21st Century Government
Campaign
to Cut Waste

President Obama and Vice President Biden launch the Campaign to Cut Waste, which will hunt down and eliminate misspent tax dollars in every agency and department across the Federal Government.

Read the executive order

21st Century Government Latest News

  • The President’s Executive Order on Improving and Streamlining Regulation by Independent Regulatory Agencies

    Posted by Cass Sunstein on July 11, 2011 at 6:28 PM EDT

    Today, President Obama took the next step in his ambitious and unprecedentedly open process for streamlining, improving, and eliminating regulations – by issuing a new Executive Order asking the independent regulatory agencies, including the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, to take new steps to ensure smart, cost-effective regulations, designed to promote economic growth and job creation.  

    In a historic initiative, the President has requested the independent agencies to produce plans to reassess and to streamline their existing regulations, and to disclose those plans for public scrutiny. In addition, the President has asked the independent agencies to follow the cost-saving, burden-reducing principles in his January Executive Order on improving regulation.  

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  • Open for Questions: Live Chat on Improving Federal Websites

    Posted by Erin Lindsay on July 11, 2011 at 5:32 PM EDT

    Tomorrow, Tuesday, July 12th, 2011 at 4:00 PM EDT, you’re invited to participate in a live chat with White House Director of Digital Strategy, Macon Phillips, Federal Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra and Director of the GSA’s Center for Excellence in Digital Government, Sheila Campbell to discuss ways to improve the online experience with Federal websites.

    Here’s how you can participate:

    There are nearly 2,000 top-level web domains across the Federal Government.  While many of these sites provide taxpayers with valuable services and information, this proliferation of separate websites creates unnecessary confusion and inefficiency, wastes taxpayer dollars, and makes it difficult for the public to find important government information and resources. 

    As part of the continuing efforts of the Campaign to Cut Waste, an initiative launched last month by the President and Vice President to root out wasteful spending, the Administration has put a halt to the creation of new websites and set a goal of cutting the number of separate, stand alone sites in half over the next year through consolidation of existing sites or shutting down sites that are no longer needed.

    As a first step to understanding what’s working and what isn’t, the Administration will post the list of existing dot gov domains, invite feedback from the public, and will reach out to experts from the public and private sectors to develop an efficient and effective Federal government website policy that will ensure the American people can easily access the information they need moving forward.

    To stay updated on this and other Campaign to Cut Waste efforts sign up for our newsletter.

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  • Doing More with Less: Saving Half a Billion Dollars through IT Reform

    Posted by Secretary Ken Salazar on July 7, 2011 at 5:11 PM EDT

    President Obama has challenged his Administration to make government work better for the American people, and to find ways to do more with less. Here at the Department of the Interior, we are proud to play a lead role in helping meet the President’s charge. 

    Today, we are announcing our strategic plan as part of the largest information technology (IT) reform in the federal government. Through this plan, we are making smart changes to IT services across the Department that will make our IT more cost-effective and customer-friendly while saving taxpayers half a billion dollars over the next decade. 

    Some of the common-sense reforms we are undertaking include:

    • Reducing the number of data centers and servers within the Department by up to 50 percent
    • Moving to a single email system at half the current cost
    • Moving to the cloud, with a cloud-based electronic forms system and cloud-based electronic records, documents and content management solutions.

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  • Accountability in Federal Contracting

    Posted by Jeffrey Zients on July 7, 2011 at 1:33 PM EDT

    With more than one out of every six dollars of Federal government spending going to contractors, increasing accountability and saving money in contracting is critical to creating a Federal government that is efficient and effective. Last month, President Obama and Vice President Biden launched the Campaign to Cut Waste and issued a new Executive Order on Delivering an Efficient, Effective, and Accountable Government to hunt down misspent tax dollars across the Administration.

    As part of the Campaign to Cut Waste, today, we are announcing that all agencies must cut spending for management support service contracts by 15 percent.  Instead of paying $40 billion for these services, as agencies did in FY 2010, they will reduce spending to $34 billion a year by the end of FY 2012 – a reduction of $6 billion.  

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  • Commerce Department’s U.S. Census Bureau Announces Management and Structural Reforms that will Improve Efficiency and Cut Costs

    Posted by U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke on June 29, 2011 at 2:02 PM EDT

    Today, the Commerce Department’s U.S. Census Bureau announced the first realignment of its national field office structure in 50 years and management reforms that will improve efficiency, reduce costs and enhance data quality. The changes will take place gradually over the next 18 months and reduce the number of regional offices from 12 to six, saving an estimated $15 million to $18 million annually beginning in 2014. 

    Increasing efficiency, cutting waste and reforming Washington has been a priority for the Obama Administration since day one, and this consolidation supports the administration’s ongoing effort to make government more efficient, effective and accountable to the American people. It also builds on the work of Census Bureau Director Robert Groves and his management team in bringing in the 2010 Census on time and 25 percent under budget, saving nearly $1.9 billion.

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  • Nearly 1.4 Million Records

    Posted by Kori Schulman on June 24, 2011 at 2:59 PM EDT

    In September 2009, the President announced that – for the first time in history – the White House would routinely release visitor records. Today, the White House releases visitor records that were generated in March 2011. Today’s release also includes several visitor records generated prior to September 16, 2009 that were requested by members of the public in May 2011 pursuant to the White House voluntary disclosure policy. This release brings the grand total of records that this White House has released to nearly 1.4 million records. You can view them all in our Disclosures section.

    Ed. Note: For more information, check out Ethics.gov.

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