Save Award 2010 Ideas

I work out of my home office and the US Gowernment pays for both my broadband DSL service and also a traditional land line with long distance service.

Dropping the traditional land line and long distance service and switching to VoIP phone service for voice communications would save the govenment about $800 per year per home based employee.

With over 100K US Government employees telecommuting - the switch to VoIP... more »

Give awards to departments or bureaus with technical knowledge cohesiveness. Many times there are applications that are issued to the govt and its department that could help make work more efficient. However, the fear of new applications or refusal to learn them out of personal reasons, slows a department down. In today's global market and as technology gets better and stronger, we can not afford to not have personnel... more »

I have a very simple idea. All printers should be set to default print at 300 dpi (or even draft quality). This would save a huge amount of money spent on toner.

My idea is to stop all the printing of government manuals, reading materials and hand-outs. Purchase a wireless hand-held reading device. One example is the Amazon Kindle. Purchase one for each employee or each employee who would have otherwise received a manual, such as Air Traffic Students. The Kindles can be shared in a classroom setting or kept with the Federal Employee for continues use through out their career.... more »

The US government, my government, should look into the future, and the future is in IP connectivity. President Obama, Why don't we really take the lead and start looking into IP connectivity as the new means of communication (yes, including voice, video and data) for all goverment agencies. I wonder how much money can be saved if we get rid of the old fashioned telephone switched network or ISDN network (land lines) and... more »

technology share between Federal Departments and Agencies.

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.

Limit all non-Executive Federal personnel training and meeting travel such that 50% or more of such hours are done annually by web-cast, teleconference or other electronic means. This will massively reduce costs of travel, hotel lodging, food and other perks currently paid at Federal expense for a select few.

While there are larger, more expensive video conferencing equipment packages staged across the US, they are usually unavailable or inaccessible, especially to those employees who work in the field. My suggestion is to allow the use of web cameras and web conferencing software on individual computers in addition to the larger conference room systems. At this time, the use of web camera equipment and software is not authorized... more »

The federal government should use free and open source software (FOSS) such as the Ubuntu operating system and the OpenOffice office suite whenever these products are competitive with similar commercial software. This would result in substantial monetary savings on licensing fees for commercial software with no loss of productivity.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

http://www.openoffice.org/

There are too many job application systems dispersed throughout the government. Sometimes different agencies within the same department use different systems.

While I agree that sometimes some systems are better than others, there has to be a more standardized approach. It should be mandated that unless there is a valid reason (i.e. national security), all federal positions should be listed in USAJOBS. I've seen plenty... more »

Allow the general public to sign up for text messages when there is a disaster declaration for a state or county. Give them the option to receive FEMA news and alerts for their region, such as town meetings and disaster assistance information.

I suggest that we utilize technology to assist in daily tasks. Our jobs are becoming more complex every year with added responsibilities and a lack of added resources to match. Technology can make the existing resources more productive and at the same time decrease the environmental impact of each office. We can go to electronic files, e-signatures, tablet computers vs. notepads, etc. Many of the day to day tasks can... more »

Energy saving technology, such as photoelectric enegry, is too cost prohibitave to the average consumer. But, typically consumer electronics greatly reduce in price as the market becomes flooded. Likewise, if the goverment becomes the best customer for many such technologies, the result may be affordability for more and more consumers.
Become the forerunner in enegy saving technology by not just funding energy... more »

I suggest you teach selected people in each office basic graphic design and web 2.0 skills. The techniques and materials for these activities now are very cheap and relatively easy to learn. People trained in these skills could act as the point people for enhancing communication or increasing visibility. These tasks are often contracted at significant costs or not done at all, which is even more costly over time. In addition,it... more »