The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development isn't given to bragging about itself. The work its 9000 employees do is, after all, just the work the President and Congress, taxpayers and citizens expect - and pay - us to do.
Moreover, the successes we enjoy usually couldn't have been achieved without the hard work and good ideas of our partners - local governments, housing authorities, nonprofits, real estate professionals. It's probably best to let the spotlight shine on them.
But every so often we can't resist the urge to brag, at least a little bit. To brag, for example, about Huston Prescott, 42, who came to HUD Anchorage about a year ago from the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation. He now serves as a grants evaluation specialist in HUD's Alaska Office of Native American Programs which works with more than 270 native villages and tribal organizations to help them meet their housing, community and economic development needs.
Calling for "new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent," by the Federal government, in late September 2009 President Obama launched what he called the S.A.V.E. - Securing Americans Value Efficiency - Awards program, inviting Federal employees to submit ideas on how their agency to save money and perform better.
Submit they did. In just two months almost 38,500 Federal employees stepped forward and shared their ideas to, said the President, "fix or end government programs that don't work" and that "waste your hard-earned tax dollars,"
Huston Prescott was one of those more than 38,000 Federal employees. Even better, after a thorough review of all the submissions by the Office of Management and Budget, Huston - along with Christine Dickson of the Social Security Administration in Alabama, Nancy Fichtner of the Department of Veterans Affairs in Colorado and Julie Fosbender with the U.S. Forest Service in West Virginia - were selected as the SAVE program's first-ever "final four."
What was Huston's idea? To streamline redundant inspections of housing developments subsidized by a variety of Federal agencies, including HUD. ""The constant in the majority of the developments that I have been involved with," he explained in submitting his idea, "is that each of these funding sources requires its own physical inspection of the units as well as calculating incomes in different manners and annual audits" and "countless hours spent recreating information could be used in more productive." Streamlining inspecitions, he says, will save inspectors time and taxpayers money.
Maybe the best news of all is that the ideas submitted will go somewhere, not nowhere. In announcing the final four, in fact, the President invited the American people to visit the SAVE Website and vote electronically for their favorite idea. The winner will have a chance to sit down with President Obama and present his or her idea in detail.
Hundreds of "the most promising ideas" also have been sent back to Federal agencies for inclusion in the budgets they propose for the Federal fiscal year beginning next October. "This Administration is committed to providing better value for the American taxpayer," OMB Director Peter Orszag said. "The SAVE Award is about improving how government operates by drawing upon the wealth of knowledge of our frontline workers who are seeing day in and day out what's working and what's not."
"Frontline workers" like 2009's "final four" - Huston, Christine, Julie and Nancy. Congratulations to them all!
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