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• Government Reform for Competition and Innovation Ideas

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  Ideas to Make Other Parts of Government More Efficient and Effective »

  End Cargo Preference Regulations

  The Cargo Preference Act requires U.S. agencies to use U.S.-flagged carriers when transporting food for emergency and development purposes. However, this "buy American" provision is deceptive because foreign-owned businesses can easily flag their vessels as U.S. carriers and benefit themselves. In fact, an academic paper by Cornell's Chris Barrett looked at trends in 2005 and found that 68.6 percent of USAID food aid ...more »

  The Cargo Preference Act requires U.S. agencies to use U.S.-flagged carriers when transporting food for emergency and development purposes. However, this "buy American" provision is deceptive because foreign-owned businesses can easily flag their vessels as U.S. carriers and benefit themselves. In fact, an academic paper by Cornell's Chris Barrett looked at trends in 2005 and found that 68.6 percent of USAID food aid shipments were carried by just four lines, three of which were foreign-owned.

  This act was originally intended to support the U.S. merchant fleet, but the reality is that today the chief beneficiaries are foreign-owned businesses transporting food on ships that are too old to have any military use, and there is already a Maritime Security Program offering subsidies specifically for ships that do have military value. This act no longer does what it was intended to do, nor does it serve the beneficiaries it was intended to serve. What it does is erode the efficiency of government programs that save lives. Get the best bang for taxpayer dollars and eliminate cargo preference.

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  Submitted by Community Member 2 years ago

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  Ideas to Make Other Parts of Government More Efficient and Effective »

  Proportional CIT to Fund Regulatory Agencies

  The idea here would be to have a variable corporate income tax rate based on industry requirements of government resources. In order to avoid unpredictability in the economy, funding levels for regulatory agencies would be locked in for a multi-year period. For example, the EPA or USDA would have its regulatory offices' budgets locked in for say 5 years. When the next budget cycle came around, the agency would assess ...more »

  The idea here would be to have a variable corporate income tax rate based on industry requirements of government resources. In order to avoid unpredictability in the economy, funding levels for regulatory agencies would be locked in for a multi-year period.

  For example, the EPA or USDA would have its regulatory offices' budgets locked in for say 5 years. When the next budget cycle came around, the agency would assess compliance rates in determining allocation of resources for the next 5 years. Industries that had very high compliance would likely see a reduction in the proportion of staff dedicated to monitoring their activities, whereas industries that had low levels of compliance would see an increase. Then the rates at which each industry was taxed would be adjusted based on their proportionate demands on those government resources. The absolute revenues from CIT would not change, but a self-regulating industry would pay less than an industry that regularly produced health and safety standards violations.

  This theory would not necessarily have to be applied on an all or nothing basis, assuming that the total revenues from CIT would significantly exceed the costs of all the regulatory agencies involved. It is possible that the potential fluctuation might be less than 1%, but even a small percentage reduction in CIT would be a meaningful incentive to promote higher levels of compliance with government regulations, which theoretically could allow the government to reduce its footprint over time due to the higher level of self-policing.

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  Submitted by Community Member 2 years ago

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  Increasing Trade, Exports, and Overall Competitiveness »

  International Business Matching Fora

  In order to help facilitate growth of U.S. exports, each U.S. embassy could include an opportunity listing website to link U.S. businesses to potential partners in other countries. The site could include subfora for different industries. Although vetting would be incumbent upon the businesses themselves, this could be a starting point for U.S. businesses looking to market their goods overseas with potential importers. ...more »

  In order to help facilitate growth of U.S. exports, each U.S. embassy could include an opportunity listing website to link U.S. businesses to potential partners in other countries. The site could include subfora for different industries. Although vetting would be incumbent upon the businesses themselves, this could be a starting point for U.S. businesses looking to market their goods overseas with potential importers.

  The model could be developed as sort of a Craig's List for international business connecting suppliers with retailers. Because it would be a voluntary registry process that would include foreign businesses as well as American, this could be presented as a collaborative initiative.

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  Submitted by Community Member 2 years ago

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  Ideas to Make Other Parts of Government More Efficient and Effective »

  Reduce Contracting Preferences

  If we really want to cut down on costs, we should consider eliminating some of the preference rules (small business, woman-owned, minority-owned, minority-serving institution) for government contracts. Each stipulation added increases the likelihood that the government will not be able to get the same services at the same level of quality for the same price that a private corporation could. If the average citizen is ...more »

  If we really want to cut down on costs, we should consider eliminating some of the preference rules (small business, woman-owned, minority-owned, minority-serving institution) for government contracts. Each stipulation added increases the likelihood that the government will not be able to get the same services at the same level of quality for the same price that a private corporation could.

  If the average citizen is looking for a company to do some landscaping, they're probably going to go out and hire based on some combination of price and past performance. If the government is looking for a company to do some landscaping, we're going to need to evaluate proposals based on gender, race, disability, military service, nationality, size of business...oh yeah, and price.

  Instead of increasing the red tape and cost of doing business for every government agency in ways that only help a niche group of special interests that have made an industry out of getting these contracts, we could cut costs and use some of those savings to implement dedicated projects to help the genuinely disadvantaged members of these groups rather than those savvy enough to navigate the government bureaucracy. Furthermore, because these niche contractors know the government has little choice but to send business their way, the government is left with little leverage if they perform poorly.

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  Submitted by Community Member 2 years ago

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  Ideas to Make Other Parts of Government More Efficient and Effective »

  Reduce Layers of Clearance

  Efforts should be made to ensure that decisions are being made at a level at which the manager still has a clear understanding of the document they are looking at. When every document for clearance has to go up to a high level executive, the turnaround time on tasks is greatly increased, and because it has to hit every person between the office of origin and that high level exec, it is a drain on the time of numerous ...more »

  Efforts should be made to ensure that decisions are being made at a level at which the manager still has a clear understanding of the document they are looking at. When every document for clearance has to go up to a high level executive, the turnaround time on tasks is greatly increased, and because it has to hit every person between the office of origin and that high level exec, it is a drain on the time of numerous other managers in between. As a result, the document rarely if ever gets rejected or sent back for clarification beyond a certain point because it has already been heavily vetted by more cognizant managers below.

  Just as an example, I would argue that a decision memo on whether to issue a grant does not need to be reviewed by the Asst. Deputy Administrator, the Deputy Administrator, the Associate Administrator and the Administrator after having already been reviewed by the Branch Chief, Division Director, the Office's General Counsel, and additional "FYI" stops with accountants, executive assistants and advisers in the offices of middle managers. If the decision can be made at a lower level, it saves time of higher level managers, saves program level staff time tracking the progress of documents, and allows the government to complete its work in a timely manner.

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  Submitted by Community Member 2 years ago

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