Earlier this week, I was impressed when SpendMatters, Ariba and Supply Excellence teamed up to write an open letter to President Obama, applauding him for his “commitment to make federal procurement reform a top priority for [his] administration”; but then expressing waning optimism because five months have passed and Obama has yet to announce a federal spend management plan or appoint leadership seats at two major federal procurement groups. They implore him to “call the public’s attention to the billions of dollars in savings” that bold initiatives could yield, and decry Washington’s “making hay over pennies” (or $2 million, as the case may be).

Now, I’m a believer in big ideas, game-changing initiatives, and herculean efforts by our leaders to do amazing things; and I agree that President Obama is in a unique position to institute meaningful reforms that will benefit generations to come.  But here’s the rub – government spending problems are too big a problem for the few to address on their own while the rest of us watch from the sidelines.  There needs to be an equal effort by all of us to take on some personal accountability and participate in spend management initiatives – at home, at work, in our communities.  And that’s where the traditional procurement model tends to fail us.  It is predominantly top-down.   Spend control initiatives form as directives that flow down in organizations, with little opportunity for those at the bottom to question “why?” and even less opportunity for them to proactively participate in a real and measurable way.

Granted, $2 million is insignificant relative to our budget deficit and federal debt, but on a personal level, I can relate to $2 million a whole lot more than our $11 trillion dollar debt (that’s twelve zeroes, before the decimal, for those of you who were wondering), or the $375 billion budget controlled by the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) and the General Services Administration (GSA).  These are such large numbers, people just can’t relate to them. And if they can’t relate to them, how can they be expected to participate in the spend management initiatives to get those numbers back under control? Put simply, they can’t.

Most people are more tuned into what’s going on around them. And at the local level, we’re not talking hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars. We’re talking millions, in some cases even less. Just yesterday, I received a “special budget report” from my municipality.  This year’s severe recession has reduced city revenues by almost $2 million.  How could that affect me?  Well, it could mean there is no funding for the story-time program on Thursday morning at the library that my daughters look forward to each week;  or it could mean a few less police officers on the street to respond to the rash of robberies in the neighborhood just down the road.  So yeah, $2 million is insignificant in the big picture, but it’s very significant to me.   We don’t live in the big picture.  We live here and now, and $2 million goes a long way.

So while I agree with the gentlemen from SpendMatters, Ariba and Supply Excellence that the nation will be well-served by action from the top, I want to beseech us to take action at the grassroots level too.  At Coupa, we’ve been talking a lot lately about crowd-sourcing spend control, about empowering employees to take action and find savings opportunities, about benchmarking performance against a market of like companies and learning from the comparisons.  There are over 2 million civilian federal employees, excluding the postal service.  If each one were empowered to treat the public’s money as if it were their own, would they?  If it were easier to requisition an item than to file an expense report, would they be more likely to follow purchasing guidelines?  If managers had visibility into their subordinates’ spending as it happens and could review requisitions via mobile devices and email, without even logging into a purchasing portal, would they take more care in reviewing and approving those requests?

At Coupa, we’re betting ‘Yes’. Greater visibility, control and personal empowerment co-exist in an environment where everyone is a participant in spend management.  In that vein, Coupa antes up with a new program to help government regain control of what’s broken – Six Months to Smarter Spending - a no-strings-attached offer to government agencies to manage their spending through the Coupa e-Procurement platform, without charge, for six months.  Savings guaranteed!  Tell your councilman about it.  Shoot your congressman an email.  Take action, today.