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i 

43–785 2009

[H.A.S.C. No. 110–147] 

OVERSIGHT OF THE DEFENSE TRAVEL 

SYSTEM 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

APRIL 15, 2008 


Congress.#13
(II) 

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman 

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania 

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri 

ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

JEFF MILLER, Florida 

PHIL GINGREY, Georgia 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky 

MICHAEL MCERLEAN, Professional Staff Member 

THOMAS HAWLEY, Professional Staff Member 

ROGER ZAKHEIM, Professional Staff Member 

SASHA ROGERS, Research Assistant 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2008 

Page 

HEARING: 

Tuesday, April 15, 2008, Oversight of the Defense Travel System ..................... 1 

APPENDIX: 

Tuesday, April 15, 2008 .......................................................................................... 29 

TUESDAY, APRIL 15, 2008 

OVERSIGHT OF THE DEFENSE TRAVEL SYSTEM 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Akin, Hon. W. Todd, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee ............................................................. 2 

Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman, Oversight 

and Investigations Subcommittee ....................................................................... 1 

WITNESSES 

Dominguez, Michael L., Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for 

Personnel and Readiness, Department of Defense ............................................ 3 

Fisher, David, Director, Business Transformation Agency, Department of Defense ...................................................................................................................... 4 

Mandelbaum, Dr. Jay, Research Staff Member, Institute for Defense Analyses ........................................................................................................................ 7 

Williams, McCoy, Managing Director, Financial Management and Assurance, 

U.S. Government Accountability Office .............................................................. 6 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Akin, Hon. W. Todd .......................................................................................... 35 

Dominguez, Michael L. .................................................................................... 38 

Fisher, David .................................................................................................... 52 

Snyder, Hon. Vic ............................................................................................... 33 

Williams, McCoy ............................................................................................... 61 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

Mr. Akin ............................................................................................................ 83 

Mr. Conaway ..................................................................................................... 83 

Mr. Johnson ...................................................................................................... 84 

Dr. Snyder ......................................................................................................... 81 

(1) 

OVERSIGHT OF THE DEFENSE TRAVEL SYSTEM 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE, Washington, DC, Tuesday, April 15, 2008. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 3:06 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. We 

appreciate you all being here with us this afternoon. 

Our hearing topic today is on the Defense Travel System (DTS). 

The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations is holding this 

hearing to receive testimony regarding recent studies, the current 

status and any planned improvements to the Defense Travel System. 

This is the second subcommittee oversight event on this issue 

today. We heard from Department of Defense (DOD) travelers this 

morning. We are undertaking this hearing at the request of our 

Readiness Subcommittee that asked us to look into it. 

Since it first began in 1998, the system has had numerous developmental problems, operational test failures, premature deployments, functionality problems, low usage and general user dissatisfaction. That was, of course, almost 10 years ago now. 

Congress directed that DOD conduct an independent study on 

DTS in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2007, 

and the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) published its report 

March 2007. IDA found that most of DTS’s technical problems had 

been remedied by early 2007, and that the system itself was salvageable, a fairly dramatic conclusion compared to conclusions that 

had been reached in the past 10 years. 

We are interested in today whether IDA’s recommendations have 

been or will be instituted, and what efforts are under way to improve the usability of the system for travelers. We have anecdotal 

evidence that DTS is difficult and time-consuming unless travelers 

are used to using the system or are trained on it frequently. We 

also worry about the cost-effectiveness of the system versus hidden 

costs and opportunity costs. 

For our panel today we are joined by the Honorable Mike 

Dominguez, the Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for 

Personnel and Readiness at the Department of Defense; Mr. David 

Fisher, the Director of the Business Transformation Agency, the 

2 

Department of Defense; Mr. McCoy Williams, the Director of Financial Management and Assurance of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO); Dr. Jay Mandelbaum, research staff 

member at the Institute for Defense Analyses. 

We thank you all for being here. I will say right now that any 

written statements that you have presented to us will, without objection, be made a part of the record. And we go to Mr. Akin for 

any comments he would like to make. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Snyder can be found in the Appendix on page 33.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. W. TODD AKIN, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM MISSOURI, RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all for joining us here today. 

Today’s hearing raises a new subject for this subcommittee, the 

Defense Travel System. While the topic may appear mundane, you 

get a sense of the program’s importance when you take into account the numbers that are involved. Currently the Department’s 

defense travel enterprise comes at an annual cost of $12- to $13 billion. 

DTS was designed to improve how the Department manages 

travel by modernizing travel processes, maximizing efficiencies and 

lowering costs. Unfortunately it took too long for the program to 

stand up and run effectively. I hope that the days of being behind 

schedule and cost overruns are past. And it is my understanding 

that DTS is much improved, and that the Department has begun 

to reap the benefits it sought from the program back in 1998. 

And so this is not to say all is fine. There are still challenges, 

and the Chairman has mentioned usability. Making DTS a userfriendly portal for booking and collecting travel reimbursements 

were two of the primary reasons this committee required the Department to have a federally funded Research and Development 

Center study on DTS. This initiative resulted in the Institute for 

Defense Analyses study that made a series of recommendations on 

improving the system, but fell short of recommending an overhaul 

of DTS. I would like to hear from the Department on their progress 

in implementing the IDA recommendations. 

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement, and thank you very 

much for scheduling the hearing. We are looking forward to our 

witnesses. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Akin. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Akin can be found in the Appendix on page 35.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Let me also add that we don’t have any hidden 

agenda on this or any conclusions we have already reached. It is 

a complex area. Defense travel has always been complex. I admire 

Secretary Dominguez for taking on the tasks that he does in his 

job. It is a complex business. But we believe that it is the responsibility of this Congress to see what is going on and perhaps contribute to it in any way that we might to becoming more efficient. 

We will begin with Secretary Dominguez, and we will just go 

right down the row. 

3 

Secretary Dominguez. Let me say we will put that light on—although his light is not going on. Well, anyway, go ahead. I was 

going to say if the light ever does go on, and it turns red, ignore 

it. If you need to—it will just give you an idea of when the time 

goes. 

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL L. DOMINGUEZ, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY 

UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR PERSONNEL AND 

READINESS, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And let me 

first say before getting into the subject how delighted I am to work 

with you again as I certainly enjoyed working with you as the 

Chairman of the Military Personnel Subcommittee. And I do want 

to start out by thanking you for the work that you did in support 

of our all-volunteer armed forces on that committee. We have certainly benefited from your leadership, sir. 

Now, as to the Defense Travel System, let me say first a little 

history lesson is that the Under Secretary for Personnel and Readiness assumed responsibility for the system in February of 2006, 

and we assumed responsibility first for travel policy, which heretofore had been fragmented across the Department, and for the Defense Travel System, which had previously been under the sponsorship and leadership of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service 

and was largely at that point focused on the funds disbursement 

issue. So we inherited a Defense Travel System that, you know, 

had legitimate concerns, legitimate challenges, and they were challenges affecting whether the system was meeting the user needs 

and user expectations, and clearly it wasn’t. 

And there were concerns about the cost of the system and the 

cost of administrating defense travel. There were concerns about 

the technical approach that we were using in DTS as governmentdeveloped software versus commercial off-the-shelf applications. 

And they were concerned about whether we would get the benefits 

associated with such a major investment of DOD and taxpayer resources. 

So, you have pointed out that there were several looks at Defense 

Travel System by the GAO, by the inspector general and by IDA. 

All of those looks provided to Dr. Chu, the Under Secretary, valuable advice on how to get the Department’s travel-improvement initiatives back on track. And I would like to say that we have and 

will implement all of the recommendations of the IDA study which 

is the subject of this hearing, except for the recommendation that 

DTMO, the Defense Travel Management Office, complete the fielding of DTS, and we have left that responsibility with the military 

services. But every other case we are moving out to implement or 

have implemented the IDA recommendations. 

So where are we now? We are largely deployed, upwards of 85 

percent of the sites that we are going to, and we have—the tough 

ones that are left are small, and they are distributed, and they are 

largely Guard and Reserve locations. So that is a challenge that remains in front of us. 

We are midway through—my personal assessment—midway 

through functionality, the trip types, the kinds of trips that DTS 

4 

will cover. So we are about midway through that. About 70-odd trip 

types, and we are about 30 of them now serviced by DTS. 

I believe we have crossed the goal line for voucher processing, 

that is paying the travelers and paying the vendors, and that is not 

surprising given this system was originally developed by accountants for accountants. But we are still in the midway toward the— 

our goal of satisfied users. So we have—that is the furthest part 

of our journey that lies in front of us. 

I do want to say then in summary that we are—we have new 

customer-centered management for this enterprise in which you 

can have confidence. We have extensive stakeholder involvement. 

