Federal government spending and managing of budgets is foremost in the minds of civil servants and contractors alike. One thing is certain – a massive amount of money is spent every day. Just look at the national debt clock in Times Square. (There is actually a website dedicated to it. Prepare yourself. It’ll make your head hurt. http://www.usdebtclock.org/)

The Department of Defense alone owns over $3 trillion worth of assets (property and equipment). What do assets have to do with debt and spending? Let’s start with the obvious: both are expensive, so expensive that huge organizations are dedicated to following stringent rules for acquisition.

But acquisition is only the beginning. What about the cost of owning stockpiles of property and equipment that can’t be found or “hidden” assets that are owned but unrecorded and therefore unknown? Waste is enormously expensive, but so is the cost of managing, tracking and maintaining assets throughout their lifecycle. More equipment = higher cost, a virtual mountain of cost as we are coming to understand.

There are two options that work hand-in-hand for reducing waste:

• Option 1 is to become more efficient at managing what is already owned.
• Option 2 is to reduce the number of duplicate, obsolete or unneeded assets that are already owned.

Would decreased stockpiles and found assets help with the DoD budget? We know there is a big pay-off to both options, because A2B performed marking and data cleansing services in one DoD organization that netted thousands of unknown “hidden” items worth many millions of dollars. When “hidden” assets are no longer hidden, the need for acquisition is diminished. Enormous efficiencies that reduce waste are the result when assets are properly tracked and maintained throughout their lifecycle. Those efficiencies range from the elimination of duplication to predictive maintenance to disposition.

Can we eliminate waste in federal budgets? Not likely, but IUID is the vehicle to dramatically decrease waste, and it is happening now.