Federal Agencies: Cost Reduction + Sustainability

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By Subraya Mallya | Topics - Going Green

Tags | cost savings, Energy Efficiency, Recycling, reducing waste, Sustainability, teleconference

In response to President’s call to identify atleast $100Million in cost savings in unnecessary expenditure from their administrative budgets the government agencies have come up with a list of 77 cost savings measures.

You can find the document that enumerates the list of savings opportunities in this document published on the The Office of Management and Budgets (OMB) web site.

Going through the list will surely create many a “doh” moment and also makes you wonder how those agencies functioned and alarmed that it needed the President of the Country to come out and ask them to be smart.

Here are some nuggets

Reduce travel for in-person meetings with tele-conference. A couple of such instances listed under Department of Agriculture -

“APHIS cancelled a meeting in Australia, saving an estimated $36,000 in travel and per diem. To date, an alternative to a “face to face” meeting has not been determined, although a teleconference is a possibility.”

“USDA used an alternative training method for staff, employing conference calls rather than face-to-face meetings. Specifically, this method was to train new staff in Asia on its Offshore Pest Information program. By using conference calls (with training materials provided in advance), officials saved the expense of conducting traditional face-to-face training. A similar training in 2006, conducted on site in Manila, cost $40 thousand.”

No repainting of newly purchased vehicles for Forest Services (what?).

USDA proposes $2 million in Forest Service savings for FY 2009, consisting of $1.8 million in no longer repainting newly purchased vehicles and $200,000 in resource management efficiency.

hmm! Nevermind.

The Department of Commerce will save $131,000 by placing a moratorium on unnecessary office renovations in FY 2009.
HUD proposes to reduce HUD’s energy consumption by turning off lights during non-working hours, and centralizing the power management of personal computers (PCs).
Many DOJ computers remain on when not in use for prolonged periods. DOJ is configuring these computers to automatically shut-down, which will reduce power consumption and costs.
This one takes the cake: A large number of DOJ copiers and printers can be configured to automatically print double-sided. Increasing the frequency of double-sided printing will reduce paper consumption and lower costs.

Across the board one requirement seems to be common – conduct non-critical meetings using teleconference instead of traveling.

It is amazing that in all this time, measures taken by commercial companies to become smarter and efficient was making press, it really did not resonate with people in charge of these agencies to take action.

So to help them in their quest for identifying more cost saving opportunities, here are couple of suggestions from my side (and missing in the list identified)

Majority of government vehicles are gas guzzlers like SUVs , old American cars. Using the same “cash for clunkers” made available to regular citizens, government agencies should swap their vehicles for new efficient ones.
Use efficient space planning tools to manage space for offices. I know they buy those tools but upon visiting many government offices, I need a lot of convincing that they do use those tools. Efficiently using those tools might reduce the real space needed.

While prior downturns (technology bust), rising energy costs have driven commercial companies to adopt thrifty measures and optimize every area of operations, federal agencies have gone relatively unscathed all these times merrily spending tax payer dollars.

Now with President taking personal interest and appointing people entrusted with the specific responsibilities, the agencies are now on hook to be thrifty. It remains to be seen given the enormity of the deficits how much this would contribute. But as the saying goes – “Little drops of water make the mighty ocean“.

Here is another piece of suggestion from my side to the President. Make those responsible for these savings a stakeholder in this and stand to gain a percentage of savings as their bonus. That will get the job done.

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