We have a superb partnership with our acquisition agent and developer, the Business Transformation Agency. So I think in sum we 

are on course to successfully achieving the purpose that the Congress established for us to do: Sound management of DOD’s travel 

enterprise and real visibility and control of that $12- to $13 billion 

of taxpayer resources that was mentioned here. So I look forward 

to your questions. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Dominguez can be found in the 

Appendix on page 38.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Fisher. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID FISHER, DIRECTOR, BUSINESS 

TRANSFORMATION AGENCY, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 

Mr. FISHER. Chairman Snyder, Congressman Akin, members of 

the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to provide information on the progress the Department of Defense has made with 

the Defense Travel System. Two-and-a-half years ago, Department 

Secretary of Defense Gordon England stood up the Business Transformation Agency, the BTA, as a new entity chartered to guide the 

transformation of business operations throughout the Department 

and to deliver enterprise-level capabilities that align to warfighter 

needs. In this regard, the BTA has a current portfolio of 27 information technology (IT) business systems, and one of those is DTS, 

the subject of today’s hearing. 

DTS provides DOD military and civilian travelers with an endto-end business solution that automates the Defense travel processes. DTS allows travelers to create travel orders, validate authorizations, make travel reservations, receive approvals, generate 

travel vouchers and directly deposit payment to the traveler’s personal account and the government charge card vendor for reimbursement. The system went into initial broad-based production 

use in 2003 and was transitioned to the BTA for program management responsibility in September of 2006. 

The Defense Travel Management Office within the Office of the 

Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (OSD P&R) provides functional oversight and ownership of DTS and obviously has 

become a very close partner of ours in the BTA’s DTS program office. 

In response to customer feedback and feedback from studies like 

the ones conducted by the GAO, it was clear to both the DTMO and 

the BTA that improvements were needed in the DTS solution as 

it stood in 2006. While travelers were very pleased with timely 

5 

payment of their travel vouchers, they were less than pleased with 

a number of functional elements of the travel management portion 

of the solution. 

Now, that area became the focus of a major upgrade to the system that went into production a little more than a year ago, and 

with that upgrade, the DTS reservation process was completely reengineered. The Reservation Refresh, which is what we called the 

upgrade, resolved a lot of the issues that had prompted Congress 

to mandate the independent study of DTS, and those benefits were 

recognized by the Institute for Defense Analyses, IDA, in that 

March 2007 assessment. 

Some of the things specifically that IDA noted, that DTS, as a 

result of Reservation Refresh, now provides lowest-cost routing consistent with DOD policy; accesses a more complete airline flight inventory; improves usability by pricing all flights as displayed, 

grouping flight choices into easy-to-understand categories, securing 

reservations at the point of selection, and providing potential policy 

violation notices at the point of selection. 

In its recommendations, IDA determined that DOD should continue to use the Reservation Refresh version of DTS, and that it 

should be given a chance to work while additional improvements 

to DTS usability are pursued. In the longer term, IDA also recommended that DOD explore a service-oriented architecture, or 

SOA, approach after the primary risks had been sufficiently mitigated. 

Now, the results since the launch of Reservation Refresh have 

been positive. Usage of the tool continues to rise at an almost exponential rate, as can be seen in the chart to my right here. In fiscal 

year 2006, DTS processed 1.4 million travel vouchers. In fiscal year 

2007, that number increased to 2.4 million travel vouchers, a 72 

percent increase. And at the current pace, DTS will process more 

than 3 million travel vouchers in fiscal year 2008. 

Consistent with the IDA report findings, the DTMO and BTA 

continue to plan for and add capabilities that will bring value and 

utility to the Defense traveler and identify and implement improvements to usability and functionality to support the DTS economic 

model of maximizing transactions through the system. For the ongoing DTS road map, BTA will examine the upcoming results of 

the DTMO usability study and will augment the functionality with 

additional types of travel, including special-circumstances travel 

and permanent-duty travel. Both of those will be enabled in 2009. 

In fact, all travel types are expected to be supported by DTS by the 

end of fiscal year 2010. 

Acknowledging the advantages service-oriented architecture may 

eventually bring to systems such as DTS, the BTA has taken some 

initial steps to address IDA’s longer-term recommendation about 

SOA. The pending release of Technical Refresh, a software enhancement designed to improve the utility of DTS, establishes an 

initial framework for this strategy. A SOA approach breaks 

functionality into discrete services. As a modular concept, SOA allows identified services to be provided by either private sector or 

government organizations external to the program itself. Interestingly enough, DTS already incorporates a number of SOA attributes in the existing solution, but because SOA is relatively unVerDate Nov 24 2008 09:01 Apr 02, 2009 Jkt 004375 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-147\43785.TXT HARM2 PsN: MARY
6 

tested within the DOD and is not without some risk, we are adopting a phased approach as we consider additional opportunities presented by service-oriented architecture. BTA is currently conducting a pilot designed to test and thus mitigate risk associated 

with the maturity of the SOA infrastructure within the DOD. 

Working with the DTMO, the feedback we have received from 

DOD travelers as well as from studies conducted by IDA and others indicate to us that Reservation Refresh has been a positive 

step. We also know that we can do more, and we will continue to 

upgrade DTS based on additional feedback and business cases that 

will translate into requirements that we can build into the tool. 

Mr. Chairman, we appreciate and value the support Congress 

has given us over the last few years as we have established new 

governance and discipline to our business transformation efforts 

across the DOD, and we thank you and the members of the subcommittee for the opportunity to be here today, and I would be 

pleased to answer your questions. Thank you. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Fisher can be found in the Appendix on page 52.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Williams. 

STATEMENT OF MCCOY WILLIAMS, MANAGING DIRECTOR, FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND ASSURANCE, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Thank you. Mr. Chairman and members of the 

subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss our previous findings related to problems encountered by the Department 

of Defense in its efforts to implement the Defense Travel System. 

My testimony today is based on our prior reports and testimonies 

from 2005 and 2006, and I will highlight three key findings we previously reported upon. 

First, the Department did not have quantitative metrics to measure the extent to which DTS was actually being used. We identified 

several key issues with regard to DTS utilization. Rather than report utilization based on individual site system utilization data, 

DOD relied on outdated information and reporting of DTS utilization to DOD management and to Congress. Also, because DTS officials were unable to identify the total number of travel vouchers 

that should have been processed through DTS, we previously stated that DTS’s reported utilization rates may not have been reliable. 

The underutilization of DTS also adversely affected the estimated savings. As we previously reported, at least 31 legacy travel 

systems were operating within the Department at that time. We 

acknowledge that some of the existing travel systems could not be 

eliminated because they performed other functions that DTS could 

not process. However, in other cases, the Department was spending 

funds to maintain duplicative systems that performed the same 

functions as DTS. Finally, because of the continued operation of the 

legacy systems at locations where DTS had been fully deployed, 

DOD components were paying higher processing fees for processing 

manual travel vouchers as opposed to processing the travel vouchers electronically through DTS. 

7 

Second, DOD had not addressed several functional problems associated with weak requirements management and system testing. 

Requirements provide the foundation for system testing. They must 

be complete, clear and well documented to design and implement 

an effective testing program. As discussed in our September 2006 

report, we identified that only 159 of the 246 unique city pair 

flights that should have been identified according to the DOD requirements were displayed. As a result, DTS users did not have access to needed flight information. 

Third, our September 2006 report noted that two key assumptions used to estimate cost savings for the September 2003 DTS 

economic analysis were not well supported. Consequently, the economic analysis did not serve to help ensure that the funds invested 

in DTS were used in an efficient and effective manner. Two primary areas represented a majority of the over 56 million of estimated annual net savings DTS was expected to realize: Personnel 

savings of $24 million and reduced commercial travel office fees of 

$31 million. 

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, as we have reported on numerous 

occasions, overhauling the Department’s business operations has 

been a daunting challenge for DOD, and the travel management 

area is no exception. In our 2 reports, we made 14 recommendations to help improve the Department’s management and oversight 

of DTS. We will be following up on DOD’s actions to address our 

recommendations in accordance with our standard audit follow-up 

policies and procedures. We would be pleased to brief the subcommittee on the status of the Department’s actions once we have 

completed our follow-up efforts. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be 

happy to answer any questions that you or other members of the 

subcommittee may have. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Williams can be found in the Appendix on page 61.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Mandelbaum. 

STATEMENT OF DR. JAY MANDELBAUM, RESEARCH STAFF 

MEMBER, INSTITUTE FOR DEFENSE ANALYSES 

Dr. MANDELBAUM. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, distinguished 

members of the committee, I thank you for the opportunity to talk 

to you today. I have got no formal statement for the record. The 

March 2005 IDA report serves that purpose. 

Dr. SNYDER. We will include that, actually refer to that as your 

opening statement, because that is what gets submitted. That will 

be made part of the record. 

Dr. MANDELBAUM. Okay. For my opening remarks now, I simply 

wanted to tell you that IDA took the task of doing this report very 

seriously. We made the study as objective and as fact-based as we 

could. It was conducted by a multidisciplinary team who were completely independent of the Defense Travel System and, in fact, at 

the onset had very little knowledge of DTS itself, and I look forward to answering your questions about the report. Thank you. 

