During the meeting, members of the Steering Committee on Federal Sustainability will be presented with some of the top suggestions from employees who participated in the White House’s GreenGov Challenge last month. More than 5,300 ideas were submitted during the two-week challenge.

The meeting will be streamed live online. Check back with www.federaltimes.com for a full report on the effort to go green.

As we reported earlier, the most popular ideas submitted during the GreenGov Challenge will be presented to agencies, which are right now figuring out how to meet the ambitious environmental goals laid out earlier this month by President Barack Obama.

With a portfolio of more than 500,000 buildings and 600,000 vehicles, the government is a prime target for testing ideas to conserve energy, reduce carbon emissions and promote environmental sustainability, Vice President Joe Biden said.

Any idea, big or small, about how to make this government more efficient can make a significant impact on our energy consumption and our energy future.

As an added incentive,  Biden recorded a special message encouraging federal employees and military service members to participate. Check it out below, and then submit your own ideas.

Federal employees and military service members have until Saturday to make their suggestions and cast their votes.

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Original post: Think you have a great idea for how the government can reduce its environmental footprint? The Obama administration wants to know it.

The White House is challenging federal civilian employees and military service members to come up with ways in which the government can get to green in six key areas: reducing carbon emissions, conserving energy, conserving water, eliminating waste, building sustainable facilities and purchasing sustainable products.

From now until Oct. 31, employees can log onto the new GreenGov website and post their ideas. They can also vote on ideas submitted by other employees.

The most popular ideas in each area will be presented next month to a committee of senior officials from each agency who are charged with meeting the goals laid out earlier this month in President Barack Obama’s executive order on greening the government’s operations.

This was the second conviction for David Safavian, who served as chief of staff at the General Services Administration under President George W. Bush. His 2006 conviction was overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 2008. He was tried again and convicted in December.

The case stemmed from allegations that Safavian lied to GSA ethics officials when he had asked for advice on whether he could accept a 2002 golf trip to Scotland from Abramoff. Safavian did not disclose that Abramoff had business dealings with the agency.

Safavian later oversaw federal contracting policy at the Office of Management and Budget but abruptly quit before his 2005 arrest.

According to the Associated Press, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said Safavian won’t have to report to jail until after his pregnant wife delivers their child.

Obama nixed an earlier idea, included in a draft executive order I reported on back in August, to set a governmentwide percentage target. Instead, each agency must recommend its own target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. It will be up to the heads of the Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget to approve those targets.

Obama’s order also sets new requirements for cutting gas and water consumption, reducing landfill waste and purchasing products and services that meet environmental sustainability mandates.

We’ll have more on the order at www.federaltimes.com and in next week’s issue of Federal Times.

President Barack Obama issued an executive order today that bans federal employees from using their cell phones, BlackBerries or other electronic devices to send or receive text messages, read e-mails or perform other electronic tasks while driving .

The order applies to employees behind the wheel of government owned or leased vehicles or those driving their own vehicles while on government business. Agencies also were instructed to encourage federal contractors to enforce similar polices on their own workforces.

Obama issued the order to coincide with a Washington summit organized by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on the dangers of text messaging and other distractions while driving.

The number of crashes attributed to distracted drivers nationally has risen during the past five years, even though the number of crashes overall has dropped, and accounted for 16 percent of crashes and fatalities in 2008, Transportation statistics show.

Confused?

It turns out that while federal agencies are hiring more workers, they’re also getting rid of thousands of buildings they no longer need. The number of buildings in the federal inventory declined nearly 9 percent in 2008, or roughly 70 million square feet, according to a report posted today by the General Services Administration.

GSA attributes the decrease to a reduction of 36,000 military housing units and 4,000 warehouses by the Air Force and Navy.

Happy Birthday, Smokey!

Smokey Bear has been preaching the dangers of forest fires since Aug. 9, 1944. His trademark catchphrase, “Only you can prevent wildfires,” is one of the longest running public service announcement campaigns in U.S. history.

His enduring message certainly has played a major role in helping reduce forest fires. Since 1944, the number of acres lost annually to forest fires has dropped from about 22 million to 6.5 million, the Forest Service says.  However, there’s still plenty of work for Smokey Bear to do. Many Americans believe that lightning starts most wildfires, while in reality 9 out of 10 wildfires nationwide are started by humans. Most often, forest fires are caused by people who leave campfires unattended, burn trash on windy days and carelessly discard cigarettes and charcoal.

To mark the occasion, the Forest Service on Monday will release a new illustrated story book, written in both English and Spanish, that is aimed at introducing the iconic figure and his fire prevention message to a new generation of American children.

Smokey Bear will be on hand for the festivities, at the Agriculture Department’s Whitten Building in Washington, and will even be cutting his birthday cake, the Forest Service tells us. We can only guess what he will be wishing for as he blows out his candles.

I’m flying out this afternoon from Washington, but before I do I thought I’d share a few interesting facts that come directly from Becky Rhodes, deputy associate administrator of govermentwide policy at the General Services Administration, which is hosting the conference:

• 1,490 people were registered to attend the conference as of July 17, which is up slightly from the 1,449 people who attended last year’s event.
• 38 percent of attendees are new to FedFleet, which Rhodes attributed to significant employee turnover at agencies.
• 164 exhibitors will showcase their goods or services, up from 145 last year.
• 22 agency meetings will be taking place during the conference, up from 16 last year.
• While most of the conference is devoted to vehicle fleets, 25 hours of training are devoted to aviation fleet managers.

A series of alarmist headlines posted at the top of the Drudge Report home page lists details on some of the purchases Agriculture has made through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The headlines, which link to summaries of contracts on the Recovery.gov website, seem to suggest that Agriculture is wasting stimulus money on groceries — and worse, getting overcharged.

The headlines indicate that Agriculture awarded contracts of nearly $16.8 million for canned pork, $1.6 million for mozzarella cheese and $1.2 million for two pounds of frozen sliced ham.

In response, Vilsack issued a statement this morning explaining that the purchases are for large amounts of food items being delivered to food banks, soup kitchens and food pantries to help feed those who have been hardest hit by the economic recession. Agriculture received $100 million through the Recovery Act for the purchases.

The references to ‘2 pound frozen ham sliced’ are to the sizes of the packaging. Press reports suggesting that the Recovery Act spent $1.191 million to buy ‘2 pounds of ham’ are wrong. In fact, the contract in question purchased 760,000 pounds of ham for $1.191m, at a cost of approximately $1.50 per pound. In terms of the dairy purchase referenced, USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) purchased 837,936 pounds of mozzarella cheese and 4,039,200 pounds of processed cheese.

Vilsack goes on to say that the purchases do provide a boost to the economy, by helping farmers and ranchers who produce the food, food retailers and those working for manufacturing and transportation companies.