The brilliance of tapping the wisdom of the feds
BY Nancy Scola | Monday, December 7 2009
It's getting somewhat cliched to say that the Obama Administration hasn't lived up to the pledges it made early on to make government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative. But there are signs that those of us operate who outside of government might be at risk of overlooking something real and powerful that's happening inside government circles, a positive shift in the relationship between government workers and the bureaucracy they serve. Sure, how civil servants and political appointees feel about their jobs isn't sexy. But if Obama can win the loyalty and enthusiasm of the many thousands of people who actually do the day-to-day work of the United States government, he stands a better chance of creating the sort of awe-inspiring, transformative change that he has promised.
Things like the SAVE Award might not get a lot of attention, but you can certainly make the argument that those efforts are a smarter investment in social media projects than worrying about getting Obama tweeting with his own two thumbs.
What's the SAVE Award, you ask? It's an ongoing contest to get federal employees (including contractors) to share their ideas about where government programs can be trimmed or streamlined. "It's time to fix or end programs that don't work," said Obama. Government employees are in the somewhat unique position of knowing, first-hand, which of the projects, programs, and initiatives they work on don't actually work. It makes very little sense to ignore them. A body of expertise has been accumulating for decades, but that human capital has been largely squandered. So, Obama asked those many thousands of Americans who work for him: what should I cut?
Peter Orszag's OMB reduced some 38,000 entries down to just four finalists. One will make it into the final FY2011 budget, and its author will get a chance to sit down with Obama. Yes, that math is absurd, and the final ideas are notably small bore. But that part of the "contest" is somewhat less important than the fact that Orszag says that his agency is feeding many of the better ideas collected by the contest back into the relevant agencies, so that the improvements suggested by their employees can be used to improve how the federal government does what it does. If Obama can really enshrine that dynamic -- of federal employees having their wisdom harnessed, their expertise respected -- then that will be a legacy worth celebrating.
The four SAVE Award finalists:
Julie Fosbender who works at the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia has a plan to cut red tape in the way visitor fees and other funds from National Forests are deposited in the government’s bank account.
Christie Dickson from the Social Security Administration in Alabama calls for saving time and money by allowing people to schedule appointments online.
Nancy Fichtner from Colorado thinks that veterans leaving VA hospitals should be able to take the medicine they’ve been using home with them instead of it being thrown away when they’re discharged.
Huston Prescott from Alaska wants to streamline redundant inspections of subsidized housing – saving inspectors’ time and taxpayers’ money.
Unlike the submission round, voting on the finalists seems to be open to the public, so vote away.