[The information referred to is retained in the committee files 

and can be viewed upon request.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you all. 

8 

We think that the clock is working here, and we will all go by 

our five-minute rule and probably have time to go around a couple 

of times, although we may have some votes coming up. 

I have to ask, Mr. Fisher, on page eight, you say, ‘‘Web service 

enablement allows the program the flexibility to further decompose 

the DTS solution set into more modular elements.’’ Am I the only 

person here that has no idea what in the hell that means? 

Mr. FISHER. We would have to poll the group. Probably not. 

Dr. SNYDER. What does that mean? 

Mr. FISHER. So the concept that IDA recommended pursuing 

along the lines of service-oriented architecture is, I think, a multifaceted element of technology capability that has come along a way 

in the last few years. Fundamentally what it means is it provides 

an opportunity instead of building something, if there is a reusable 

service that is out there in the technology world today, rather than 

you building it, you subscribe to it, which is one of the things that 

DTS already does. 

But DTS did not build the global distribution systems or the software that we get from ITA that actually manages the flight inventory and the pricing. Again, the GDSs manage the bookings, the 

government travel card provider. Those are all external services 

that DTS subscribes to. 

The IDA study has recommended that we look at potentially 

leveraging other services that can be provided by other partners 

rather than things that we have built ourselves. The technology 

that has come, I think, a long way in the last few years makes that 

easier. The concept is not new. The technology has gotten better 

that enables that flexibility. 

Now, the challenges to make that technology work requires a few 

things to be in place. Number one, there has to be an existing service, which is one of the reasons to date why we have not pursued 

a service for the travel management portion of DTS, because there 

is no other service today that provides the business rules in a service or a piece of software that the Department of Defense has to 

comply with. So there is no other service for that piece of DTS that 

exists in the marketplace. If there was, we could take a look at it, 

but there isn’t. We have the most complicated travel rules probably 

on the planet, and we have a tool now that subscribes to these 

things that manage airline inventory and things like that, but we 

built the piece that manages our own specific rules. We have a 

technology capability that could subscribe to such a service if one 

existed, but it does not exist today. 

The other piece that makes this kind of technology challenging 

for us is that it is based on standards, technology standards, and 

the DOD is also behind the times in moving to that standardsbased environment internally within the Department. That makes 

adopting the SOA, the service-oriented architecture technologies, 

very challenging. I hope that helps. 

Dr. SNYDER. I am kind of sorry I asked, to be honest with you. 

I have got a minute left or a couple of minutes. I wanted to ask 

several questions. I don’t know who to direct them to. 

Secretary Dominguez, I guess I will direct them to you in some 

specific things. The reports that we got back, by the way, are that 

the voucher processing is much better. People really appreciate the 

9 

money getting through quickly. But I have a series of specific questions that may just take very short answers. 

One of the complaints we heard, and I heard personally from 

people, is they go online, they get a flight all set up, they make 

their choice and, boom, then they get a notice now there is no government-rate seats. Why doesn’t the system—and then they have 

to start over. Then they have to go back again. And I talked to one 

person who said it happened to both her and her husband. Her 

husband gets so frustrated after the third or fourth or fifth time, 

he just goes on the phone and does it by phone, I guess, to the 

Commercial Travel Office (CTO), which defeats the whole idea. 

Why doesn’t the software have something in there so that—you 

know, if there is a government fare available, that is what you 

would get so you don’t have to choose a flight and then be told, no, 

you actually can’t choose that flight? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Sir, I will start, and then Dave maybe can answer some more. But the first is that it does now. There is different 

tabs so you can—it shows the government fares, and then there is 

a tab for nongovernment fares, because the business rules say 

where there is a government fare, you must take it. Where there 

is not a government fare, you have to go get somebody’s approval 

of it. But the Reservation Refresh, I think, added that functionality 

so you can go in and look at non—when there is no government 

fare available. 

There are also some complex travel environments, the overseas 

environment, for example, where today you need manual help. So 

one of the things we are doing that is consistent with the IDA 

study is to have a button in DTS where you can push it and say, 

get me out from the Commercial Travel Office because I am obviously in a situation that the simple software can’t deal with. 

Largely and in broader terms, we are looking at the usability of 

the software, how intuitive it is, and how helpful it is and how responsive to user needs, and that review is ongoing now. Lots of different users helping us think about how we need to revise, upgrade 

this software to make it intuitive for people and not frustrating. 

Dr. SNYDER. My time is up. We will go to Mr. Akin. But I sat 

down yesterday with a very knowledgeable user, and we didn’t see 

any—I didn’t see any tab there that said, here, just hit this tab, 

and you will just get the government fares. In fact, the person said, 

well, they ran it just before I got there, I guess, just to make sure 

it was working, and they made a selection and everything, and 

they had a reject, and it said, you chose that one, but you don’t get 

it. 

Mr. Akin. 

Mr. AKIN. I appreciate your coming in. And not being a user of 

the system or knowing anything about it before this morning, or 

actually yesterday afternoon when some of my staff put me on the 

system and all, the thing didn’t laugh itself off the table, so I figured it had to be somewhat user friendly because computers and 

I don’t mix very well. I used to sell them for IBM, but I tried never 

to use them. 

But there were a series of different people that were different 

users that we chatted with this morning, and they had a couple of 

ideas, and certainly a couple of them appealed to me because of the 

10 

fact that I run into this kind of thing in other places. One, it would 

be nice, they said, to have a 24-hour hotline where you could call 

if something were going wrong. And somebody said, we have that, 

and the trouble was you couldn’t get through on any of the lines. 

And the people that were users talked about being stuck in Turkey 

needing to get a flight, and they didn’t really want to call a colonel 

at 4:00 in the morning in his home, because they had some political 

wisdom and all. So it would be nice, I suppose, if there were a place 

where, if there is a problem, you can make a call to get in. That 

was one recommendation that we heard. 

The other thing that we heard apparently were places where 

there are legacy systems that are not part of the current—that are 

scheduled to be brought on or brought in, and I thought it might 

be helpful to know how do you evaluate which are the most important ones to—obviously you mentioned that you have locations that 

you are going to bring up, but also additional applications. How do 

you weigh those things, and which ones do you anticipate bringing 

up in the near future? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Sir, let me start speaking to the 24-hour hotline. We do have a 24-hour hotline. We are going to try to do more 

to make sure it is available or people are aware of it. 

Mr. AKIN. Are there not enough operators to answer the phone? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. That is a new one to me, sir. 

Mr. AKIN. There were a whole bunch of guys that were users, 

and they all said that they didn’t know of any—one of them said 

there was one, but you can’t get on it, so it didn’t do you any good 

to have it. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. If that is, in fact, the case, then they are right, 

and we will have to look at that, because it needs to be accessible 

to people. So we will check into that. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Secretary, would you consider a question for the 

record and give us a written? That may occur with several of these 

questions today. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Sure. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 81.] 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. With regard to the legacy systems, we are in 

this study in process now of going through and identifying what 

legacy systems are out there by location, what functionality they 

perform, and what would it take for them—for us to pull the plug 

on them as DTS functionality proceeds. We anticipate that in fiscal 

year 2011, 2011, that we will be shutting those things down because DTS fielding will be complete in fiscal year 2009, and then 

the functionality will cover the whole range of travel services by 

the end of fiscal year 2010. So in 2011, we will be shutting down 

all of those legacy systems. 

Mr. AKIN. All of them? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. The ones that do just travel. In some systems, 

travel was just a sideline of what they do. So we are going through 

the analysis now to be able to do that. But nobody should be running a travel system in 2011. At the end of fiscal year 2011, everybody else should be out of the business. 

11 

Mr. AKIN. Don’t you have some sort of a Program Evaluation and 

Review Technique (PERT) chart? I mean, I know this is the military. You guys have got to have PERT charts. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. That is being developed now. 

Mr. AKIN. So you don’t know which ones you are going to be 

doing next? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. No. They are all over. Every installation has its 

own little unique solution to that, different services, different agencies. So we are going through that analysis now to develop that 

plan to do the orderly shutdown. 

Mr. AKIN. So—that seems hard for me to imagine, that you have 

DTS—I mean, you have been putting different blocks and 

functionality online. You are saying even some of it you spun off 

to outside sources, and so there must be some plan as to which 

ones you are working on or moving through, right? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Well, sir, in terms of functionalities, yeah, different travel types, yes. 

Mr. AKIN. That is what I am talking about. For instance, you 

don’t have a place where if a soldier is going to be moved from one 

place to another for a year with his wife or kids, or maybe without, 

you don’t handle that kind of—— 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Right now we don’t do the permanent changeof-station (PCS) travel. That is one of the ones we are trying to get 

to. When we get to—— 

Mr. AKIN. But things like that, don’t you have a list of which 

order you want to do those in or which ones are more important 

to do first? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, sir. Those are travel types, not legacy systems. 

Mr. AKIN. So that is different then? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, sir. These are functions that need to be 

performed that are performed—— 

Mr. AKIN. And you have a listing of which ones are more important to do? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, sir. 

