GovLaunch: SAVE Award Winner Announced

The White House Blog reports the winner of the 2011 SAVE Award is Matthew Ritsko of Crofton, Maryland. Matthew’s idea is to create a centralized tool repository, or a “lending library,” at NASA. The idea is to avoid wasteful repeat purchases of tools. The White House Blog states

Matthew is a Financial Manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He noticed that when NASA employees purchase specialized tools and equipment for developing and building flight projects, many of these tools are not tracked once projects are complete – an oversight that results in the same tools being unnecessarily bought by other employees. To cut down on these wasteful repeat purchases, Matthew suggested creating a centralized tool repository – or “lending library” – where these tools can be stored, catalogued, and checked in and out by NASA employees.

Matthew’s idea received over 19,000 votes and will be able to present his idea to President Obama at the White House. This is a great example of having people closest to problems identifying and developing solutions. The next step is to turn Matthew’s idea into a practical solution, I hope it moves forward and the idea is provided with the proper resources to make the idea into actual policy.