[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-16]
CAN DOD TRAVELERS BOOK A TRIP? DEFENSE TRAVEL SYSTEM UPDATE
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
MARCH 5, 2009
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OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina ROB WITTMAN, Virginia
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
JIM COOPER, Tennessee CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
GLENN NYE, Virginia DUNCAN HUNTER, California
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
Ashley Alley, Professional Staff Member
Thomas Hawley, Professional Staff Member
Sasha Rogers, Research Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2009
Page
Hearing:
Thursday, March 5, 2009, Can DOD Travelers Book a Trip? Defense
Travel System Update........................................... 1
Appendix:
Thursday, March 5, 2009.......................................... 23
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THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2009
CAN DOD TRAVELERS BOOK A TRIP? DEFENSE TRAVEL SYSTEM UPDATE
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman,
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee...................... 1
Wittman, Hon. Rob, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking
Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.............. 2
WITNESSES
Fisher, David M., Director, Business Transformation Agency,
Department of Defense.......................................... 5
Khan, Asif A., Director, Financial Management and Assurance, U.S.
Government Accountability Office............................... 8
Mitchell, Pamela S., Director, Defense Travel Management Office,
Department of Defense.......................................... 4
Moore, Dr. William B., Vice President, LMI Government Consulting. 7
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Fisher, David M., joint with Pamela S. Mitchell.............. 33
Khan, Asif A................................................. 54
Moore, Dr. William B......................................... 48
Snyder, Hon. Vic............................................. 27
Wittman, Hon. Rob............................................ 30
Documents Submitted for the Record:
March 17, 2009 letters from Dr. Snyder and Mr. Wittman to the
Secretaries of the Air Force, Army, and Navy requesting
information on service legacy travel systems............... 75
April 27, 2009 letter from John W. McNair, Acting Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, answering the March 17, 2009 letter
on behalf of the Secretary of the Navy, with enclosures.... 78
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
Mrs. Davis................................................... 86
Dr. Snyder................................................... 85
Mr. Wittman.................................................. 86
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Dr. Snyder................................................... 89
CAN DOD TRAVELERS BOOK A TRIP? DEFENSE TRAVEL SYSTEM UPDATE
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House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Thursday, March 5, 2009.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:04 p.m., in
room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Vic Snyder
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
Dr. Snyder. The hearing will come to order. Good afternoon.
Welcome to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
hearing on updates to the Defense Travel System, the DTS
system. The subcommittee last held a hearing on this issue in
April of 2008, just short of a year ago. As we said at that
time, we thought this topic was an important one. It certainly
is an expensive one. And we are here to get an update on the
progress that has been made, as we said we would last year.
And there is a lot of challenges that continue. And I think
anyone would agree with that in the Defense Travel System. DTS
is supposed to be the primary end-to-end travel system for
Department of Defense (DOD) personnel. The Department of
Defense spends between 9 and $10 billion on defense travel
every year, while the system has been plagued by developmental
problems, operational test failures, premature deployments,
functionality problems, low usage, and general user
dissatisfaction. The importance of this kind of issue is that
60 percent of the Pentagon's procurement budget, the
acquisition budget, does not go into equipment, the sexy items
that get all the attention like rifles and tanks and planes, it
goes into services contracts like the Defense Travel System we
are considering today.
And it is very important, in a bipartisan manner, to this
Congress that we find out how money is being spent and figure
out the most efficient way to accomplish the goals of the
American people. It has been reported that even though the
Defense Travel System is operational in over 95 percent of DOD
locations, the Department is still allowing travelers to use
legacy systems. This is an inefficient waste of taxpayer money,
and the Department needs to ensure that all personnel who
should be using DTS are, in fact, using it. This committee has
heard repeated concerns from DOD travelers that DTS is a
confusing, complicated system. In fact, a usability study
conducted last year by LMI Government Consulting showed that
only 42 percent of DOD travelers could successfully complete a
task in DTS, whether booking a trip, canceling one, or creating
a voucher.
This means over half of the travelers who were surveyed
were unable to complete the basic tasks necessary for travel.
DOD has spent a lot of money and time on implementation of the
Defense Travel System, and it must become the single
streamlined travel management system that was intended, that we
all want. It is central that this is accomplished in a way that
is both cost-efficient and user friendly. We hope all of our
witnesses can help illuminate how much progress has been made
toward achieving this goal, how far the Department still has to
go, and where we can expect to be at this time next year. We
will hear from two witnesses from the Department's Travel
Management Office (DTMO) and Business Transformation Agency who
will tell us what kind of progress has been made with DTS in
the past year and what current efforts are underway to improve
the system.
We will also hear from Logistics Management Institute (LMI)
Government Consulting about the results of the DTS usability
study they conducted last year for the Department, any ideas
they may have about how to make DTS more user friendly for
travelers. Finally, we will hear from the Government
Accountability Office (GAO), which has done extensive work on
the reliability and cost efficiency of DTS. In 2006, GAO issued
two reports on DTS that included 14 recommendations for
improvement. GAO will testify today on the implementation of
those recommendations. It will also tell us how far they think
the Department has to go to make sure that DTS is a reliable
system for DOD for all travelers and administrators.
Our panel of witnesses today consists of Ms. Pam Mitchell,
the Director of the Defense Travel Management Office, the
Department of Defense; Mr. David Fisher, the Director of the
Business Transformation Agency at the Department of Defense;
Dr. William Moore, the Vice President of LMI Government
Consulting; and Mr. Asif Khan--did I say that correctly?
Mr. Khan. Asif Khan.
Dr. Snyder. Asif Khan, Director of the Financial Management
and Assurance, Government Accountability Office. We appreciate
you all being here. And I will turn now to Rob Wittman for his
opening comments. And this is actually our first formal
hearing, isn't it, the beginning of this new Congress. And we
are very, very pleased to have Mr. Wittman on the committee.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Snyder can be found in the
Appendix on page 27.]
STATEMENT OF HON. ROB WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA,
RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Wittman. Well, thank you, Chairman Snyder. I really
appreciate it. It is an honor to be here with you and serving
as the ranking member. I want to say good afternoon for our
witnesses. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules
to join us today. We look forward to hearing you. And as
Chairman Snyder pointed to, before I begin to comment about
today's hearing, I would like to note my appreciation in the
bipartisan spirit in which Chairman Snyder has reached out to
make sure that this committee works in a collaborative effort
in making sure that we look at all the different things that
are involved with the House Armed Services Committee and
finding ways that we can improve the Department of Defense and
other government programs.
So Chairman Snyder, thank you. It is a great leadership on
your behalf and great way to run a committee. So I appreciate
that. This afternoon we return to a topic that we examined last
year, and that is the Defense Travel System, or DTS. DTS was
initiated more than 10 years ago to better account for DOD
travel costs. And in other words, the initial focus was to
benefit the accountant, not the user. And while accountability
is a worthy objective, the early efforts gave little heed to
user friendliness, leading to lots of frustration, and
ultimately user rejection of the system. And since travel
processed online is substantially cheaper to book than travel
booked the traditional way, this failure to consider user
friendliness was counterproductive. Indeed, widespread user
frustration has brought this issue to the subcommittee's
attention.
And the average sergeant and captain in the field was
literally fed up with being ordered to use a system that did
not produce results. And we heard loud and clear that
frustration. And we are looking at ways we can overcome that. I
understand that DTS is continuing to make progress in this
regard, and that usage statistics and user acceptance has
improved since last year. And I applaud all the efforts to make
the system work better and to make it more user friendly. And
as we all know, we are encouraged any time those sorts of
improvements happen, but we understand that there are still
some ways that we can improve further.
