Like Uber, But for USDA

Rep. Dav­id Sch­weikert has a new strategy to get the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to cut down on its massive fleet of 630,000-plus cars: sum­mon­ing an Uber.

The Ari­zona Re­pub­lic­an has pitched a pro­pos­al that would get three agen­cies to start re­du­cing the num­ber of gov­ern­ment-owned cars by hav­ing them ex­plore ride-shar­ing. All told, his idea—offered as an amend­ment to the House trans­port­a­tion bill—would re­duce the fleets at three agen­cies by 10 per­cent.

But Sch­weikert said that, if the amend­ment passes, it’s also a way to start talk­ing about “bring­ing the new eco­nomy in­to gov­ern­ment ef­fi­ciency.

“There’s a long-term goal here of, can we use in­form­a­tion to al­loc­ate cap­it­al re­sources bet­ter?” said Sch­weikert, who came to the House as part of the tea-party wave of 2010. “This is sort of the first step of try­ing to sell the idea.”

Un­der the amend­ment, three de­part­ments—Ag­ri­cul­ture, In­teri­or, and En­ergy—would launch a pi­lot to trim 10 per­cent of their vehicle fleet and re­place it with a ride-shar­ing solu­tion. The lan­guage spe­cific­ally says that the de­part­ments can use their dis­cre­tion to “in­crease the use … of com­mer­cial ride-shar­ing com­pan­ies,” but Sch­weikert said it’s not as simple as just get­ting every­one to sign up for Uber or Ly­ft.

“We use the term ride-shar­ing, but it’s more than that,” he said. “Would it be a Zip­car-type mod­el, would it be two people us­ing the same car, would it be a shared vehicle or shared route? I don’t really care, as long as we get more ef­fi­cient.”

The three de­part­ments were chosen be­cause they have large vehicle fleets re­l­at­ive to their staff.

The amend­ment is one of more than 80 set for de­bate Wed­nes­day on the six-year trans­port­a­tion bill.

The Gen­er­al Ser­vices Ad­min­is­tra­tion last Oc­to­ber launched a pi­lot pro­gram with four vendors, in­clud­ing En­ter­prise and Hertz, to ex­plore wheth­er a car-shar­ing ser­vice could help re­duce costs in the fed­er­al fleet by let­ting em­ploy­ees simply check out cars from a lar­ger pool for short­er trips.

Sch­weikert said that this is just one way he’s try­ing to bring as­pects of the shar­ing eco­nomy in­to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, even if it can be an up­hill battle in the tra­di­tion­ally non-dis­rupt­ive Con­gress.

“A lot of my broth­ers and sis­ters in there just stare at me blank when I walk through us­ing in­form­a­tion as part of the new eco­nomy and say, ‘I hadn’t thought about it,’” he said, ges­tur­ing to the House floor. “I think not enough of us have talked about it.”