Mr. AKIN. Now, the legacy systems, you do not have that yet because you don’t know what all the legacies even do yet? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. That is correct, sir. 

Mr. AKIN. And some of the legacies are doing multiple things 

where you are only doing a piece of it? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. That is correct. And they are doing things other 

than travel in some cases, because they were developed locally to 

support a local installation’s business needs. 

Mr. AKIN. Okay. So from the additional functionality, then, what 

are the—I am out of time. 

Dr. SNYDER. Go ahead. 

Mr. AKIN. Additional functionality, what are the top priorities to 

bring on? Stream the top two or three things you are looking to put 

on most recently. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. I think, sir, that—well, let me take that one for 

the record as well. PCS travel or permanent duty travel is clearly 

one of the big ones, but I can get to you the—for the record if I 

might—— 

Mr. AKIN. How about foreign travel? 

12 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, sir. I mean, that is another big one. It is 

a very complex challenge for us as well. 

Mr. AKIN. Okay. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 83.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Mrs. Davis for five minutes. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank 

you all for being here. 

I wonder for a novice, first time to hear some of these issues, 

help me understand within the system the difference that you have 

or the policies that surround the refundable tickets and the restricted tickets? And if I was trying to get to get a quick flight, and 

I wasn’t—I knew that I wasn’t—when I said a quick flight, it could 

still be within the realm of the restricted fares—and I was having 

trouble with the system, can somebody just book their own flight 

and get a voucher later? How does that work? Just talk about the 

restricted flights. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Well, see, ma’am, the first is that the Department—there is various laws as well as policy that governs travel 

within the Department of Defense. So the Fly America Act governs, 

so we need to use U.S.-flag air carriers. The policy is you use the 

General Services Administration (GSA)-negotiated city pair rates, 

and so it is those vendors and those rates whenever possible. 

There are certainly situations where there is not a U.S.-flag carrier or a U.S.-flag partner, there is not a city pair available, and 

in those kind of incidences with the right approvals you can get— 

that is the kind of thing you need help from the Commercial Travel 

Office, and they will help you negotiate your way through that 

swamp. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. What I am referring to, though, is if 

you know that the restricted fare is far less than the refundable 

fare, and you know that you are definitely going to have to take 

this trip—I mean, I am just trying to understand the opportunities 

that you have even within the system. 

And the other question really relates—and perhaps Mr. Williams 

to speak to—often we do create systems. Clearly, we have thousands and thousands of people traveling, so the importance of having a system like this, you know, is one that people have made a 

very strong case for, and a lot has been developed to respond to 

that need and to make sure everybody is doing what is right. But 

sometimes we tend to legislate by exception. I am just wondering 

about the problems that would exist there if there were certain— 

if people had a greater ability to pick up those restricted fares as 

opposed to dealing with—— 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. DTS actually gives us the first time, because of 

the visibility you get into, who is traveling, what they are traveling, where they are going, how they are making the arrangements, how soon they are making the arrangements, who actually 

completes the travel that they book, so that business intelligence 

you can get now is really critical to supporting a review of the policy. The prior policy said across the board, don’t buy these nonrefundable fares because too many of us can’t travel when we plan 

to travel. Stuff happens, and we don’t want to get the government, 

you know, left paying for an empty seat. So as a matter of policy, 

13 

we closed off that option as a standard practice. We are relooking 

at whether that is the right policy for the future, particularly with 

the business intelligence as you get through DTS. 

So it is an excellent question now to see whether we are maximizing use of the taxpayers’ dollars and whether we can be a little 

more flexible in our travel policies with the system that you get 

through DTS. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. That is consistent with our thinking on this, and 

that is that you need to take a look at some of the restricted fares, 

because sometimes there is a huge difference in the price, and if 

you have travel that, you know, will be occurring on some routine 

basis, some annual basis, some monthly basis, and you have got 

this huge difference in a restricted fare versus the city pair fare or 

some other fare, then we think it would be wise to take advantage 

of those opportunities. 

You talked a little bit about the issue here as far as some of the 

various requirements that—and rules that are in place that we 

have for government travel for DOD. And in looking at systems development across the government, one of the first things that we 

at GAO have basically talked about is that you need to take a look 

at your processes and your procedures and see if you can simplify 

those. So that is one of the things that I would suggest that the 

agency take a look at, and some of those rules and processes would 

require that DOD come to Congress and request for some legislation change, because if you can simplify those processes, it would 

really help this whole process, and you could recognize a lot of benefits across different areas, from efficiencies in the whole process, 

the development, and the interfaces and et cetera. 

So that is one of the things that GAO has constantly talked 

about, that you want to take a look at that and see if you can simplify and get away from 30-some different forms of travel, and see 

if you can get it down to a handful, if possible. As I said, it would 

require changes in policies and procedures as well as it would require some assistance from the Congress also in order to implement this. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Bartlett for five minutes. 

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much. 

What percent of travel is now processed through DTS? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Sir, we are on track to by the end of this year 

process 60 percent of the temporary-duty travel through DTS. We 

are probably about half—at 50 percent or so now, but it will be 

about 60 percent by the end of the year. 

Now, there is other kinds of travel, permanent-change-of-station 

travel, that is not yet inside DTS. So just this temporary-duty travel. 

Mr. BARTLETT. So the big increase from now until 2008, up to 3.2 

million vouchers, is not increased travel, it is just increased use of 

DTS. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. That is correct, sir, increased use of DTS. So 

things like the travel to and from military entrance processing systems not yet covered by DTS, that is some of that added 

functionality that we will be getting to. So those kinds of things— 

as we add functionality, we will grab more of that travel. As we 

get to more sites where DTS capability exists, Guard and Reserve 

14 

travel, when they are on Active service, so we pick up that travel, 

and that is where we get to that nearly 100 percent of temporary 

duty (TDY). 

Mr. BARTLETT. There was a chart up on the easel. Do you have 

that in front of you? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, sir. I don’t think I have it, but I am familiar with the chart. 

Mr. BARTLETT. Okay. I did the calculation, and there was, in fact, 

a little green bar across the top. It had the vouchers processed in 

2006 and 2007, and there was, in fact, 72.4 percent growth. But 

then when I look at the graph itself, there is some vertical green 

dotted lines and an arrow between them saying 72.4 percent 

growth. I am wondering what those lines are, because there is actually in excess of 175 percent growth between those two lines. I 

am a little confused. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, sir. The 72.4 is 2006 to 2007. So the chart 

is misleading because the arrow actually goes into 2008, and that 

is where that larger growth—— 

Mr. BARTLETT. The growth between those two vertical green dotted lines is, in fact, over 175 percent. Thank you. 

Where the system needs improvement, do we need to be involved 

in that in other than oversight? Is any additional legislation needed, or is the law adequate? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Sir, presently I think your oversight is essential. We are right now conducting the review of travel policy in 

partnership with the General Services Agency and other federal 

partners that Mr. Williams just cited in his answer to a question 

a moment ago. So we are looking at that. Undoubtedly, as we think 

about how you simplify this very complex Defense travel environment, we will be coming back to the Congress with some suggestions for how through legislation we will need your authority to 

simplify the travel programs. 

Mr. BARTLETT. So it is your anticipation that some of the needed 

improvements in the future will be statutory as well as regulatory? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, sir. I am almost positive. 

Mr. BARTLETT. But not this year? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. No, sir, because we are only now into that review of how do we make this simple. So we won’t have conclusions 

until September or October of 2008 here. So they will be on your 

desk for the fiscal year 2010 legislative cycle. 

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much. 

Thank you Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Johnson, five minutes. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Congress has passed legislation called the Fly America Act that 

requires government employees to use American commercial carriers when at all feasible. However, DTS sometimes gives travelers 

the option to fly on a foreign-flagged carrier in violation of that 

statute or code sharing, which makes the distinction moot. How 

would the Department make sense of this, Mr. Dominguez? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Sir, the DTS is designed to enforce, and that is 

part of the user complaints ironically. It does limit choices by virtue of enforcing through the software statutory and policy restrictions with regard to Defense travel. So it should not be offering opVerDate Nov 24 2008 09:01 Apr 02, 2009 Jkt 004375 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-147\43785.TXT HARM2 PsN: MARY
15 

tions in violation of Fly America Act. So it will offer options—if you 

buy a ticket through United Airlines, for example, and they book 

you on their United Airlines partner for an overseas leg, that complies with the Fly America Act. Similarly, if you are stuck in Turkey, and you need to get out of there somehow, and there is not 

a U.S.-flag carrier or partner to do it, DTS will allow you with the 

right authorizations to book a flight on some other airline. But DTS 

does enforce the rules and requires the appropriate approvals if 

you are going to need to go outside of those rules. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Dominguez. 

Some travelers have complained that when they are on extended 

travel, their credit card bill comes due before their travel is complete. For long periods of temporary duty or travel to overseas locations, this can be a lot of money, putting the burden on the traveler. The responsibility to pay credit card bills belongs to the traveler, but sometimes the reimbursement from the government arrives after the bill is due. 