And daunting as the DTS mission may be, given all the
different scenarios and travel rules that DOD travelers
encounter, we all know from personal experience that online
systems that are hard to use will not be used. But again, I am
encouraged by your progress and would like to know how and when
you expect to complete the job and shut down redundant legacy
systems. And again, I want to thank our witnesses for being
here today, and I look forward to your testimony. And with
that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the
Appendix on page 30.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Wittman. We will now go to your
opening statements. We are going to have a light go on here
that will turn red at five minutes. We will put the same clock
on ourselves. And most of us will pretty much stop at the end
of the five minutes. If there is things you need to tell us out
of the five minutes, you should go ahead and do that, but I
want you to have an idea about the length of time. It is my
understanding, Ms. Mitchell and Mr. Fisher, you all have a
joint statement. And we will begin with you, and then we will
go to Dr. Moore and Mr. Khan. And I don't want to be tacky, but
I just can't resist, I understand in the spirit of
transparency, the first draft you sent over of your statement
actually said at the top to the Office of Management and Budget
(OMB). And I appreciate that candor, that your statements did
have to be cleared by OMB. So you should feel free, at my
request, to share with us anything they edited out or perhaps
more importantly they added that you think we ought to know
about. Who, Ms. Mitchell, are you the lead?
STATEMENT OF PAMELA S. MITCHELL, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE TRAVEL
MANAGEMENT OFFICE, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Ms. Mitchell. Chairman Snyder, Congressman Wittman, and
distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to be here today to update you on progress the
Department of Defense has made with the Defense Travel System.
In the fall of 2006, Dr. David Chu, the Under Secretary of
Defense for Personnel and Readiness, stated to the Senate Armed
Services Committee, commercial travel within the Department,
including DTS, is under new management. The new management to
which he referred evolved into an extremely effective
partnership between the Defense Travel Management Office, DTMO,
and the Business Transformation Agency, or the BTA. Three years
ago the Travel Assistance Center did not exist. Today it is a
single one-stop shop helping DOD travelers around the world 24
hours per day, 7 days per week. Three years ago there was no
customer satisfaction program, no meaningful opportunity for
users to provide feedback, and no reliable means of effectively
gauging customer opinion. Today the Department is well on its
way to integrating customer feedback into DTS improvements and
the entire scope of travel.
A key component of this program is the QuickCompass survey,
a new scientific polling methodology. The 2008 QuickCompass is
our baseline going forward, and provides early evidence that
the Department's efforts to increase usability and
functionality are working. For example, 69 percent of DTS users
in this survey find DTS easy to use when making airline
reservations. Seventy-nine percent find it easy to use for
rental car reservations. Seventy-one percent of those
responding were either satisfied or very satisfied with expense
reimbursement time, which is three times faster than the
statutory requirement.
And 46 percent noted they would rather use DTS for making
reservations than call their commercial travel office agent.
Three years ago, DTS processed about 257,000 temporary duty, or
TDY vouchers during the first quarter of the fiscal year.
During the first quarter of this fiscal year, DTS processed
almost 867,000 vouchers, a 237.4 percent increase. Three years
ago, the Department lacked a comprehensive training program for
travelers. Today the program includes a variety of classes,
with more on the horizon.
Since July 2008, five new Web-based courses have provided
traveler and instructor knowledge to over 38,000. Twenty-three
distance learning courses were launched in early 2008 and are
in active use. Three years ago, 100-plus commercial travel
office contracts were managed by over 50 organizations across
the Department. Today, the DTMO manages 31 small business
contracts, and has awarded an umbrella contract to 8 commercial
travel vendors. We have awarded 7 of 11 planned task orders
under this contract, and expect to award the 4 remaining by the
end of this year. Three years ago, usability and additional
capability were only topics of discussion.
Today, the enhanced reservation module in DTS, commonly
referred to as Reservation Refresh, is regarded as a
significant improvement for travelers. Other important, more
recent enhancements include an easy way to request commercial
travel agent assistance from within the system and a simple
method to cancel a trip. Further, the results of the recent LMI
usability review will guide Department improvement of the user
interface over the next two years. Three years ago, the focus
was on basic business travel in DTS, with the system supporting
27 of the 73 travel types identified by the Institute for
Defense Analysis. Today, work is underway to implement
capability for those remaining. By October of this year, we
plan for DTS to support 66 of the 73 travel types. The
Department has charted an ambitious path ahead as we continue
to improve the Defense Travel System. Thank you for your
continued support, and I look forward to answering your
questions.
[The joint prepared statement of Ms. Mitchell and Mr.
Fisher can be found in the Appendix on page 33.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Ms. Mitchell. I should have said you
all have a joint written statement, but you each are doing oral
statements. Mr. Fisher.
STATEMENT OF DAVID M. FISHER, DIRECTOR, BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION
AGENCY, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Mr. Fisher. Thank you, Chairman Snyder, Congressman
Wittman, members of the subcommittee. It is a pleasure to be
here again to discuss our continued progress with the Defense
Travel System. As Ms. Mitchell has detailed, both usage and
satisfaction with DTS continue to increase, as does the savings
that increased usage brings to the Department of Defense.
Reservation percentages, vouchers processed, percent of
temporary duty (TDY) travel managed, all the metrics indicate
increased adoption of the tool. And the recent survey provides
another clear indicator that user satisfaction with the system
continues to improve as well. And since the economic model for
DTS is predicated upon a usage-based savings, these metrics all
indicate increased bottom line success. Now, our colleagues at
GAO continue to provide valuable independent oversight and
assessments of DTS. We appreciate their acknowledgment of some
of this progress. And the preliminary results from their
current audit indicate we still have some room for improvement,
specifically in the area of thoroughness of testing. And that
point is well taken. It has been an additional focus area for
us over the last few months. And it is a recommendation that we
take to heart and continue to look at. The Business
Transformation Agency is now 3\1/2\ years old, and DTS is one
of the 27 inherited systems that are in our portfolio. I
believe it is one of the best examples of the value that we
have been able to bring to previously troubled enterprise
systems.
At BTA we have adopted a set of guiding principles,
something we call the six S's of success. And I would like to
spend just a couple of minutes talking about DTS in the context
of those six guiding principles. Those are strategic alignment,
stovepipe elimination, standardize, streamline, simplify, and
systems and services. DOD-wide strategic alignment around DTS
is finally occurring after a long period of resistance.
Initially the tool was clumsy to use. It was geared more to
back-end financing processing than up-front travel management
by DOD travelers. Usage and satisfaction were both low.
Beginning with the 2007 implementation of our Reservation
Refresh module, alignment began to come into being. The tool
became easier to use, adoption increased, and the mandate
policy was issued from the Office of the Secretary of Defense
(OSD). Alignment is now in place between the finance and the
travel communities, and increasingly with the DOD individual
traveler as well, for DTS is the tool for travel management in
the Department. Stovepipe elimination. This has also occurred
in the last couple of years as the seamless integration between
the travel and finance communities has been accomplished in
DTS. Both communities needed individual capabilities to be
implemented without sacrificing the ability for tight
integration.
The updates to DTS in the last two years have facilitated
that, breaking down the functional stovepipes that had hindered
effective processing of individual travel transactions.
Standardize. Absolutely. The Department has used DTS to
standardize business rules and policies as enforced by the tool
itself for most of our TDY travel. Personnel and Readiness
(P&R) owns the policies, BTA implements them and the tool for
travelers to use. DTS now ensures that our DOD travelers see
the same available inventory, the same rates, and follow the
same business rules no matter who uses the tool or where. DTS
use gives us a high degree of confidence about compliance to
travel standards across the Department. Streamline. Again,
absolutely. The results are in our metrics. Payment for travel
vouchers is provided in about a week, beating the requirement
by three times, and besting the old manual processes by even
more.
This is one of the greatest benefits for our people, timely
and accurate pay for travel. Now, could we do more in the area
of streamlining? I believe we can, but that is dependent upon
the next S, which is simplify. This is the area where we have
made the least progress in trying to optimize the user
experience of our travelers. DTS remains quite complex in some
areas. It inhibits our ability to streamline some of the
elements of that front-end travel process. If we could simplify
the rules that we need to embed in the tool we could simplify
and streamline the process better for our travelers. I believe
we collectively have more work to do in this area.
Finally, in terms of systems and services, DTS is both. It
provides a capability which embodies most of our guiding
principles. We will continue to add to both the capability of
the tool and the usability of the tool in part based on the
excellent recommendations from the study from LMI. These
ongoing enhancements, consistent with our guiding principles,
will enable the Department to achieve our seventh S, which is
savings. We can clearly make the case that DTS saves money for
the Department.
Each voucher processed saves on the back-end transaction
costs to make that payment. Savings are also accruing on the
front end of the travel reservation process, as the new
contracts with our commercial travel partners embed lower fees
when most of that work is done in DTS. Every reservation made,
every voucher paid through DTS, this saves us money. Adoption
of the six S's through our close partnership with the DTMO has
enabled us to improve this tool, improve the experience for our
travelers, and improve the bottom-line savings for the
Department. And we are not done. We are continuing to update
DTS to account for even more types of travel, and continuing to
make improvements in the travel experience. And we believe
these steps will continue to add to an already vastly improved
DTS. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to be here
today. I do look forward to answering your questions.
[The joint prepared statement of Mr. Fisher and Ms.
Mitchell can be found in the Appendix on page 33.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Fisher. Dr. Moore.
STATEMENT OF DR. WILLIAM B. MOORE, VICE PRESIDENT, LMI
GOVERNMENT CONSULTING
Dr. Moore. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of this
distinguished subcommittee. My name is Bill Moore, and I am a
vice president of the Logistics Management Institute, known as
LMI. Thank you for inviting me to testify before the
subcommittee. Your letter of invitation asked for a discussion
on the Defense Travel System usability study that LMI completed
in September of 2008. You have asked that I focus on LMI's
findings, recommendations, and the improvement strategy
contained in our study. Following an independent study of DTS
by the Institute for Defense Analysis, the Defense Travel
Management Office asked LMI to assess the usability of the
system for various types of users performing various tasks. I
will provide a brief overview of our approach to that review,
discuss our findings, and end with our recommendations for
improving the usability of DTS. Our team conducted usability
testing with approximately 280 participants, having a mix of
demographic characteristics and level of experience with
computers and the Internet.
The participants included military, civilian users from the
four military services, as well as other DOD components. We
grouped participants into four categories: travelers, and three
separate administrative functions. Participants in each group
attempted to complete several role-specific scenarios,
representing common tasks such as setting up a trip, canceling
or modifying portions of a trip, or approving vouchers. We
observed their performance of the tasks, captured usability
metrics with automated software, and gathered participant
comments and suggestions. Our findings fall into three broad
categories: Performance-based issues that shows statistical
differences in success rates based on user demographics; DTS-
wide issues that affect the design of the overall system; and
scenario-based issues stemming from specific tasks given to
users. We found large differences in overall success rates for
different types of users and the kinds of tasks they performed.
The average success rate for travelers was only 42 percent,
with a success rate for the remaining three roles ranging from
61 to 88 percent. In general, we found that many ordinary tasks
are difficult, require users to understand complex underlying
business processes, invite confusion and error, lack sufficient
online help, and are hampered by poor interface design. On the
basis of our findings, we developed recommendations in three
broad areas: Performance-based recommendations, which include
making changes to the interface to better accommodate less
experienced users; improving opportunities for training and
system learnability; and ensuring that DTS provides enough
feedback so that users know whether they have successfully
completed a task.
System-wide recommendations are to design DTS to be more
like a traditional Web application that functions within one
browser window, complete with a back button and a link to home.
Make the system more like commercial travel sites, with which
many users are already familiar. Ensure that the welcome screen
has links that allow travelers to interact with trip documents.
Revise the format of travel documents and organization of
tasks. Revise the global navigation throughout the site. Make
link labels clear, unambiguous, and intuitive, and improve the
help information for each screen. We also make specific
recommendations for several task scenarios such as trip
cancellations and updating user profiles. Future improvements
should be user-centered, data-driven, and research-based. The
focus of initial design efforts should be on the scenarios
where users have the most difficulty are the most critical, and
have the greatest impact on user performance. In particular,
DTMO should focus first on the travelers' portion of the
system. We provided a strategic implementation plan that
outlines the iterative steps for changing critical portions of
DTS, assessing the results, and then using the results to guide
further refinements. By making changes to the system and
continually measuring progress, DTMO has a much greater chance
of ultimately improving the usability of the DTS on the
dimensions of user effectiveness, user efficiency, and user
satisfaction with the system. Thank you once again for the
opportunity to appear before you. I would be happy to answer
any questions you may have.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Moore can be found in the
Appendix on page 48.]
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Khan.
STATEMENT OF ASIF A. KHAN, DIRECTOR, FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND
ASSURANCE, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Mr. Khan. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and the members of
the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss our
prior work and our ongoing review of the Defense Travel System.
Your subcommittee has been at the forefront in addressing
issues related to DOD travel management issues. Our testimony
today will be based on the status of DOD three actions. The
first action that we will be discussing is the implementation
of GAO's prior recommendations. The second one is DOD's
progress in phasing out legacy travel systems. And the third
one is the cost savings associated with electronic versus
manual voucher processing. After completing additional work, we
plan to issue a report on the status of DOD actions on GAO's
prior recommendations for improving the Department's management
and oversight of DTS to help ensure its success in the future.
Mr. Chairman, GAO has made numerous recommendations to help
the Department improve its oversight and implementation of DTS
and related travel policies. We are currently reviewing the
status of DOD actions to implement the recommendations in our
January and September 2006 reports. My testimony today is based
on this work. First, I would like to discuss the status of our
prior recommendations. Our analysis indicates that of the 14
prior recommendations, DOD has completed action on seven. The
closed seven recommendations dealt with premium class travel,
unused airline tickets, use of restricted airfare, proper
testing of system interfaces, and streamlining certain travel
processes such as approving travel vouchers for expenses. While
DOD has made progress, there is still significant work to be
done. Of the open seven recommendations, three relate to the
adequacy of DTS requirements management and systems testing,
three to DTS underutilization, and one to streamlining the
process to reduce the need for hard copy receipts. Moving to my
second point, the phasing out of legacy travel systems.
A key component of DOD's travel transformation effort is
the elimination of legacy travel systems. Our analysis shows
the Department has not yet identified and validated the number
of legacy travel systems currently being operated. We received
inconsistent information on the number of systems in operation.
According to DTMO, there are 23 legacy travel systems in
operation. However, according to the military services, there
are 12 legacy systems in operation, 10 of which were on the
list provided by the DTMO. Without accurate information on
DOD's legacy system, there is a risk of not fully achieving the
goal of eliminating redundant travel management systems. It
should be noted some existing legacy travel systems will
continue to operate after DTS becomes fully operational. This
is because the legacy travel systems have a functionality which
will not exist in DTS.
A prime example of this is permanent duty travel by
civilians. Moving to the third point, the cost of electronic
versus manual voucher processing, the continued use of legacy
travel systems, particularly where DTS has been deployed,
diminishes the savings through electronic voucher processing.
We found it significantly cheaper to process a voucher
electronically versus manually, a cost saving of almost $35 per
voucher. Continued use by the military services of manual
voucher processing diminishes the cost savings that could occur
through the use of DTS.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, transforming DOD's financial
management and business operations is a challenge. However, it
is necessary for effective and efficient business operations.
DTS is intended to be the Department's comprehensive travel
management across all locations and organizations within DOD.
With over 3 million potential travel systems users, the sheer
size and complexity of deploying DTS overshadows any similar
effort in the private sector. DOD has made important progress.
Nonetheless, standardizing business systems across the
Department would be a key to saving billions of dollars
annually.
In closing, I commend your subcommittee for holding this
hearing as a catalyst for improving the Department's travel
management policies. Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared
remarks. I would be pleased to answer any questions that you or
any other members of the subcommittee may have. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Khan can be found in the
Appendix on page 54.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you to all of you for your both written
and oral statements today. As one little courtesy thing, if you
see me reach and look for my BlackBerry, please forgive me. My
wife is home with three two-month-old baby boys, and that is
how she fires off her red flares from Little Rock. So we will
put ourselves on the five-minute clock here and we will go
around, I am sure, at least a couple times, if not more. I
wanted to ask the question about Dr. Chu's memo from March 28th
of 2008, which if it is not part of the record, we will make
part of the record.
And just the last paragraph that says, accordingly,
pursuant to the authority conferred by Management Initiative
Directive 921, DTS will be the single online travel system used
by the Department. This mandate applies to all travel functions
currently supported by the system, and those that will be
supported in the future as they become available. And where I
get confused is at the end of Ms. Mitchell and Mr. Fisher, at
the end of your written statement you say, with continued
progress it is expected that DTS will be DOD travelers'
preferred method for making travel arrangements. Now, since
when do they have a choice? What is this preferred method
business? I don't care if they have a preferred method or not,
I mean, there is a lot of things we do--when I fill out my
vouchers I don't get a preference about, you know, which form I
fill out to get my travel paid for here. I mean, what is this
preferred method when you have that mandate?
Ms. Mitchell. Mr. Chairman, the ``preferred'' is really a
reference to the usability of the system. Certainly the mandate
exists, and the services have, in fact, issued their own
mandates. But we want to go beyond mandate. We want it actually
to be the system they want to use because we have made those
improvements for them.
Dr. Snyder. All right. So that was a poor choice of words
then in your statement, because it implies that they have a
choice. But we would all agree, would we not, that there are
clearly people out there that are making a choice that are
using the legacy systems? Correct?
Ms. Mitchell. Yes, sir.
Dr. Snyder. That is they should be using the DTS system,
but they continue to use the legacy system. Do you agree with
that?
Mr. Fisher. Sir, there are some.
Dr. Snyder. How many?
Mr. Fisher. I will defer to Ms. Mitchell on that. The point
I want----
Dr. Snyder. Let's hear from Ms. Mitchell then. Do you know?
I don't think we know, do we?
Ms. Mitchell. Sir, we are actually able now to publish
quarterly metrics. We have been able to go--one of the points I
would like to make is we all over time, certainly in the
Department and I suspect you do also, hear a lot of anecdotes.
One of the major things we have tried to do is move from the
anecdotal to the empirical. And so we are now able to publish
quarterly metrics that give us a lot of information on who is
using the system and who is not.
Dr. Snyder. Okay. How many people in the last quarter for
which you have metrics arranged their travel on vouchers and
all through a legacy system that should have been done through
the DTS system because of Dr. Chu's mandate? How many is that?
Ms. Mitchell. We know that for vouchers filed, which is our
best measure of usage of the system, that as of December DTS
was processing about 73 percent of those.
Dr. Snyder. That doesn't answer the question, though, does
it?
Ms. Mitchell. Well, we know of the overall universe of TDY
travel DTS processed 73 percent of that.
Dr. Snyder. Okay. Of that universe, are 100 percent of
those supposed to be processed by DTS.
Ms. Mitchell. No, sir, 100 percent of those cannot be.
Dr. Snyder. So then we don't know the answer to my question
then, do we?
Ms. Mitchell. Frankly, we do not know by shredding it out
into the eaches how many of that 27 percent remaining could be
processed into DTS. And that is because the legacy travel
systems don't afford us that level of detail.
Dr. Snyder. And the concern, I think, for the committee
is--I can't remember if it is in your statement or in the
background information--about the level of savings that occurs
if somebody uses a DTS system, what is it, about $2.57 a pop?
If somebody uses a manual voucher system it is $47? Or is that
about the range? And so when you tell us that we don't know how
many people are using the other systems, we are saying we don't
know how many people are wasting $42 a pop of government money.
Isn't that right? Isn't that what we are saying?
Ms. Mitchell. We are saying that of that 27 percent who did
not use DTS in December, we don't know how many of them could
have used DTS.
Dr. Snyder. Now, my time is winding down here, but one of
the frustrations we have had is--can you just tick off for me
right now the names and contractors of the legacy systems? Are
there 12 of them or are there 23 or are there 31?
Ms. Mitchell. Sir, we have reached out to GAO yesterday,
because we believe we have identified at least most of the
source of the confusion. We did provide a list of 23. However,
there were redundancies in the list. Because across the
services some of them used the same systems. The best
information I have today, and let me just step back and say
that the list that we have was provided by the services and
validated through our governance process.
So that is the list that we shared with the GAO. The list
that GAO has, as was noted, 10 of those were on our list, two
of those were new to us. And we have not had an opportunity,
because we just got the list, to really be able to take a look
at that and see what those two were or if they were overlooked
at some earlier time. So what we believe right now is that it
appears that there are 12 legacy systems that are currently
still in existence processing travel.
Dr. Snyder. Well, my time is up. I won't pursue this. But
you know--and you all are good people here. And you are taking
on a very difficult task, and have been for some years, but
when I hear you say it appears to us there are these many
legacy systems in an enterprise that is a $10-plus billion
enterprise and we don't even know for sure--I mean like what
happened? Did one of them get Harry Potter's invisibility cape
and disappear? I mean we can't even tell how many legacy
systems we have out there or how they are paid for or who the
contractors are? I mean, I don't get it. I don't get it. Mr.
Wittman, maybe you got it.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Mitchell, you
heard from Dr. Moore about LMI's report and the 39
recommendations contained within to enhance the usability of
DTS. Can you give us your estimates about what the costs are
associated with those particular improvements? How many can be
incorporated into parts of the systems that are ongoing now,
how much would be separate, and what the costs would be
associated with those?
Ms. Mitchell. We are going to approach usability
essentially in four ways. One is incremental improvements that
we have been making over time. One is when we release the
permanent duty travel capability this fall, that is going to
represent a major change in how users see the system for
processing their PCS reservations and voucher. And then there
will be two usability releases, one in fiscal year 2010 and one
in fiscal year 2011 that will get larger. So for the fiscal
year 2010 release specifically, our estimate at this point is
that it will cost about $4 million. And that is a preliminary
estimate, because a lot of analysis is still going on as to
what that will really entail. I do not yet have an estimate for
the second usability release.
Mr. Wittman. Okay. So those two usability releases then
will fully implement these 39 recommendations and allow you to
accomplish the objectives of those recommendations?
Ms. Mitchell. That is our intent, yes, sir.
Mr. Wittman. Okay. And when you get the dollar amount on
the second implementation of the usability function, if you
could let us know that, that would be very helpful.
Ms. Mitchell. Yes, sir.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 86.]
Mr. Wittman. Another question is the Department told the
subcommittee last year that it was performing a travel policy
review in collaboration with the Government Services
Administration (GSA) to look at the complexities of foreign
travel, including the provisions of the Fly America Act. And I
wanted to know has this review been completed? And if so, can
you tell us about the findings? And in particular, were there
any weaknesses identified in the Fly America Act that are
allowing DOD passengers to fly on foreign carriers if they have
U.S. partners versus foreign carriers who do not have U.S.
partners but are less expensive?
Ms. Mitchell. First of all, that phase of the travel policy
review is complete, and we are pending the final report from
LMI. There were three major recommendations that came out of
that, one, to create a framework for proactive policy
development. And one of the things that I think is important
for me to note is that this review was conducted in partnership
with GSA and the State Department, which is the first time this
has happened in several decades. For creating that framework,
one of those things, one of the underliers there is to
strengthen the governance process across the Department. And in
fact, GSA has taken that on, and we do participate in some new
governance boards that they have set up.
Another one is to enable data-driven business case
development. And that goes back to my earlier comment about
trying to move from anecdotal to empirical. And then lastly, to
expand government-wide principles. For example, standardizing
air travel and hotel standards across the government, as
opposed to differences among agencies. Their second major
recommendation was to simplify and streamline policy, to
simplify reimbursements, and to submit a travel reform
legislation package. We are actively working on both of those
things in this currently phase two of the process. Their third
major recommendation was to revise and standardize government-
wide regulations across the agencies and across military and
civilian. So those are the results of that review. In answer to
your question about the Fly America Act, the group did look at
that. And across the government, the consensus was that the Fly
America Act probably does need some revision to enable
government travelers to take advantage of the most effective
and efficient travel available.
So we are continuing to look at that as we look at the
broader recommendations, and will consider that for inclusion
in the reform package that we submit.
Mr. Wittman. Okay. So your recommendations as to how the
Fly America Act should be revised to make sure that the most
efficient use of funds and decision-making and travel can be
implemented?
Ms. Mitchell. Yes, sir.
Mr. Wittman. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield the
balance of my time.
Dr. Snyder. Ms. Sanchez for five minutes.
Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, when we put
up the DTS project it was really to standardize and to really
be able to have people do end-to-end travel within the
Department. Mr. Khan, is that really happening? Does this
system really have the potential, in your opinion, to be able
to do that? And how do we get from where we are right now using
legacy systems and 27 percent of the people off of the system
to really having what my service members and others say go to
the system and be able to get their travel done all sitting
down at one point?
Mr. Khan. I mean the system certainly has the potential to
be to handle end-to-end travel. However, based on our work, our
concern is being able to capture what the user requirements
are, which is going to give it the functionality to enable it
to do that end-to-end travel. There are some deficiencies in
how that information is captured and how the testing is
proceeded with. So there is a risk that some of the user
requirements may not end up in the functionality of the system.
Ms. Sanchez. I don't understand what you meant by that. Can
you explain more? Did you understand that comment? The
functionality, how it would be caught in the functionality of
the system? Explain to me what you mean by that.
Mr. Khan. By how the system is going to be used. That is
based on user requirements.
Ms. Sanchez. I see. Okay. Okay. Thank you for clarifying
that for me. I was struck by something that you said, your
second to the last sentence, and I didn't get a chance to write
it all down because I was listening to the question that the
chairman had. You said that we could save billions of dollars
if we had standardization. What do you mean by that? And can
you give us examples of what you are talking about in billions
of savings if we standardized? What standardization? I thought
that is what we were doing in DTS.
Mr. Khan. Right. That I mean was at the end of my statement
was more meant across DOD itself, standardizing other business
processes. But as far as it relates to DTS or the Defense
travel, it is standardizing the process so it will eliminate
the need for using legacy travel systems.
Ms. Sanchez. Okay. And my last question to you has to do
with unused tickets. Can you walk us through what did you find
with respect to unused tickets? And what would be the solution
to get those back into the system and get those credited?
Mr. Khan. That was a finding in our prior report in 2006.
When tickets were purchased centrally and they were not used by
the traveler, there was a possibility, and we did find
evidence, that refund was not obtained by the Department
itself. And one of our recommendations was that they put in
controls so that if the tickets were unused there was a method
to claim refund from the airlines. Based on our recent work, it
appears that they have put in processes where the Travel
Management Office or the Commercial Travel Office (CTO) will be
able to generate reports and be able to claim this money back
from the airlines. That is an intended policy, and I would
defer to my friends from the DTMO and the BTA to confirm that.
Ms. Sanchez. Is that happening in your opinion?
Ms. Mitchell. That is correct. That is happening. Another
important thing to note is that paper tickets are almost gone.
And that really has been the larger source of the problem,
because the paper ticket requires the individual traveler to
turn that back in so that reimbursement can be processed. With
electronic tickets, the CTOs are required by our contracts
after 30 days--first of all, they can see what ticket has not
been used through their systems and that they have no longer
than 30 days to process those for refund. And we get regular
reports from them so that we may check that.
Ms. Sanchez. So on a foreign travel ticket you are no
longer requiring that it be a paper ticket?
Ms. Mitchell. Well, unfortunately it isn't up to us to
request that. We prefer electronic tickets because we do have
an automated means of tracking them. But there are some
locations, I believe--and I will take this, but I believe
Turkey, for example, still requires paper tickets. But for
example, a recent check with the Commercial Travel Office
providing support to Army indicated that less than one percent
of all the tickets being issued to Army travelers were still
paper.
Ms. Sanchez. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Snyder. Ms. Davis for five minutes.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I am sorry, I am
going to have to leave right after this question. But Ms.
Mitchell, I think one of the issues raised particularly by the
GAO was how the legacy travel systems are actually funded, from
what accounts they are funded from. I am not sure, I don't
think I heard your answer to that before. Can you be specific
about that? Where are they being funded from?
Ms. Mitchell. Ma'am, I do not have the answer to that
question. I will have to take it for the record.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 86.]
Mrs. Davis. Why don't we know that?
Ms. Mitchell. They are not centrally managed. They are
managed by the individual components who use them. And
unfortunately, I would have to say that we are also frustrated
in not being able to obtain the information in a timely manner.
Mrs. Davis. Is there sort of a ballpark idea of where they
are funded from, or is it just actual single line accounts? Mr.
Khan, you looked at this issue. How do you think we, in your
capacity, can try to get to that answer?
Mr. Khan. We were somewhat puzzled as well. We weren't able
to get the information how they were funded. We looked at the
budget and some of the additional reports there are which DOD
has, but we were not able to get any visibility as to how they
were funded. I don't have an answer for that.
Mrs. Davis. Do you have any thoughts about that, Mr.
Fisher? Any thoughts about why that is so difficult to look at?
Is there something inherently classified about that?
Mr. Fisher. I honestly don't know. It is beyond our purview
and our role in managing the DTS program. So I don't have any
visibility into the other systems. Our focus is exclusively on
the DTS system. So I don't have any visibility to that.
Mrs. Davis. Okay. Thank you. One question would really be
whether it is realistic or not for all travel to be
consolidated within DTS. Is it realistic to do that, or are all
the issues that you have identified as problematic, do they
constitute an impossibility or--I still am having a little
trouble, too, understanding why this doesn't come together a
little more easily.
Mr. Fisher. So I believe--oh, I was going to give a
suggestion that there will be some elements of DOD travel that
it may not be cost-effective to build into the capability, the
tool. We have had a discussion about PDT, permanent duty travel
change. For the military, there is about 700,000 of those trips
a year. That is a fairly significant number. And it is
certainly cost-effective for us to implement that capability in
the tool, and we are doing that this year.
It will be released in the fall. Civilian PDT, which has
different rules, would require a different set of requirements
and implementation, there is only about 30,000 or 33,000, I
believe of those each year. So the cost-effective element of
that, what it would cost us to enable that capability in the
tool versus the savings that we would have doesn't put it on
our priority list to get that done right now.
I believe as Ms. Mitchell said, we will have 66 of the 73
trip types in place by the end of 2009. Of the balance, there
is a couple that we probably won't do because there are not
enough of them to warrant the investment in the tool to
automate that capability. But as we continue to add more trip
types, obviously the expanded universe of travel that can be
handled within the tool will expand, as will the savings will
accrue.
Mrs. Davis. Mr. Khan. Because part of the question we are
trying to get there by 2013, is that right, to try and
eliminate most of the legacy systems? Mr. Khan, did you want to
comment? I am sorry.
Mr. Khan. Our issue is kind of getting to the metrics
itself. When we were doing the analysis we could not find a
complete list of what the legacy systems were. So it was a big
question as to, if there wasn't an identified baseline of how
many legacy systems were, then it would be difficult to say
when they would all be put out of service. Like Ms. Mitchell
did say----
Mrs. Davis. That would be difficult to do, I would agree
with you, if you don't know what they are.
Mr. Khan. Right. Like Ms. Mitchell did mention, they have
sent over a list, and we will be having a meeting with them
just to make sure that we understand what those existing 10
legacy systems she referred to there are. And then we can
follow up from there.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. One other question just to follow
up, Mr. Chairman. Is every attempt to do teleconferencing when
it is possible? It seems today that there really are ways that
we can get a lot of work accomplished without necessarily
having--I just don't know whether that is something that is
pursued aggressively or whether it just doesn't work. I mean
obviously bringing people back from the theater, I mean there
are a lot of reasons why you have to have people engaged in
travel. But I am just wondering whether, you know, that is a
fairly exhaustive question that happens before----
Ms. Mitchell. We do know that teleconferencing does work,
and it is used. But I would not be able to tell you to what
extent.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mrs. Davis. I wanted to continue
this discussion that was continued by Mrs. Davis about the
legacy systems. And Mr. Khan, do we know are any of those
legacy systems managed by contracts, by contractors? Are they
all managed by contractors? Are they in-house? Do we know?
Mr. Khan. I do not have this information. I can provide
that for the record.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 85.]
Dr. Snyder. Do you know, Ms. Mitchell or Mr. Fisher, if any
of the legacy systems are managed by contract?
Ms. Mitchell. No, Mr. Chairman, I do not know.
Mr. Fisher. Again, I don't have insight into those legacy
systems.
Dr. Snyder. Now, you used that phrase a little bit ago, Mr.
