AUGUSTA – Looking to save $10.1 million as a final step in balancing the new $6.3 billion two-year state General Fund budget, Maine lawmakers are seeking help from the public in coming up with ideas.

That’s where the suggestion box comes in, a device that some management theorists say dates in its modern form to a program implemented by the 18th century British Navy. (More grog, less flog?)

The new savings number needed by Maine lawmakers is only a tiny fraction of the overall spending package they overwhelmingly approved in June. But now that the biennial blueprint has been adopted in all but this final detail, where is there left for state government departments and agencies to turn?

Government, of course, has critics aplenty and whether suggestions or complaints will translate into workable recommendations won’t be known for a while.

To collect savings proposals, Maine lawmakers have had the staff of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee set up a virtual suggestion box.

“We can’t afford not to make it a participatory process to the extent possible,” says Republican Rep. Sawin Millett of Waterford, a ranking Appropriations panelist who served as a fiscal chief for Gov. John McKernan.

The concept of suggestion boxes has long been something of a favorite in government circles.

The National Conference of State Legislatures reported in 2006 that most states had employee suggestion incentive programs. State officials reported that 2006 marked the 60th year of the New York State Employee Suggestion Program. California began a program in 1950.

New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut made it into the NCSL count and Maine, too, has had intermittent idea solicitation programs for employees.

Maine’s latest is in just its first year and has generated 50 or 60 suggestions so far, according to Deputy Commissioner Domna Giatas of the Maine Department of Administrative and Financial Services.

Alas, for applicants, no reward payouts yet. One proposal relating to printing state brochures won its author a certificate of accomplishment: A certificate of contribution went to another employee in connection with the installation of hand-sanitizer dispensers, according to the program’s Web site.

Maine’s new suggestion box for the public is not designed to provide compensation for contributors.

Headed “Public Input to Streamline State Government,” the site entry describes a legislative goal of “consolidating functions and eliminating duplication and inefficiencies in programs, in contracted personal services and in the administrative and management positions within the structure of state government.”

The invitation for citizen ideas “to generate on-going structural savings” reads: “If you have new creative ideas for administrative savings or can identify sources of administrative excess, redundancy or inefficiencies in state government, please enter your ideas for savings in the text box below. These ideas will be reviewed and analyzed by committee staff and presented to the committee. Please be as specific as possible, identifying the department, programs, the specific positions and/or contracted service that will be affected by your savings proposal.

“Your suggestions may be entered anonymously or you may choose to leave contact information in the fields below the text box. Do not expect a response from the committee, unless you specifically request a follow-up. If you do choose to include contact information that information will become part of the public record and is available to anyone requesting that information.”

A recent survey of Maine attitudes found that about nine of 10 respondents expressed support for efforts to run government more efficiently. Trying to tap into the substance behind such sentiment is “legitimate,” Millett says.

“I think anything we can do to signal to the public that we are serious is a step in the right direction,” Millett says. “But I’m not looking at it as a treasure-trove.”

Mark Turrell, a co-founder and chief executive officer of the software and professional services company Imaginatik, says there have been some advances in the use of suggestion programs over the centuries.

“At least you no longer get [hanged] for bad ideas, which is a good thing,” he jokes.

Still, says Turrell, whose firm is based in Winchester, England, and in Boston and who preaches about innovation, the trick can be managing the ideas. Without proper management, he warns, reciting an old saying, “A fool with a tool is still a fool.”