What policies have been put in place to prevent members from 

being charged late charges or being punished? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Sir, specifics on those I would like to take for 

the record, but I can say today there is a couple of things. The first 

is the ability to get travel advances. So if you anticipate or your 

boss anticipates that you will be gone for a long time, we get you 

an advance on that travel so that you can—you have the cash to 

be able to defer expenses, including with your travel card. 

The second thing is that DTS, one of the things that people do 

acknowledge that it has done is it has really compressed the time 

to get paid. So people are being paid in the three days from the 

time they submit a voucher through DTS instead of two weeks and 

longer. If you haven’t completed your travel, and you are still on 

TDY and still incurring expenses—so I will get back to you, sir, on 

the record with an answer to that. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 84.] 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Mr. Fisher, has the Department of Defense developed a capability to support all types of travel with DTS? And IDA’s report 

listed 61 different types of travel with Department of Defense personnel, each governed by different rules within the joint travel regulations and the joint Federal travel regulations. What has been 

done to reduce the number of different travel types and integrate 

all of them into the DTS system? 

Mr. FISHER. I will take the first part of that, and then Mr. 

Dominguez, I think, can talk about the reduction of travel types. 

Our role is to accommodate those that are defined. We have accommodated about half of the travel types to date as of 2009, the 

end of fiscal year 2009. There will be two major releases in 2009 

that will add significant on the TDY and the permanent-duty travel that will come into place in 2009, which will get us up to, in 

terms of number of travel types, I think above the 80 percent 

range, and by the end of fiscal year 2010, all of those—all travel 

types that are defined will be accommodated in DTS. So we will be 

at 100 percent accommodating for travel by the end of fiscal year 

2010. 

16 

In terms of reducing those or consolidating them, that would be 

more of a policy question, and I would—— 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. And, sir, we are undertaking right now a policy 

review, a look at all those different types of travel and how we 

might compress them and consolidate them both through policy 

and through legislation that we would seek help from the Congress 

on, probably in the fiscal year 2010 legislative change proposal. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Conaway for five minutes. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Why do you shut the office down at 4:00 every 

day? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. The Defense Travel Management Office? First, 

I don’t believe we do. 

Mr. CONAWAY. I had some users this morning who are currently 

in uniform and using it, and they said that after 4:00 if you get 

jammed up on the Web site, you have got to wait until tomorrow. 

So you might just check that out. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Thank you, sir. I will be happy to do that. 

Mr. CONAWAY. The last time I saw it, $500 million invested in 

this deal? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. It is probably more than that. 

Mr. CONAWAY. But $500 million, and we have done—if you just 

add the 2006 and 2007 and the projected 2008, that is 7 million 

vouchers. We are now at $71 a voucher in our system, just the investment. That is not the operating costs and—so it is a head 

scratcher as to making sure we are making adequate progress. 

Mr. Dominguez, if I were in your seat and I had a knucklehead 

Congressman who came tricky-trotting in for a drive-by shooting 

like this one is and began to question your time line for getting all 

the others tribaled in, it would offend me, because I don’t know everything about it that you do. But does the GAO look at this projected in the fiscal year 2010, and your PERT chart, and all of your 

assumptions and your plans to do a very complicated rolling in of 

the rest of these types of travel, whether they are legacy systems 

or types of travel or whatever it is; GAO, do you give them a head 

nod, or do you give us a head nod that that is an appropriate time 

line for them to be on, or is it excessive, or is it too aggressive or 

too optimistic? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. I wouldn’t be in a position to say right now because we haven’t looked at it. It has been about a year and a half 

since we were in and looking at the operations. You don’t want to— 

I don’t want to make a projection, given the history that we have 

reported on that. You know, this was a process that started back 

in the mid-1990’s, and I would not like to venture to project as to 

whether these days it will be met. 

Mr. CONAWAY. How would we go about, Mr. Chairman, asking 

the GAO to—I mean, this seems to me like a pretty important progressive line that we ought to have nailed down as best we can. 

You are the professionals. You are living and breathing this stuff. 

But Congress ought to have a second look at it. How do we trigger 

that GAO look? 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Williams, you have a study you are about to undertake; do you not? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. For DTS? 

17 

Dr. SNYDER. Yeah. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Not at this time. No, we do not. 

Mr. CONAWAY. I can’t imagine—I mean, maybe Expedia does 

have $71 of ticket in their system. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Sir, let me—it is very important to understand 

the difference between DTS—— 

Mr. CONAWAY. You never did answer Roscoe’s question. Of the 13 

billion we spend every year in travel, how much does DTS handle? 

What is your volume? You just total the volume, and I will do the 

math. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Let’s see. The numbers I have for that, in 

2008—I think actually Jay—Dr. Mandelbaum has the most recent 

numbers from 2006. 

Dr. MANDELBAUM. 2006. And for that year, the TDY dollars we 

estimated to be about $7 billion. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. In temporary-duty travel. 

Dr. MANDELBAUM. Right. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. No, sir. No. We have—— 

Dr. MANDELBAUM. In 2006, it was probably a bit less. 

Mr. CONAWAY. Well, are the financial numbers not available for 

2007 yet? I mean, don’t you know what the total TDY travel for 

2007 is yet? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. We—yes, sir. I think we can take the question 

for the record. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 83.] 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. I think we spent in the $9 billion in TDY travel—— 

Mr. CONAWAY. 6.3 billion—— 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Now, again, we are on this curve so—— 

Mr. CONAWAY. All right, 4.5 billion? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. By the end of 2008, we should be at 60 percent. 

In 2007, you know, we weren’t—— 

Mr. CONAWAY. You said earlier you were at 50 percent now. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. That was my subjective assessment that we are 

about 50 percent. 

Mr. CONAWAY. TDY travel represents 9 billion—the total of 13 

billion. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, sir. I am not familiar with the $13 billion 

number, but the $9 billion in fiscal year 2007 is the number that 

I have. 

Mr. CONAWAY. In 2010—— 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. We are going to have 100 percent of the travel 

types available. Now, whether we are going to have it all processed 

through—most of it will be processed through DTS, so we will be 

covering that whole enterprise. 

Mr. CONAWAY. I am not trying to be argumentative. I am just 

trying to make sure I understand it. And again, you know a whole 

lot more about this than I ever will. That is kind of why I wanted 

the GAO to have a look at it, because this time line and your estimate on that time line ought to be a pretty important piece of 

DTS’s—— 

18 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Williams, I guess I missed it. Your testimony 

was that you will do follow-up, but it is on your normal audit 

schedule? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. The follow-up that I am talking about in the testimony is that whenever we make recommendations in our reports, 

we follow up to see if those recommendations have been implemented. 

Dr. SNYDER. When do you anticipate doing that? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. We will be starting that this late spring, this 

summer to look at the 14—this year. That is recommendations on 

previously issued reports. 

Mr. CONAWAY. But is this time line through—through the end of 

2010, isn’t that time line and your ability to beat that time line 

under your—— 

Mr. WILLIAMS. No, no. That is not one of the recommendations 

that we will be following up on. This will be something completely 

different. This is following up on the recommendations in the previous reports and testimonies that we have issued. 

Dr. SNYDER. They are going to be looking at it anyway. We can 

ask them to enhance that. They are going to be looking at the program anyway, so we can ask them to add on that. 

We had better recess. We have got to go vote, and we will be 

back. The staff can help you if you need phones or a private room 

or anything. We will be in recess. 

[Recess.] 

Dr. SNYDER. We will resume. If you see Mr. Akin slip out, he has 

another commitment. Don’t be alarmed. 

I wanted to ask; years ago, I was hitchhiking through Eastern 

Oregon. I came to a town so small that even the 24-hour restaurant 

was closed. That is a one-liner. It seems to me that is the situation 

we heard with regard to the 24-hour hotline. Now, maybe the problem is there is no—and hotline is not the proper word. There are 

multiple, multiple contracts. Is there not? How many, Secretary 

Dominguez, do you think, contracts? You have got a worldwide system here. How many different contractors do you think there are 

out there that are managing the 24-hour phones? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Sir, it would be gross speculation but you hit 

the nail on the head. The issue is that commercial travel organizations, they actually buy the ticket, purchase the ticket, and provide 

the ticket to the member who is traveling, and are supposed to support that member then at the journey. And so they are also supposed to have after-hours numbers to serve the traveler. 

Dr. SNYDER. It sounds as if we don’t have good quality control 

assessments of that. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. That is correct. And part of what we are doing 

is related to the centralization of policy authority in the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (USDP&R), is that 

we are moving from that legacy environment of many, many, many 

local arrangements for commercial travel service to our providing 

the commercial travel contracts globally for the DOD and awarding 

task orders under those so we can standardize quality and standardize the services. 

19 

Dr. SNYDER. I went on the DTS yesterday. There was a phone 

number too at the bottom. I assume it is the same number no matter where you geographically access the system. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, sir. 

Dr. SNYDER. And yet it will ring at different places depending on 

what state you are in? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. No, sir. The difference between the tactical assistance, which is a 24-hour—24-by-7 hotline for DTS—— 

Dr. SNYDER. Which helps me walk through the DTS. Is different 

than? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Than the after-hour service numbers provided 

by commercial travel organizations. So that if you at your installation—the CTO that is servicing you is supposed to provide afterhour service for your trip. Now, through DTS and through DTMO, 

we are trying to rationalize this thing and herd this thing together 

so that a call to the 24-hour Technical Assistance Center (TAC) 

hotline will get referred to a 24-hour or after-hour service by a 

commercial travel office. We will stay engaged with the traveler to 

get them help. 

Dr. SNYDER. I don’t think I saw the details of that in your written statement. Would you for the record provide us with a description of the number of contracts and description as best you can, including the things that maybe you are unclear about what is out 

there right now. That would be helpful. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, sir. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 81.] 

Dr. SNYDER. This chart right here that has been talked about 

multiple times—and I won’t make that nice woman have to go find 

your chart again. But she is standing by it if we need it. If I was 

to extend this out as far as Dr. Mandelbaum and Mr. Williams 

want this thing to be extended so, whether it is 2010, 2011, whatever it is, what is the number going to be of the number of vouchers processed in that year? How far out is that chart going to go? 

What is our universe we are talking about when we include not 

just TDYs, or your goal is 60 percent or whatever. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Right. 

Dr. SNYDER. But as far as when Mr. Conaway is satisfied that 

we have the entire universe, I don’t have a sense of if we are looking at the tail or the dog. What is the number that is going to be 

out there? How many millions of vouchers are going to be processed 

when we are exactly where we want to be? Twenty million? Fifty 

million? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Sir, I can’t answer the question. Let me try it 

this way, if I could. Which is, in 2009 we will be at all the places 

we need to be at the end of 2009. By the end of 2010, all travel 

types—this is commercial travel, this is not military travel or military air. So all travel types will be enabled in DTS. And there is 

a mandate: If we are there and we support the travel, you use 

DTS. So that by the end of fiscal year 2010, we should be done and 

99 percent of all of this commercial travel should be done through 

the DTS system. And I don’t know how many vouchers. 

20 

Dr. SNYDER. And I appreciate that. It seems like in terms of 

judging what the savings would be or potential savings, it seems 

like somewhere there should be a universe of how many vouchers. 

Mr. Akin. 

Mr. AKIN. You are designing or farming out parts of the system; 

by an additional two years from now, 2010, you will have all of the 

different means of travel embodied in the system. Does that include 

things like hotels and things like that as well? 

Mr. FISHER. Hotels are supported today. 

Mr. AKIN. So then, at that point, now that you have got the system designed and running, what is the ongoing cost to maintain it? 

Does it have just armies of programmers just to keep the thing up 

and running? Or is it pretty easy, is it not as big a group of people 

involved? 

Mr. FISHER. We will drop into a sustainment mode at the time 

that it—operational capability. If new requirements hop in, then 

that would be a variable sitting on top of that. We have already 

brought down, since the BTA took over the program two years ago, 

that operation’s cost because we have streamlined some things 

from a management perspective. So we have both a Research, Development, Test & Evaluation (RDT&E) element of new capability 

that we are adding, new RDT&E appropriation, as well as the operations and maintenance, which is the ongoing sustainment of the 

solution. 

So I can probably get you for the record a projection of what that 

number would be based on our budget estimate, assuming no new 

requirements after that 2010. 

Mr. AKIN. Of course, there will always be additional requirements coming and going, particularly if you refine some of what 

you are doing, which may make it simpler also. I am just trying 

to get a feel for the ongoing cost of the system in terms of volume 

of transaction. It would be interesting to know that every time you 

buy a ticket that it is costing you $10 for the ticket just because 

of the maintenance, or maybe it is $5 or maybe it is $2. It would 

be interesting to know what that ongoing cost is, just the cost of 

having that system. Certainly, I would assume that Mr. Williams 

is talking about that is part of the purpose, is simplifying it so that 

you don’t have to carry as much overhead and things. Plus, it is 

easier to use and everything else. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Sir, it is important to understand that the DTS 

enables us to get some business intelligence that we don’t now have 

to know—we don’t know the baseline. That is part of the IDA 

study. We don’t know the baseline for how much it is costing us 

in terms of indirect costs to operate our travel enterprise today. 

That is going to be captured in DTS, and the costs of those where 

we can find things are going to go down. It is simpler and cheaper 

now to process vouchers and get people paid than it used to be 

when you used DTS. It is cheaper in terms of the commercial travel 

organization fee. If you do your reservation through DTS, that fee 

is as little as $7, whereas if you call the travel agency it could be 

somewhere north of $25 for that reservation. So we are getting 

those kind of things now. And, in fact, the operations & support 

(O&S) cost to operate the travel system and the travel enterprise 

post DTS should be lower than what we are experiencing now. 

21 

Mr. AKIN. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. SNYDER. I will continue on. Mr. Akin, you jump in any time. 

So we have got legacy systems, which I think some of us got confused and thought when you talk about legacy systems that we 

were merging that with trip types. But you have got two different 

issues there. 

Why can’t, Mr. Dominguez, you just issue an order that chips 

away at it in some other way that just says all trips by any uniformed or nonuniformed DOD person by July 1 of 2008 in which 

both ends of the travel are within the continental United States 

will be done by DTS? Why does it have to get broken down? Okay, 

the purpose is a—this is a temporary duty so it will be done by 

DTS; a permanent change of station is not done by DTS. Why can’t 

it be something simpler than that? This is in the continental 

United States, it will be done by DTS. Why do you have to go 

through that? Why does the purposes of the travel make a difference? You have got like 70 different kinds of trips. Why did that 

become the determining factor? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Well, because of the rules about what you can 

and can’t do are different for these different trip types. 

Dr. SNYDER. If somebody, like we had a person today that I think 

would like to be able to do their permanent change of station under 

DTS. But if it went on there, the rules wouldn’t be right for them 

under the software. Is that what you are saying? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, sir. 

Dr. SNYDER. So there is not a little box. So that does kind of 

come back around. And I recognize, we are all responsible for a 

program that started almost 10 years ago now. So we still at the 

10-year mark don’t have that kind of software developed that you 

can click a box that says permanent change of station and it would 

work? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Right. And—you are right. And partly that is 

the function of the complexity of our travel environment, you know, 

and then the difficulties of developing this technology. Because, 

again, remember that this is not Travelocity. This thing is secure 

so that it operates inside the DOD Internet environment, so it has 

got to be secure. It does this transaction voucher, the financial end 

of the thing, and then forces these very complex business rules. 

Dr. SNYDER. Help me. Use that as an example, or you can find 

another example if you want. What rule—as I went through the little thing and checked all the boxes yesterday when I went through 

my flight, what rule would there be different for a permanent 

change of station, like if a person traveled from Fort Benning, 

Georgia to El Paso, Texas? What reimbursement rule or processing 

rule would be different that would mean that you couldn’t do that 

on—that doing it on DTS today would somehow impact negatively 

on either your budget or the service person’s? Does that make 

sense? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, sir. The thing that I am looking at here, 

it doesn’t relate to the airfare but it relates to the per diem rates, 

could be different for TDY travel than for PCS travel. So PCS travel it is limited to 10 days for CONUS-to-CONUS (continental 

United States) moves. These may be split in any combination beVerDate Nov 24 2008 09:01 Apr 02, 2009 Jkt 004375 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-147\43785.TXT HARM2 PsN: MARY
22 

tween the old and new duty station. So, you have got per diem here 

and per diem there. So that is different than under the TDY rules. 

Dr. SNYDER. I understand. 

Mr. FISHER. I would also add, sir, there is also differences between military and civilian. The entitlements vary in some cases 

even, for example, within PCS travel. If you are a military member, 

the entitlement might be X; and if you are a civilian, the entitlement might be Y. That is the level of detail we need to account for. 

Dr. SNYDER. That leads me to this issue of military lodging. My 

understanding if I am a uniformed person and I am going to travel 

to Little Rock Air Force Base, which has lodging, and I book my 

flight and I then, I guess if I am enlisted or whatever, at some 

point it will tell me you can’t start booking hotels. You have to go 

to the base and find out if they have lodging the day you arrive. 

And if they do, then you have to go there. If they don’t, then you 

can go find and make arrangements that evening for finding a 

hotel. Does that sound right to you? 

Mr. FISHER. Well, it is accurate that DTS, because of the services 

and the way they manage military lodging, don’t have a technical 

architecture into which we can connect. 

Dr. SNYDER. They are not on your system. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Well, they may not have systems themselves to 

keep track. 

Dr. SNYDER. Right. They are not on the system. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. But you can call ahead and you can make your 

reservation on the telephone. So you don’t have to wait until you 

arrive there. 