Fisher, about no visibility into the legacy systems. But if I
am trying to put together a travel system and I have got a
group of people that we think are in the several hundred
thousand range that apparently are liking the other systems
better, I would think you would want to get some visibility
into those systems to find out what they are doing that you all
are not doing.
Mr. Fisher. Well, so let me characterize again an element
of why some people aren't using DTS. In many cases, it is
because DTS does not yet provide the capability for those types
of travel.
Dr. Snyder. No, I understand that. I am not talking about
those. I am talking about the ones that have the mandate that
aren't using it.
Mr. Fisher. Again, our focus is on DTS and making that
capability available. What is done in the legacy systems other
than the capability, which we are cognizant of the types of
travel that DTS doesn't deliver yet, that clearly is something
that is resident in some of the legacy systems. On the
usability side, again, our intent is to make DTS the, as Ms.
Mitchell said, preferred usage tool so that they are not only
mandated to use it, they will want to use it. And that is our
focus.
Dr. Snyder. Right. Mr. Khan, a number that we throw around
is we think it is about a billion dollars a year or so that in
the legacy systems. Is that a fair guesstimate?
Mr. Khan. We were not able to get any information--not a
lot of information on how much was being spent on legacy
systems. However, we do know--I mean, they need money to
sustain and operate. And also the other concern is the use of
manual voucher processing, which most of the legacy systems do
require. I mean, that diminishes the cost savings.
Dr. Snyder. So most of the legacy systems use the manual
voucher, which is about over $40 more per voucher to process?
Mr. Khan. About 35 approximately, correct.
Dr. Snyder. $35 more?
Mr. Khan. Right.
Dr. Snyder. Paid for by the taxpayer. It is perplexing. I
don't know how to get a handle on that. We are interested in
the Defense Travel System, and you are saying that that is your
area of expertise. It sounds like a lot of the inefficiency
right now is in the legacy system side of it because they
haven't moved over to the DTS. Now you all have a
responsibility to make the system available, and we have talked
about that. But the longer--we are now saying 2013, another 4
years at $35-plus a pop wasted every time a paper voucher goes
through, it just seems like that is a huge chunk of money, yet
we don't even know who these people, computer, some old
remnant. I don't know, it is the strangest dang thing I have
seen around here. Maybe, Mr. Khan, you can get a handle on
that. We may need to revisit this again here in the next month
or two to try to sort this out. Because maybe it would be
helpful to the DTS to try to sort out exactly who are these
systems, who are these mystery people that we can't even seem
to get an accurate list of that seem to change day by day
exactly what the list of them is. Did you have another comment,
Mr. Khan?
Mr. Khan. I was going to say that as Ms. Mitchell did say,
we did receive a list from them, which appears to be a pretty
final scrub of what the legacy systems are. So we will continue
with our analysis on that one. So that will help to answer some
of the questions that you have.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Khan, when you do these calculations as the
Government Accountability Office, formerly the General
Accounting Office, does it enter into your discussions, and I
will ask the same questions to you, Ms. Mitchell and Mr.
Fisher, the amount of hours it takes or the amount of time it
takes somebody sitting at their desk during work hours to work
themselves through the system? Has anybody done any studies on
exactly how long it takes to do the system, the DTS system?
Mr. Khan. Our focus was more looking at the quantitative
numbers itself as opposed to the time spent on processing.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Moore, did you touch on that in your study?
Dr. Moore. For the samples when we surveyed, we do have
statistics on that, how long it takes by various groups and for
various tasks. But that is just a sample. It is not
extrapolated.
Dr. Snyder. So what was it for the travelers what was it?
Dr. Moore. Let me look at that for you. The average time
for updating and routing was 8\1/2\ minutes. These are all in
the minutes. And less than 10 minutes for the various tasks.
Dr. Snyder. So if somebody sits down there and they just
found out they have to go somewhere it is about less than 10
minutes to put the whole trip together?
Dr. Moore. Well, that is for the individual components of
the tasks. There may be two or three tasks associated with
getting a trip together. So it could vary from somewhere--say
between 10 minutes and 20 minutes maybe total. Again, that is
based on what we--the folks we tested.
Dr. Snyder. All right. Ms. Mitchell--I am sorry, my time is
up, Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Moore, I want to
follow up a little bit more on LMI's study there and the 39
performance-based scenario recommendations that you all make.
And you heard a little bit earlier Ms. Mitchell talk about
phasing them in, and the first phase of usability and second
phase of usability. Are you aware of if those phasings have
been based on the importance of your recommendations or the
ranking of your recommendations? And if not, would you make a
recommendation as to which ones are most important in the phase
of implementation?
Dr. Moore. We identified the ones that we thought were of
the greatest hit value, and some of them, in fact, have
actually been already completed. For example, one was the
ability to cancel travel was quite difficult. And that was a
quick fix. DTMO made that immediately almost on that. So that
took one part of the problem out. And from what we know, and we
have not been intimately involved in the scheduling of the
activities, but of what we have seen on that, they have been
based on the high priority ones that will provide the greatest
benefit quickest.
Mr. Wittman. So from what you know, you are in agreement
with the implementation of those based on the ranking of
importance?
Dr. Moore. Yes, sir.
Mr. Wittman. Okay. Very good. Also in your study it
recommends that DOD should encourage DTS users to prepare their
own travel documents. And I was wondering if you found that
reliance on legacy systems affected the traveler's ability to
prepare documents in DTS. And again, we go back to that whole
issue of trying to get our arms around what is going on with
legacy systems. Is there an artifact there that is, you know,
holding people onto those instead of getting them over to the
DTS system?
Dr. Moore. There likely could be. We did not look at that
in our study. Our study was confined to basically testing the
specific functionalities of DTS.
Mr. Wittman. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will yield my
time.
Dr. Snyder. I wanted to ask--I am not going to ask a
question about the legacy systems. You will be glad to know
that. I wanted to ask about--I am not sure if it is a conflict
in information or not--but in your-all's written statement, Ms.
Mitchell and Mr. Fisher, on page 7, you have a higher
satisfaction reporting of--I guess 69 percent of DTS users find
the system easy to use. This is your QuickCompass survey. Dr.
Moore's is a more negative 42 percent. Would you describe for
me, please, the QuickCompass survey? Is that something that
people complete at the end of having done the process? Or what
do you think of the 42 percent and, Dr. Moore, what do you
think of their numbers?
Ms. Mitchell. The QuickCompass survey is a scientific
polling methodology that is Web-based that is sent to a sample
that is statistically set by the Defense Data Management
Center. And it had a great return rate of 39 percent. It
targeted a variety of travelers, from less experienced to more
experienced. And we were, of course, very happy to see those
numbers.
But let me comment on what we think the difference is
between those numbers and what we saw in the LMI survey. We
wanted to do the LMI survey because we really wanted to find
out the difficulties that people were having with the system if
they were sitting in a lab environment, which essentially they
were for the LMI study, unable to talk to fellow travelers, to
Defense administrators, unable to call the assistance center
for help. And so we have, I think, what is a very--it is not
quite a sterile condition, but it is a more sitting by yourself
trying to do something as opposed to be being able to reach out
to others for help. So I would suggest that that accounts for
the differences. But that is exactly what we wanted to target
and to find out, because that helps us determine what we really
can do to help travelers across the board.
Dr. Moore. Mr. Chairman, I would agree with that in our
study was designed in conjunction with DTMO to provide probably
the worst-case scenario in terms of determining usability. What
I mean by that is the only assistance beyond looking at a
screen that was available was the help function within the
software. So there was no ability to call the help desk number.
There was no availability to call co-workers or anybody else.
So this was kind of the worst case situation where somebody was
sitting in a room somewhere and they didn't have the ability
with a landline to get a hold of a help desk, nor could they
ask anybody else. It is not surprising to me that the numbers
would be higher if they were given some other capabilities.
Dr. Snyder. The sampling that was done, Ms. Mitchell, was
that of people who had completed travel? What was the universe
from which your sample was selected for the QuickCompass
survey?
Ms. Mitchell. Travelers, yes. When I say ``travelers,'' I
mean the universe of people. There may have been
administrators, there may have been travelers, everyone who
using the DTS system.
