JANUARY 20, 2017, WASHINGTON (AFNS) – Capitalizing on the Air Force culture of innovation, the “Make Every Dollar Count” program continues to evolve to maximize the impact of each dollar with the addition of six new initiatives.
In a memorandum sent to Airmen across the Air Force, Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein stated MEDC includes the continuation of current efforts to minimize costs, harness efficiencies and redefine legacy enterprise business paradigms.
The memo also introduced six new initiatives under MEDC, including a retooling of additional duties, application rationalization, enterprise process improvement and manpower standards development, streamlining of enterprise service agreements, information technology service and data center transformation and a review of the planning, programming, budgeting and execution process.
“As we evolve our Make Every Dollar Count campaign, we will stay the course with the culture of increased productivity and efficiency while weaving in a stronger emphasis on ‘Airmen’s time’ and increased effectiveness,” James and Goldfein stated in the memo. “This will expand focus on activities that are paramount to readiness and mission accomplishment.”
MEDC’s 15 initiatives have added emphasis to the critical areas of cyber and information technology and resulted in significant improvements, including giving time back to Airmen and increasing mission effectiveness. These initiatives are integral to James’ priority of taking care of people and Goldfein’s priorities of strengthening squadrons and multi-domain command and control.
The initial rollout of MEDC resulted in 13 Headquarters Air Force-level initiatives and 26 major command-sponsored initiatives that cut across multiple Air Force lines of business, including acquisition strategy, contract management, maintenance repair operations and energy management. One of the more widely recognized initiatives, Airman Powered by Innovation, has drawn more than 7,400 ideas from Airmen since February 2014, with an estimated savings of $136 million.
In their joint memo, James and Goldfein said coordination at every level of command is important while they continue to develop these initiatives and field other cost-saving measures.
“As Air Force leaders, we must find ways to factor savings into everything we do, multiply those benefits by implementing them across the entire spectrum of operations to empower, and inspire our Airman leaders at all levels to do the same,” the senior leaders stated.
By Staff Sgt. Jannelle McRae, Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs