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The
White House...
2011
SAVE Award
November 11, 2011
Good
morning,
I
want to introduce you to a few
federal employees who are serving our country every day, and who are
thinking
about ways to make sure your tax dollars aren’t wasted.
Yesterday,
President Obama announced
the four finalists for the 2011 SAVE Award, an annual contest for
federal
employees to submit their ideas for cutting costs by making government
more
effective and efficient.
We
need your help to determine this
year’s winner – help us choose who gets to discuss their idea with
President
Obama.
Cast
your vote for the winner of the
SAVE Award:
This
year, nearly 20,000 ideas were
submitted from federal employees across the country.
There were a lot of great ideas, but in the
end, these four really stood out:
Matthew
Ritsko, NASA: At Goddard Space
Flight Center, NASA employees purchase specialized tools and ground
support
equipment for developing and building flight projects. Many of the
tools are
not tracked once projects are complete, and as a result funds are
wasted on
duplicative purchases. In order to cut down on repeat purchases,
Matthew
suggests creating a centralized tool repository – or “lending library”
– where
these tools can be stored, catalogued, and checked in and out by NASA
employees.
Eileen
Hearty, Department of Housing
and Urban Development: All across the country, HUD contractors and
staff
conduct annual Management and Occupancy Reviews of multifamily
properties (i.e.
apartments) that are privately-owned and subsidized by HUD. Many of
these
properties receive high marks year after year and consistently provide
excellent service. Eileen proposes a reduction in the frequency of
reviews for
high-performing properties – a change that would reward superior
properties for
their excellent work and reduce the travel costs, staff time, and fees
paid by
HUD for these reviews.
Kevin
Korzeniewski, Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency: When Kevin began working as an attorney in
the
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, he automatically received a
new set
of U.S. Code books that get updated and reordered every year. Because
the
information in these books is now available online through LexisNexis,
Westlaw,
and free sources – where it is also updated in real time – Kevin
suggests that
his agency stop automatically ordering these books.
Faith
Stanfield, Social Security
Administration: Every quarter, the Social Security Administration (SSA)
produces and mails OASIS, a 25-plus-page, glossy magazine to 88,000 SSA
employees all across the country and more than 1,000 retired SSA
employees. The
OASIS magazine has been around for decades; however, as more and more
SSA
communications shift online, Faith suggests that the magazine be
released only
in an online format to save money on printing and shipping that could
be put to
better use elsewhere.
The
SAVE Award is just one of many
ways we’re working to ensure that none of your hard-earned tax dollars
go to
waste. Yesterday, President Obama signed an Executive Order instructing
federal
agencies to reduce spending by 20 percent on things like travel, cell
phones,
laptops and other devices that can be issued to employees, printing
documents
that can be posted online, and unnecessary plaques, mugs, water
bottles, and other
frivolous swag.
For
three years now, federal employees
from across the government have submitted their ideas to help
streamline and
modernize their departments and agencies. These are the folks who know
the
system best, people who have a genuine understanding of the
nitty-gritty
details.
All
their ideas help to save taxpayers
money and make sure the government better serves the American people.
And this
is a chance to make sure that each of them is recognized for their
foresight
and creativity.
But
only one of them will get a chance
to sit down with the President and present their proposal. And it’s up
to you
to choose who that is.
Vote
on the SAVE Award today
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