Dr. Snyder. So if someone started with the DTS system and
got ticked off and said the guy right down the hall is using
this other system, he probably wouldn't use the word ``legacy
system,'' but I am going to use the one that the guy down the
hall used because he said it worked better, that would not show
up in your QuickCompass survey, would it?
Ms. Mitchell. It would not.
Dr. Snyder. The numbers are real numbers. This is in
measure Khan's statement that in 2008, the Army processed 1.5
million vouchers, 1.1 million were done by DTS, but 400,000
were not. The numbers are significant, and of that you
acknowledged we don't know of those 400,000 how many people
would have had no choice to go through the legacy system,
versus how many people DTS and got dissatisfied and went a
different direction. Can that be a factor, too, in why your
results are different from Dr. Moore's? Or am I overreading
your sampling?
Dr. Moore. I think the fundamental difference is there are
the differences we talked about in terms of the ability to get
assistance. But whenever you mix the other category of users,
the 42 percent is just for travelers, it is not for the other
three administrative functions. Those had higher success rates.
If you put them all together, you come up with a blended rate
that is higher.
Dr. Snyder. I wanted to ask, the 24-hour help line, what do
you call that line?
Ms. Mitchell. It is the travel assistance center.
Dr. Snyder. The travel assistance center, how is that
going?
Ms. Mitchell. That has been very well received. I would let
you know that the one of the Air Force principals commented
that it is the best thing that we have done.
Dr. Snyder. Who administers that?
Ms. Mitchell. The Defense Travel Management Office has
oversight of it, and it is managed for us by Space and Naval
Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), an element of the Navy. And
it is contractor staffed, largely.
Dr. Snyder. Is there a call center somewhere that takes in
all of the calls?
Ms. Mitchell. Yes, sir. The call center is located in
Chesapeake.
Dr. Snyder. And how do you test the quality of the answers
that they give?
Ms. Mitchell. Every call is recorded. They have a special
system in place that does that. We are also down there
frequently listening in. I have listened in to some of the
conversations myself. I have been very favorably impressed. We
also do a survey that we just implemented this past fall. It is
not particularly scientific. It is giving folks the opportunity
to comment. And again, the results have been very good. The
reception has been very acceptable to the travel assistance
center.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you. Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. I wanted to follow up on some of the
chairman's questions. I will go back into some of the legacy
systems questions. You talk about not being able to get your
arms around where the legacy systems are still in use. Is there
a way that we can get that information? Is it fragmented
through different branches? How would we go about getting the
information to get the full scope where the legacy systems are
being used and how they are being used so we can look at maybe
trying to find a way to get our arms around phasing everybody
into the DTS. So we are looking at whatever attributes are
there in the legacy systems that we maybe ought to be putting
in the DTS so we sort of push people towards the DTS system?
Ms. Mitchell. The legacy systems, we do know for the most
part who is using them. And, for example, I can tell you that
there is a system called WINIATS, that is a computation module,
and it does process travel, and that is used by the Army, for
example, as well as one of the other services and some
agencies. But it also has additional modules that do other
sorts of financial functions that I am not particularly
familiar with.
As I noted earlier, we have gone to the services and asked
them to validate the list. We will certainly go back again and
ask again and see if we can sit down with them and really get
to fine level of detail on specifically what each system costs
and where it is used.
Mr. Wittman. I think that would be valuable to try to
figure out exactly how the systems are used, why they are still
in place, is there a lack of function with DTS that these
systems are trying to replace, or is it just a personal
preference? If we can maybe drill down and figure out those
reasons, we might be able to actually start to get rid of those
legacy systems. But the only way is to figure out where they
are, how they are being used and why they are being used. That
would be a great piece of information for us to obtain.
I want to talk a little bit about premium travel and if DOD
is able to identify when premium travel is used and when it is
paid for by DOD versus when it is paid for by the traveler, in
other words, if they have points to upgrade, and under what
conditions does the Department authorize and pay for premium
travel and how do you all audit and track when premium travel
is used and how it is authorized to make sure that it is not
being abused?
Ms. Mitchell. First of all, we do not have visibility as to
when the Department pays. Well, we know when the Department
pays, but we don't have visibility as to who specifically
upgrades using frequent flyer miles, for example.
We do have a process in place. We receive information from
the commercial travel offices to monitor who is flying premium
travel, both first and business class, and we receive reports
that enable us to do that. We are looking for more automated
ways to do that. One of the big challenges that we have is the
fact that there is no standardization of codes used by the
airlines that indicate a premium travel seat. So that makes
things very complex. And to add to that, the airlines over time
change their codes. So we are looking at sort of almost what
you can think of a carousel of codes to try to nail that down.
We also have some tools in place for the services to note
when they have approved premium travel. We take the feedback
that we get from the commercial travel office, those reports,
and we share them with the services and do a cross-check in
that way to ensure that what the Department has paid for has in
fact been approved.
You asked under what circumstances we permit premium
travel. There are two really that are the largest ones. One is
medical. Someone perhaps has a bad back and cannot make a 14-
hour trip sitting in coach. We know it is hard enough for those
of us without bad backs. And the second falls under the
category of mission. There is a critical meeting that is going
to occur, there is no coach seat available and the person has
to fly in order to get to that meeting. Those are two primary
examples.
Mr. Wittman. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my
time.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Fisher, I wanted to ask one very specific
question. Currently how many types of travel are there total?
Mr. Fisher. There are 73 total trip types for the
Department.
Dr. Snyder. And how many currently is DTS handling?
Mr. Fisher. There are 27, and those were prioritized based
on the volume.
Dr. Snyder. I think what you said was you are not going to
get to all 73 because the numbers would be too small. Do you
have a sense how many more you know for sure you are going to
do?
Mr. Fisher. We have plans to implement this year, we have a
summer release that is going to add 34, so that will bring us
up to 61 TDY.
By the end of 2009, we will have 5 more are predominantly
permanent duty travel for the military related to PDT which
will bring us up to 66 of the 73. So by the end of calendar
year 2009, based on our implementation plans, we will be at 66.
There are a couple more that we are looking at, there is
deployment travel and elements of deployment travel that are
incredibly complex with lots of business rules. Those will not
be done by 2009, it will be more 2010 time frame, and then you
have the cats and dogs that may not be cost efficient.
Dr. Snyder. I appreciate all of you taking your time today.
I anticipate that we will revisit this topic formally a year
from now. My guess is that we will want to do something in the
next month or two, or whenever we get more information about
this legacy system. It seems like we have this billion dollar-
plus hole that we don't know anything about. So we will be in
touch with all of you, particularly you, Mr. Khan, in terms if
you are able to sort out who these legacy systems are, who
manages them, how they are paid for and the total amount of
money. The bottom line is we talked about the mandate which
went out to all the joint chiefs and all the secretaries and
everyone in authority saying you have to use the DTS system.
And the reason they have said that is because it is $35 a pop
per voucher when they don't, and we still don't have a handle
on how many are not. Maybe that can help in some way. Thank you
all for being here today. Thank you, Mr. Wittman. We are
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:13 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
March 5, 2009
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
March 5, 2009
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WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING
THE HEARING
March 5, 2009
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RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY DR. SNYDER
Mr. Khan. On March 5, 2009, I testified before your Subcommittee on
the Department of Defense's actions to implement our prior
recommendations related to the Defense Travel System (DTS).\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ GAO, DOD Business Transformation: Status of DOD's Actions on
Previous Recommendations for the Defense Travel System, GAO-09-416T
(Washington, D.C.: Mar. 5, 2009).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This letter responds to a question that you asked us to answer for
the record. The question and our response follow.
Mr. Khan, are the legacy travel systems used instead of DTS managed
by contractors or in-house at the Department? If managed by
contractors, what are the costs of these contracts?
Based on information they have provided us, all of the legacy
systems used by the military services to manage travel, with the
exception of one, are owned and managed by the military services.\2\
The one exception is the Windows Integrated Automated Travel System
(WINIATS), which is a legacy travel system operated in house by the
Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) to process manual travel
vouchers. According to DFAS, a contractor owns the WINIATS travel
management software program, but the federal government owns the data
and the operating hardware. DFAS advised us that it had paid the
contractor over $2 million in fiscal year 2008 for the right to use the
software and incurred an additional $1.3 million of in-house operating
cost for a total annual system cost of approximately $3.3 million. The
contract is a fixed-fee 1-year contract with four 1-year options.
