Source : http://egovau.blogspot.com/2010/07/using-gov-20-techniques-to-save-money.html
28/07/2010
Pourquoi pas au niveau des institutions de l’Union ?
Around the
world governments are tightening their belts. After the recent global financial
crisis many countries' governments have borrowed heavily from financial markets
and released these funds as stimulus packages - placing them in deficit.
Australia is no different, although we have very successfully kept our deficit
to a smaller percentage of GDP than most other western nations.
For government agencies, long used to efficiency dividends and a philosophy of
doing more with less, it is important to constantly 'health check' their budget
decisions to ensure that public money isn't wasted and is most effectively
spent.
The US, UK, Canada and other governments have begun more intensively involving
citizens and public servants in the process of identifying waste and potential
efficiencies - a process which has produced some large results in a short time
in some jurisdictions.
How are they doing this?
By employing Gov 2.0 techniques, providing access to budget and revenue data
online in machine-readable formats and by engaging their staff and the
community via social media tools.
Here's a few examples.
UK Spending Challenge
The UK recently launched a public 'Spending Challenge'
asking UK citizens to contribute their ideas for reducing their national
deficit.
Managed through a website and a Facebook group, the Challenge has attracted
more than 31,000 ideas so far, with the government aiming to include the best
in their October 2010 budget review.
US SAVE Award
The US is holding their second annual SAVE award which allow public servants to submit and
vote on ideas for
cost savings which can be applied within government departments.
Last year SAVE attracted 38,000 ideas and President Obama says (in the video
below) that many are being integrated into agency budgets. The top four entries
were voted on online by American citizens and the winner got to meet the
President and received national acknowledgement.
For the 2010 SAVE award, so far there have been over 17,000 ideas submitted and
153,000 votes.