Dr. SNYDER. I understand. I want to go back then to the permanent change of station, talking about differences in per diem rates. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Right. 

Dr. SNYDER. Then why couldn’t that same architecture be, okay, 

we have got your flight being the permanent change of station. You 

will have to make arrangements on your per diem when you get 

there. Do it by phone? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Well, that is in fact the legacy environment 

now. 

Dr. SNYDER. Because there is no difference at all. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Right. 

Dr. SNYDER. There is nothing about the flight that is different. 

But they can’t do that now. They can’t do permanent change of station now for flights though. Correct? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. I will have to get back to you on that. 

Dr. SNYDER. We are told they can’t. They are one of the types 

that you have not yet reached. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. That is correct. 

Mr. FISHER. And we look at a travel type in its totality. I think 

what you are suggesting is could you break it up and do the airline 

portion of permanent change of station but everything else would 

be done in the different manner. And right now that is not how we 

utilize the tool. We use it sort of as a trip type in whole. 

Dr. SNYDER. I understand. It is just that we do break it up for 

uniformed personnel if they are going to a place that has military 

lodging. It is broken up because they have to make other arrangements. I understand. 

23 

The issue of training. We haven’t talked about that much today. 

There seems to be pretty much a uniform belief amongst the people 

we talked to that, once people understand the system, I kind of 

looked and I used to have a 1953 Ford pickup and it was the easiest thing in the world for me to drive because I drove it every day. 

But if I gave it to someone else they couldn’t get it started. I never 

understood that. But it seems like that is the kind of system that 

you have, that people, once they use it and use it on a fairly regular basis, they get comfortable with it. They may have some 

glitches, but they can work around it. 

But the issue of training, where are we at with regard to the 

training? Are you satisfied with the level of training that is out 

there? Do you feel that you have work to do? How are you going 

to deal with a person who only has a trip once a year or maybe 

twice a year? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Sir, we do have a lot of training. And you are 

exactly correct, it does takes some training and it takes some practice and it takes using the system to be familiar with it. And there 

may be some unalterable minimum that you get to in this, again 

because of the complexity of DOD’s travel environment. But we 

have two things going on to address that. 

The first is the usability review. We have a bunch of people, 

smart people, users, we feel our technology partners, trying to 

think through this and trying to design a system from a customer’s 

viewpoint so that it is intuitive for them to, you know, bang 

through it. 

The second thing we have going on is this simplification, a look 

at travel policy simplification and how can we pull the complexity 

out. Those two things give me some hope. In the interim—— 

Dr. SNYDER. And the second portion is maybe where you need 

some legislative help. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. I would expect that that might be necessary. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you. You touched on the overseas stuff. I 

guess the only conclusion is it, any complexities you have domestically are amplified when you start talking about overseas stuff, 

particularly talking about going into war zones potentially or using 

foreign airlines or the difficulty of getting the telephone help you 

need when you are having to find a telephone. I don’t think I will 

touch on that anymore. 

What about the issue of the ability to use a system from home 

on a personal computer? Are we heading that way or not? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Sir, the system is a bundle of software—and 

Dave is better at this; I just deal from the policy—but that is inside 

the DOD network. And as such, access to it has to be controlled 

to protect the DOD network. The common access card (CAC) is required by DOD policy for access to any system inside the DOD’s 

environment. 

Dr. SNYDER. So that would include the computers in your office 

or your official laptop. And you don’t foresee we would ever get to 

the point—obviously if a person leaves the office on a Friday and 

changes can occur, it would be helpful to be able on a Sunday afternoon to go on. But that is not available. So they have to get on the 

phone to make those kind of changes. 

24 

Mr. FISHER. If they have a government-issued computer or if 

they have a CAC card reader that you can use on a home computer 

that enables the system to authorize or recognize you, you can use 

the tool from home. Like when I bring my laptop home, it has a 

CAC card reader in it, and I can access the DOD network. That 

is okay. But I can’t use it on my home computer that doesn’t have 

a CAC card reader. And I actually, from what I understand from 

where the Department is going, it is going to be more of that because of the security issues. 

Dr. SNYDER. I got you. The issue came up of group travel. Would 

you explain the rules of group travel? How does it work currently? 

I have got a group of five and Ms. Fenner has a group of 15. We 

want to go at the same time, the same plane, the same itinerary. 

How does that work? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Sir, DTS can process group travel authorization. 

So it can do it. 

Dr. SNYDER. At what numbers? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Well, beyond two. But I am not sure at what 

end. 

Dr. SNYDER. The complaint that we heard was that in fact it had 

to be, I think, 10 or more. Is that correct? That if I have got a 

group of eight or nine, it would not recognize it as a group travel? 

We would have to have eight or nine individuals entered into it, 

and it would save everybody time to just say I have got a group 

of eight? It didn’t make sense. Why would you have to have a—— 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Airline industry rules require a group size of 10 

or more to travel at negotiated group rates. And so, again, because 

of airline rules, we need to negotiate with the airline. 

Dr. SNYDER. That is a different issue. I thought what you said, 

negotiated group rates, I thought the point was the convenience of 

the person entering them in. So you have got the gunnery sergeant 

who has got eight Marines that he is trying to get someplace. He 

is not trying to negotiate for a rate; he is just trying to enter them 

all at the same time. But it is an airline obstruction. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Once you hit 10, then the airline travel rules require that so we need to have some prior negotiation about groups 

or you would have to make arrangements for that group. That is, 

again, where you need to go to the commercial travel office and say 

here is the issue, please work it. 

Dr. SNYDER. You would think that we could have a computer system that, even if we weren’t trying to negotiate a group rate, that 

your system would do it eight times automatically if you hit a button that said eight. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. I believe DTS will do that for under 10. 

Dr. SNYDER. That may be right. But would you get back to me 

on that for the record? The information we received from people 

who do this is that it doesn’t. 

Mr. FISHER. I think the only thing about the magic number 10 

is about the group rates applying, not about organizing a group to 

facilitate travel. But we will verify that. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 81.] 

Dr. SNYDER. That would be helpful. 

25 

Someplace in maybe one of your all’s reports—I may be wrong. 

I had some recollection that there has been some issue in the past 

that part of the savings, or perhaps not today but in years past, 

part of the issue in terms of failure of realizing some of the savings 

predicted is that we were not doing as good a job of getting money 

back from airlines that was owed to us for tickets for flights that 

didn’t occur. Do any of you have any comments about the status 

of that, or do you think we are in good shape on that? I book my 

10 people, the bus breaks down, they miss the flight. Are we recouping all the money? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. For flights that we didn’t take? I will have to 

get back to you. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Let me speak to that. This is an issue that we 

raised at GAO in one of our reports. It was unused airline tickets. 

We reported that that was an area that needed to be looked at. 

And I think in the report we also talked about the DOD taking a 

look at a program that it could utilize that would basically identify 

unused tickets and utilization of that particular program would be 

able to recoup the monies for those unused tickets. I don’t know the 

status of where they are at right now, but this is the recommendation. 

Dr. SNYDER. My recollection is you did not have any prediction 

in terms of amounts of money that might potentially be. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Sir, I do want to say that DTS enables that 

kind of intervention, which is not possible today because we don’t 

know what is going on out there today, especially with these things 

that are done locally, by local contract through commercial travel 

offices. But as more stuff is in DTS, you know, you know whether 

the thing has been used or not. So that is the kind of business intelligence that DTS will enable management intervention. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. And in that process, I think that in the new 

agreements with the CTOs there was a provision that each CTO 

was to take a look at that and to recoup that money. And that is 

why we had the recommendation that you need to get this program 

to make sure it is done on a consistent basis across the entire operation. 

Dr. SNYDER. During the break, staff—this Quick Compass survey. Are you familiar with those results? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, sir. 

Dr. SNYDER. And I don’t know what the requirement is of people 

to use this or to fill this thing out. Maybe it is like, well, a completely optional thing. But one thing that gives it some credibility 

is, in response to the question ‘‘I get paid quickly,’’ you had really 

overwhelming agreement with that, and just right around 10 or 12 

percent that said they didn’t agree with that. But when you look 

at some of the other categories, now these are the same people who 

said very positive things about getting paid quickly, it is not overwhelmingly positive at all. It is: It is user friendly, 36 percent, 35 

percent. Training is sufficient, 38 percent. I am just guessing about 

these numbers. I like DTS more than a travel agent, actually lost 

out to—there is just a lot of work to do on this. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, sir. Absolutely. I acknowledge this system 

was not developed with the customer at the center, and that is a 

major focus. The fact that we are doing these Quick Compass is 

26 

about getting us on the right track with that, because this is absolutely the journey that remains in front of us, is customer satisfaction. 

Dr. SNYDER. Two final questions, Mr. Secretary. My understanding was that during the break—did you come up with some 

answers you wanted to share with us? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, sir. Just some points of clarification on a 

couple things. The first is on the money issues that Mr. Conaway 

was talking about. The first is—I don’t know the source of the $13 

billion number. That may include travel other than the commercial 

travel. 

