Officials tout Defense Travel System as much improved
By Gordon Lubold
Federal Times
October 10, 2006
The Defense Travel System, designed to make official travel management easy and efficient for Defense Department personnel and save taxpayer money, has been mired in controversy, but officials insist it is a valuable, one-stop service that will only get better.
Often billed as a Pentagon version of Expedia or Travelocity, DTS allows users to validate travel orders, book tickets and submit travel records for near-immediate reimbursement, all in one online system.
“The DTS is a system that works and works well,” said Air Force Col. Lynne Hamilton-Jones, program director. “Today, it is not clunky.”
But the travel system has a long way to go to escape the bad press and congressional scrutiny that has come as the project has gone over budget and fallen behind schedule.
The Government Accountability Office recently issued another stinging report on DTS, “Reported Savings Questionable and Implementation Challenges Remain,” and lawmakers such as Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., have expressed concerns that the system won’t yield the savings the Pentagon promised.
The system also has been dismissed by some military personnel — its users — for just not working well.
Not true, insist Defense officials who say natural resistance to change from old travel systems and procedures contributes to the perception that the new system isn’t effective.
They say DTS is a unique way for service members to access everything they need online to go on temporary official travel. Hamilton-Jones said there is no other system that can do the same thing.
“If this system went away, there would be no other system these people could depend on to this level,” she said.
Under the variety of old travel management and pay systems on which many people still rely, employees would submit travel orders, wait for authorization and book their travel through any number of agencies — or on their own. Afterward, reimbursement could take weeks or months.
Hamilton-Jones said DTS issues about 50 percent of travel reimbursement claims within 4.5 days and 100 percent within 5.5 days.
DTS is now being used by more than 50,000 “unique visitors” per day. So far, 2 million vouchers — travel reimbursements — have been issued and more than 2.5 million authorizations for travel, or travel orders, have been produced by the system.
Hamilton-Jones said about 8,000 sites — offices, installations or commands — are set up to use the system. That represents more than 90 percent of the department’s sites that log the most official travel. By October 2007, DTS will be operational in as many as 12,000 sites around the world.
Still, critics say not enough of the 3.4 million potential users are actually availing themselves of the system. To date, about 1 million users are registered, and it’s not clear just how many of them use it.
The Pentagon “acknowledged that DTS is not being used to the fullest extent possible, but lacks comprehensive data to effectively monitor its utilization,” stated the GAO report issued Sept. 26.
The system will become better and more accountable due to a restructuring of the Pentagon’s Defense Travel Management Office, said Sheila Earle, acting principal director for military personnel policy.
That organization includes all the elements of travel that allow users to authenticate their orders, book travel and have it paid. It’s a new system that is “the envy of some of our federal friends,” Earle said. “You have a new organization that is going to look at travel with the whole umbrella.”
The main complaint from employees is that DTS goes down too frequently, sometimes due to issues beyond the Defense Department’s control. Hamilton-Jones said it is up 99 percent of the time, but acknowledged that this doesn’t help the person who is having problems the other 1 percent of the time. They are working on the issues that cause some people to experience those problems, she said.
The system will get better, she said. In November, the DTS component that provides booking of travel tickets, car rentals and hotels will become easier to use, with fewer Internet pages to sort through to get the tickets booked, Earle said.
“The ‘fit and finish’ will feel better,” Earle said.
