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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:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/save-award
Sincerely,
David Plouffe
Senior Advisor to the President
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