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Pentagon looks to require DTS use

The Pentagon will move to require its civilian and military employees to use the Defense Travel System after an outside report won the department breathing room to fix the much-maligned system.

A Pentagon-commissioned report by the nonprofit Institute for Defense Analyses recommends that the department continue using the Defense Travel System and that a portion of DTS used for travel accounting not be separated from the portion used to book trips, as critics have urged.

The institute completed in the report in March, but the Pentagon did not release it until this week, in response to a Federal Times request.

The study largely endorses the arguments of Pentagon officials responsible for DTS — including David S.C. Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness — who have pushed for improving the traveler interface of DTS, not overhauling the system.

A department spokesman said officials there consider the report a win for DTS, which critics call hard to use and not worth the nearly $500 million it has cost to develop.

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., with support from Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., earlier this year introduced a bill requiring Defense to scrap the travel-booking portion of system, which the senators labeled a “boondoggle.”

But because the Pentagon agreed to a series of recommendations in the report, Coleman will not push to attach the legislation as an amendment to the 2008 defense authorization bill, a spokesman said.

Last year’s authorization bill required the department to commission the study as part of a compromise reached when a prior Coburn-backed measure to dismantle DTS was removed from the final version of the bill.

A key criticism of DTS has been that it is hard for travelers to use, leading them to book elsewhere, such as through travel agents. Users often complain that some flights are not listed on screen or disappear.

But the report says the Pentagon is moving toward fixing that problem via a “complete rework of the DTS reservation process based on a product called “Reservation Refresh.” The software uses a new method to search for flights.

The report says the product “corrects some of the important shortcomings that gave rise to the study.”

The study assessed the cost and benefits of separating the financial and travel-booking portions of DTS, of mandating use of the financial part of the system for all travel transactions and of the department permitting multiple travel reservation processes. The report also evaluated converting the travel reservation process to a fee-for-services system, instead of the current “cost-plus” arrangement.

The report recommends against multiple reservation processes and against splitting the two portions of DTS. The study also concludes “it is not feasible to” mandate use of the financial portion of the system now because some defense offices process travel vouchers using legacy systems that cannot immediately be scrapped.

Congressional critics have argued that DTS contractor Northrop Grumman lacks incentive to increase use of the system under the current cost-plus system under which it is being paid. But the study says “converting the DTS reservations system to a fee-for-service arrangement has little potential to add value for DoD under the current DTS architecture.”

A Pentagon spokesman said the department “will implement all feasible and cost-effective recommendations.”

And he said, now that the report is complete, “we will make DTS mandatory for all [temporary duty] travel that DTS supports.”