White House kicks off second cost-cutting contest

Thursday marks the beginning of the White House's second annual contest encouraging federal employees to present their ideas for curbing unnecessary government spending.

Like last year, the winner of the Securing Americans Value and Efficiency award will earn a meeting with President Obama, and his or her proposal will be put into practice. This year's contest, however, will involve greater participation from federal employees.

"Building upon the success of the first SAVE award contest, this year we are asking federal employees to rate the submissions," Jean Weinberg, an Office of Management and Budget spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. "This new feature will allow employees to apply their insight to the evaluation process."

In its inaugural year, SAVE -- developed in response to President Obama's call for a forum in which "every government worker can submit their ideas for how their agency can save money and perform better" -- spurred more than 38,000 cost-cutting proposals in just three weeks. Office of Management and Budget officials narrowed the pool of ideas to four, and Americans voted a proposal from Nancy Fichtner of Loma, Colo., the 2009 SAVE Award winner. OMB estimates that Fichtner's idea of letting veterans take home medications that otherwise would be thrown away after their release from the hospital will save $14.5 million through 2014.

Fichtner's suggestion is not the only 2009 proposal to be implemented. The Homeland Security Department will save $4 million annually by making the default payroll setting electronic rather than paper. OMB is analyzing other SAVE proposals from last year and will announce other initiatives to be implemented shortly.

"These ideas are proof that it pays to take a hard look at the way we do business here in Washington," President Obama said on Thursday. "And it also goes to show that the best ideas often come from the folks on the ground -- the men and women who make our federal government run every day."

Past programs similar to the SAVE awards include Vice President Al Gore's Hammer Awards, which honored teams of federal employees for innovation in government. John Kamensky, senior fellow at the IBM Center for the Business of Government and former deputy director of Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government, said, "Both programs turn to federal employees to look for ideas that will save money and reinvent government."

Federal employees are asked to submit their proposals at SaveAward.gov by July 22.