Case Study: The White House achieves millions in taxpayer savings and greater government efficiency with IdeaScale

The White House Five Years of SAVE Awards

In 2009 the White House launched the SAVE Award, a crowdsourcing initiative that used the IdeaScale platform to invite federal employees to submit and vote on cost‑saving ideas. The challenge was to make government more effective and efficient with taxpayer dollars by tapping frontline employee knowledge and surface practical, scalable savings.

Using IdeaScale, employees posted ideas, the community voted them up, and the Office of Management and Budget narrowed finalists for public voting and presidential review. Over five years the program generated nearly 100,000 ideas and 535,000 votes from about 90,000 employees; winning proposals have produced millions in savings (for example $14.5M from reusing VA supplies and $4M/year by stopping mailed Federal Registers) and dozens of ideas have been incorporated into the President’s Budget.

The White House