SAVE Award Idea Turned Away
Three months ago, I submitted an idea to the Obama Administration’s SAVE Award program at the request of the Office of Management and Budget. Per the OMB SAVE Award page:
The President’s SAVE Award enables Federal employees from across government to submit their ideas for efficiencies and savings as part of the annual Budget process. The SAVE Award is part of the President’s commitment to a line-by-line review of the Federal budget.
It’s never a bad idea to get input from insiders on how to cut out the red tape from their jobs and save a few taxpayer dollars. My idea went well beyond that:
End the long used practice of not awarding units in the DoD their requested budget appropriations unless they completely exhaust the previous FY budget allocations. Savings from units that meet/exceed IG standards will be awarded a percentage of those savings in the following FY budget. Units/projects that don’t save or overspend will be required to reduce their budgets by a very small percentage if they are meeting IG inspectable standards. Units that fail to pass IG inspections will be given an increase in funding if needed. This could potentially reduce the department’s budget by billions annually while still maintaining our strong national security.
While this might be insanely complex to administer I am hoping it spun off a few actionable ideas on how to change the culture of ever increasing DoD budgets. I’d like your opinion on this idea and some input on how to clean up the language for submission for fiscal year 2011’s SAVE Award program.