Currently, the contract is on an extension pending negotiation of a new
contract for 1 year (2009) with four 1-year options for renewal.
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\2\ At a March 12, 2009 meeting, the military services stated that
the following systems are used to manage travel--the Army (the Regional
Level Application Software, the Army Orders and Resource System, the
Automated Fund Control and Order System, and the Corps of Engineers
Financial Management System; the Navy (the Naval Reserve Order Writing
System, the Naval Facilities and Engineering Command/Enterprise
Administrative Management Information System, and the Windows Automated
Travel Order System and Automated Travel Order System Plus Afloat and
Ashore, the Reserve Order Writing System; and the Air Force (Web
Intensive New Gain System for ROTC, the Air Force Order Writing System,
and the Reserve Travel System).
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As of April 1, 2009, the Navy confirmed that it owns the
intellectual rights and hardware related to the four legacy systems it
uses to manage travel--the Naval Reserve Order Writing System (NROWS),
the Naval Facilities and Engineering Command/Enterprise Administrative
Management Information System, the Windows Automated Travel Order
System and Automated Travel Order System Plus Afloat and Ashore
(WinATOS/ATOS), and the Reserve Order Writing System (ROWS). According
to Navy, three of these four Navy systems--NROWS, WinATOS/ATOS, and
ROWS--are operated jointly by the government and contractor personnel.
The Navy has not yet provided us the cost associated with contractor
personnel operating three of their systems and the terms of those
contracts. Further, we have not yet received information requested from
the Army or Air Force regarding whether their systems are operated by
government or contractor personnel, or both, the costs associated with
systems managed by contractors, and the specific terms of the contract.
In addition, based upon information provided by the Defense Travel
Management Office, 35 of the 44 defense agencies and joint commands
have stated that they are using DTS and do not have any legacy systems
to manage their travel operations, as of April 7, 2009. Regarding the
remaining nine activities, one defense agency--the National Geospatial-
Intelligence Agency--reported that they use WINIATS for civilian
permanent change of station travel. In addition, the United States
Transportation Command uses a system called the Global Air
Transportation Execution System to support passenger and cargo movement
on both chartered and military aircraft. The Defense Travel Management
Office told us they are following up with the remaining seven entities
to identify the specific systems used for processing travel. We will
provide the Subcommittee staff with any additional information we
receive from the department. If you or your staff have questions about
our response to this question, please contact me. [See page 16.]
______
RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. WITTMAN
Ms. Mitchell. The cost estimate for the second phase of the
usability release will be available during the third quarter of Fiscal
Year 2010. I will be happy to provide the cost estimate to the
Subcommittee as soon as it becomes available. [See page 12.]
______
RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MRS. DAVIS
Ms. Mitchell. Defer to the Services for information on their legacy
systems. The Service Secretaries have received individual letters from
the Committee (attached) in this regard and will respond directly. [See
page 15.]
[The letters referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on
page 75.]
?
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
March 5, 2009
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY DR. SNYDER
Dr. Snyder. The Department stated that to enhance the user-
friendliness of DTS, it plans to implement two phased ``usability
releases'' in 2010 and 2011. For the DTS usability release planned for
2010, the Department estimated that the cost would be about $4 million.
What is the cost estimate for the second phase of the usability
release, planned for 2011?
Ms. Mitchell. The cost estimate for the second phase of the
usability release will be available during the third quarter of Fiscal
Year 2010. I will be happy to provide the cost estimate to the
subcommittee as soon as it becomes available.
Dr. Snyder. The shift from paper tickets to electronic tickets will
help the Department decrease travel costs. What percentage of DOD
travelers are currently using paper tickets? In what circumstances are
travelers required to use paper tickets? Is there a Department policy
mandating the use of e-tickets where possible?
Ms. Mitchell. Current use of paper tickets in the DoD is rare,
affecting approximately 1.2% of travelers. Their use is necessary only
when an airline does not have electronic ticketing capability, either
because it does not exist for a particular destination or is
temporarily unavailable because of airline ticketing system problems.
Some examples include Algeria and Brazil where paper airline tickets
are required for all in country travel, and paper tickets are required
when traveling on Saudi Arabia Airlines as part of a code share
agreement with Gulf Air. Airlines are working to resolve these
challenges to achieve 100% electronic ticketing capability.
There is no Department policy mandating the use of e-tickets.
However, the Department's commercial travel office contracts do
stipulate that electronic ticketing is the preferred method of ticket
issuance for DoD travelers.
Dr. Snyder. GAO's scrutiny of the DOD budget revealed that only 3
legacy travel systems are identified in DOD's budget. How many legacy
systems are currently used by the Department and the Services, and what
are the funding accounts for each of these legacy systems?
Ms. Mitchell. Defer to the Services for information on their legacy
systems. The Service Secretaries have received individual letters from
the Committee (attached) in this regard, and will respond directly.
[The letters referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on
page 75.]
Dr. Snyder. Significant cost savings can be achieved by using
teleconferencing instead of travel where possible. What is the DOD
policy on using teleconferencing versus travel? How is it enforced?
Ms. Mitchell. The Joint Federal Travel Regulations and the Joint
Travel Regulations require consideration of alternatives to travel when
the ``mission can be achieved by some other means.'' When a
teleconference is deemed more cost effective than travel, the decision
is made locally by the command and is based on mission need and
availability of teleconference facilities.
Dr. Snyder. Are the legacy travel systems used instead of DTS
managed by contractors or in-house at the Department? If managed by
contractors, what are the costs of these contracts? Please provide a
detailed explanation for each legacy system.
Ms. Mitchell. Defer to the Services for information on their legacy
systems. The Service Secretaries have received individual letters from
the Committee (attached) in this regard, and will respond directly.
[The letters referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on
page 75.]
Dr. Snyder. The Subcommittee staff requested that the Department
provide cost information for DOD's travel enterprise prior to the March
5, 2009, hearing. The Department informed the staff that the actual
cost of DOD's travel enterprise for fiscal year 2008 will not be
available until the full President's budget is released and Object
Class 21 information is made public. The Subcommittee has access to
non-publicly available information and requests that the cost
information for fiscal year 2008 and fiscal year 2009 be provided
immediately.
Ms. Mitchell. The figures below are preliminary. I will be happy to
provide final figures when they become available.
-- Estimated FY 2008 spend for the travel and transportation of
persons: $10.4 billion
-- Estimated FY 2009 budget for the travel and transportation of
persons: $9.2 billion
Dr. Snyder. Given the LMI survey finding that only 42% of travelers
could successfully book a trip, there is an imminent need for the
usability problems within DTS to be fixed. Please provide a detailed
explanation for the plans to address the usability problems within DTS,
including time frames. Also, how many of the 39 system changes
recommended in the LMI study has the Department already implemented?
What are the Department's plans to implement any outstanding
recommendations?
Mr. Fisher. The Department plans to address all 39 recommendations
documented in the LMI Usability Review of the Defense Travel System
(DTS). Two of the LMI recommendations have already been implemented.
In concert with the LMI Usability Review, the Department identified
a series of essential system improvements directly related to usability
through an on-going customer initiated change request process. These
change requests were prioritized, approved through the defense travel
governance process, and targeted for release in February 2010.
The LMI review, completed in October 2008, produced a set of 39
recommendations. Because DTS usability improvements were already
underway as part of the usability improvement plan, the previously
identified change requests and the 39 LMI recommendations were jointly
reviewed and streamlined (where possible) to take advantage of existing
usability work and reprioritized to optimize the impact of the
Department's improvements to DTS usability.
Based on the results of the review and reprioritization, the
Department adopted a two-phased approach to improve DTS usability that
includes both the customer change requests and the 39 LMI
recommendations. The first phase, Usability I, focuses on enhancements
to help prevent common traveler mistakes and is planned for release in
February 2010. The second phase, Usability II, includes a redesign of
the DTS user interface based on direct input from the DTS user
community and is scheduled for release in May 2011.