cannot only be judged by those above, and are likely better judged by those he/she manages. Likewise it is also more effective to go outside of... more »

I suggest you... the creation of an collective force (*KMN: Knowlege Management Network) with all employees, to deal with improvements of processes designed by adding value while transforming inputs into useful outputs (material, labor, energy, and capital equipment) in the public operations. At present, the knowledge of the process analysis discipline has been reserved for few engineers, MBAs, and senior levels, underestimating... more »

Make sure the government is delivering the right training to its employees by standardizing training and development processes and procedures:

1) Ensure that Instructional Designers and Performance Analysts are avaliable to conduct front-end analysis (i.e., ensure you are training what you need and not what you think you want).
2) Empower Performance Analysts to support workers after training by identifying needed solutions... more »

Slim down the meeting schedule.

There is no good reason in the 21st century to have standing meetings. Meetings, when they are convened to discuss a specific topic, and have the right people participating to apply a solution, are a mainstay of productivity. A standing meeting, by contrast, is one which convenes on a pre-scheduled basis, requires participation by a wide group of loosely involved individuals, and most... more »

Minimize meeting attendees.

Very few people attending design reviews actually need to participate; keeping the attendance list to an absolute minimum saves on travel costs, but more importantly, saves on excessive labor charges. By eliminating outside review organizations (ARINC, Aerospace, etc.) and requiring review panel officials to do their own work reviewing the material at hand will cut down greatly on excessive... more »

I don't know if this applies to all agencies, but I think the Interior Department needs to use technology more efficiently by automating tasks such as correspondence routing, form submission, event/meeting planning and routine hr tasks. We can utilize encrypted digital signatures to route review, and approve a variety of different documents such as memos, letters, forms - even controlled correspondence. We are using... more »

No one "owns" the acquisition process from end-to-end, which allows inefficiencies to proliferate over time. A process design team, supported by acquisition personnel who understand (1) FAR requirements, (2) DOLAR requirements, and (3) OPS Bulletin requirements, should tackle this issue. Such a team could conduct a complete end-to-end evaluation of the current state, do a gap analysis to identify any missing requirements... more »