Save Award 2010 Department of Health and Human Services

Before FDA White Oak’s Green Team intervention, GSA had a campus-wide policy at FDA’s White Oak campus in Silver Spring, Maryland in which GSA sub-contractors were required to instruct custodial staff servicing the White Oak campus restrooms to remove and place in the trash half rolls of toilet paper and replace with full rolls. Once this practice was identified by a White Oak Green Team member, other Green Team members... more »

Lodging Per Diem Policy Change (easy to implement, immediate savings) - allow employees to file lodging claims at a significantly reduced rates (say 20-30% of lodging allowance) without receipts to encourage them to stay with family or friends instead of hotels where feasible.

Simplifies processing of travel claims (saving labor time scanning receipts, time spent on audits of receipts) and cuts down on the total cost... more »

Get rid of Use or Lose Budgets. So much money is wasted by organizations, buying up anything and everything, so they can use their budget money out of fear of losing it the following fiscal.
Instead, have a streamlined approach to funding where projects are funded by authorization instead of use or lose budgets.
Example: NCI buys new furniture every year because it's in their huge budget. However, NIDCD can't afford to... more »

Instead of allowing Managers to hold back telecommuting (and they are) it needs to be expanded. New language needs to come down from the department level saying to use it as much as possible and enforce it. The President and previous President has signed off on this as has Congress but it's not getting down to the worker bees.

If your position is the type where a large percentage is done on the computer or phone... more »

I suggest offering Health and/or Physical Fitness incentives to all goverment employees. By offering a cash or time off incentive for employees for taking better care of their health, the government could save on insurance claims, sick days, not to mention work productivity, etc. This idea could work with the HealthierFeds program. A criteria would have to be set up to determine what would constitute recieving the... more »

The fiscal year cycles have become inherently wasteful, and as a result very frustrating. The annual scenario: we start the fiscal year in October on a CR, too worried about unknown budgets to buy even essentials until after Christmas (which, of course, greatly affects productivity); local departmental budgets aren't known until at least January if not March, and when budgets are at last finalized, frantic calculating... more »

I suggest that we should implement a 4 day work week. With only working 4 days it would cut down on commuting, reducing pollution, provide more free time for personal enjoyment, a longer work day will increase productivity, easer parking two times a week, less traffic on the roads reducing road damage, less wear on personal vehicles and government owned vehicles, and so many more not listed.
Thank you for reading my... more »

Cost Saving

I suggest you start hiring government staff instead of using contractors in the Animal Sciences field. The government is spending too much money in this area. The contractor wages being paid with fringe benefits are greater than current government salaries across the board. There is so much turnover with contractors that it could affect the research. Government employees would take more pride in their... more »

Reduce physical travel by 25% through use of Virtual Meetings (e.g., WebEx/LiveMeeting).

This reduces cost and environmental impact. Reducing hours/days spent traveling increases productivity.

Agencies should target specific C/I/Os and divisions with goals for reducing travel and replacing with virtual / telepresence meetings. This includes conferences, training, seminars.

Savings should be measures by travel hours... more »

There should be mandated random drug testing before welfare recipients receive any Government assistance/checks.

Tap water is just as healthy as bottled water and, in fact, is more strictly regulated. There is no need to waste money on buying bottled water. San Francisco has banned bottled water and it is estimated that it will save $500,000. Buying bottled water also destroys our environment. 38 billion PET bottles are not recycled annually. If everyone were to bring their own cup (BYOC) to work, government dollars would never... more »

I am a new employee, so I may be wrong, but it seems like alot of resources (time, paper. etc) are wasted routing a document to as many as 20 people to sign, then copying and sending a copy to each person to keep. Wouldn't it be far more efficient to have e-signatures, perhaps like the ones used at the store when you make credit card purchases, and a central electronic location for document storage and retrieval. A "signature... more »

Offer all federal employees the opportunity to telework/telecommute. Even though some federal agencies are offering this to there employees there are still many agencies that frown on telework for whatever reason. I think if it became mandatory that all agencies offered this opportunity to their employees this would be a huge savings to the federal government. If all employees were permitted to work from home 3 days... more »

Just as President Obama is using web-based “crowdsourcing” (a cornerstone of Web 2.0) to get ideas for his Save Award, Federal offices could use web-based crowdsourcing to share their temporary excess workload with other Federal offices that have temporary excess human capital. For example, an authorized employee with a backlog of audio files that need to be transcribed could post a request for assistance on a secure... more »

Here at the CDC we have recently acquired a Styrocycler that compresses expanded polystyrene foam (EPS) packaging (commonly known as Styrofoam™) into blocks that are 2% of the size of its previous volume. The blocks are then recycled by a vendor to create new EPS products, resulting in a closed loop material cycle. It’s great because it keeps all the Styrofoam out of our dumpsters and landfills. It saves plenty of money... more »