We in fiscal year 2007 spent $9 billion in commercial travel. $2.4 

billion of that was processed through DTS. Now, there is a difference between the number of vouchers that we have processed 

and the dollars that—but we are on track, as I said before, to try 

to capture all of that. 

Dr. SNYDER. Did you say $2.4 billion out of 8.5, $9 billion? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, $9 billion in fiscal year 2007. Again, but 

that was earlier, not all travel types, et cetera. So we are on 

course, though, to capture all of that through DTS. 

Dr. SNYDER. We will pass that on to Mr. Conaway. Those accountants like that kind of information. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. I wanted to talk to you, sir, about the 800 numbers, which we covered a little bit, to differentiate between the 

Technical Assistance Center and the commercial travel office after 

hours. And we are working both of those problems for sure. 

And then the fact of—the third item was people on extended temporary duty and the fact of their government travel card. 

Dr. SNYDER. Right. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. You can submit travel vouchers while you are 

on that travel. And there is many different ways to get them in, 

including calling back and having someone enter a DTS on your behalf and file the voucher for you. But one of the interesting things 

is that DTS enables a travel administrator to go in and see travel 

vouchers and claims and bills that are coming due that someone 

hasn’t filed their voucher for. So travel administrators can intervene to assist people who are in these circumstances and for whatever reason haven’t filed their voucher. So, again, this is the business intelligence that enables sound management to the travel enterprise. 

Dr. SNYDER. So then you can go back to your training, and 

maybe that is something that needs to be covered a little more 

clearly. 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Yes, sir. 

Dr. SNYDER. My last question, and I appreciate your all’s patience—we got interrupted by votes and we got started late to 

begin with—is for you, Mr. Fisher. Tell me, give me a summary of 

the Business Transformation Agency and what all you are doing 

and what you are involved in. You are a relatively new creation. 

How many employees do you have? What is your budget? Give me 

a tutorial on that. 

Mr. FISHER. We were stood up 2-1/2 years ago. We have 251 government staff as of last count, with about 700-odd contractors as 

well. So a little under 1,000 personnel total. Budget’s in the $350 

27 

million to $360 million range. We have two—you can sort of think 

of our organization in two parts. There is the part that does things 

like DTS, that we have a portfolio of 27 business systems. By definition, the systems we own cross the services. So DTS is used by 

everyone. The Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System (DIMHRS), the new military human resources and personnel 

and pay system, will be used by all the services. So programs that 

are used by all services are the kinds of programs that we inherited. If it is a Navy specific program or an Army specific program, 

those didn’t come to us. So we have a portfolio of these 27 systems, 

and they span travel, personnel, logistics, acquisition, finance, all 

the business areas. 

The other half of the organization is more on what I call the 

guidance side, the requirements side. So we have a group of folks 

that work very closely with the principal staff assistants, the under 

secretaries in the Pentagon who set policy and really drive enterprise level requirements. We work with them to translate those requirements into something that can be implemented. So we own 

our responsibility for the Department’s business enterprise architecture, which is a repository of rules—there is nothing more complicated than that—that says, here are the standards that we, the 

Department, have decided we are all going to do the same way. So 

we have that responsibility to collect those requirements and put 

them in an architectural form that people can use. And then we 

work with both our programs and the component programs on the 

best way to actually implement those in systems. 

So, in a way, we are a conduit between the more higher level requirement folks, policy setting, and the people who are actually implementing these requirements. Whether it is at OSD level or at 

the component level, we build that bridge in between to try to help 

everyone understand what those requirements are and best practice ways to implement them. And then, on the other side, is the 

actual systems that we own. 

Dr. SNYDER. And then you come back around at the end and assess how you did? 

Mr. FISHER. We do both from an investment management standpoint. So BTA has the responsibility to facilitate the investment review process in the Department. So we look at compliance to architecture of those systems that are being implemented. They come 

through a process on an annual basis to get reviewed, and we facilitate that process. And we also do reviews of programs. The larger scale component programs, we assist the milestone decision authority, the person who has that ability to say, yes, you can go the 

next step as to whether or not, from a risk-based perspective, if 

that program is healthy enough to move forward. 

So we serve sort of different masters in OSD to try to help guide 

them on the health of programs and our ability to make progress, 

and then we also help the programs that are trying to implement 

these enterprise standards, get them to understand what they are 

and best practice ways to implement them. 

Dr. SNYDER. Have you had this position since the beginning? 

Mr. FISHER. I was with the organization from the beginning. I 

was the first director named to the organization. First permanent 

28 

director. And that position was staffed just over a year ago, but I 

joined the Department just prior to the standup of the BTA. 

Dr. SNYDER. And how many times have you testified before Congress? 

Mr. FISHER. This is the first time, sir. 

Dr. SNYDER. Probably our neglect. 

I appreciate your all being here today and I appreciate your efforts to sort this out. Secretary Dominguez, you have testified in 

the past. There are certain topics that come before the Congress on 

kind of an annual basis such as health care, retention and recruitment, and some of those things. And this defense travel system 

may be one of those topics that the Congress may on an annual 

basis or some regularity ought to look at, particularly as if we start 

getting into areas or you are implying that we have areas that are 

maybe needing statutory fixes. So don’t be surprised if we decide 

to revisit this in a year or so. I think it would be probably helpful 

for us. 

And, Mr. Williams, don’t be surprised if you get a letter from us 

saying that perhaps you ought to move up—the GAO look at some 

of the milestones you all set down. But thank you all very much. 

Again, I apologize we had the delay with votes. We are adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 5:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

A P P E N D I X 

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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE 

RECORD 

APRIL 15, 2008 

(81) 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY DR. SNYDER 

Dr. SNYDER. Some DTS users are unaware that 24-hour toll free telephone assistance exists, and others say that their calls are not always answered. What is the 

status of the all-hours worldwide support line for the DTS website? Are all Commercial Travel Offices required to provide all-hours support to both domestic and overseas travelers for trip changes? If so, how is their performance verified? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. The Traveler Assistance Center (TAC) was established August 

31, 2007, and is in the process of a three phase implementation, with the final 

phase scheduled to begin 1 October, 2008. Each phase of implementation will add 

greater levels of assistance to additional groups of travelers. The TAC is currently 

in phase II and provides Defense Travel System (DTS) related assistance to all travelers with the exception of the Army. This means Army travelers do not have, and 

are therefore largely unaware of, the 24-hour number. The TAC will become available to the Army in 4th quarter, 2008, and at that point, phase II will be completed. 

In phase III, service will expand to provide all travelers with assistance for all travel issues (rental car, air, hotel, policy, travel card), not just DTS. 

For those currently being serviced, the TAC is available worldwide, 24 hours per 

day, 7 days per week, via toll-free telephone number, e-mail, and self-support web 

site. A state-of-the-art automatic call distribution (ACD) system logs each incoming 

call to ensure that all calls are answered as efficiently as possible. TAC ACD performance reports are reviewed monthly by the DTMO to verify that contractual performance standards are met. 

Additionally, Defense Travel Management Office (DTMO) Commercial Travel Office (CTO) worldwide contracts, supporting both domestic and overseas travel, require standard all-hours support for trip changes. The remaining Service and Agency CTO contracts also contain all-hours support language; however, it is not standardized. Those contracts will transition to the DTMO worldwide acquisition by third 

quarter 2009. 

The DTMO requires CTOs to perform quality control on their performance, to include all-hours support. Performance reports are provided to the DTMO by the 

CTOs as part of the government’s quality assurance process. In addition, the government performs quality assurance surveillance to include addressing customer 

complaints, random inspections, and receiving feedback from field quality assurance 

evaluators. 

Dr. SNYDER. How many different contracts does the Department of Defense have 

with Commercial Travel Offices? Are these contracts standardized, particularly as 

regards all-hours worldwide support for travelers? If not, what is the nature of these 

different contracts and what is the Department’s plan to standardize them? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. The Defense Travel Management Office (DTMO) is currently in 

the process of a Commercial Travel Office (CTO) consolidation initiative. Prior to beginning this effort, there were over 100 CTO contracts, managed by over 50 different organizations within the Department of Defense. Contracts currently managed by other organizations may include differing language, including that for afterhours support, based on the specific requirements of the managing organization. 

The DTMO awarded a worldwide CTO contract in September 2007, selecting eight 

vendors to further compete for 11 task orders. Task order issuance is currently in 

progress, with award of the first task order for Worldwide Commercial Travel having been awarded on May 15, 2008, for the Continental United States Marine Corps 

and select Defense Agencies. It is valued at over $14 million, with implementation 

scheduled to occur over the period July–November 2008. We anticipate all task orders will be awarded by the end of July 2008. 

Upon completion of the CTO contract consolidation in 2009, there will be approximately 50 CTO contracts centrally managed by one organization, the DTMO. These 

50 contracts will include small business, pending task orders (that will become formal contracts upon award), as well as a small few individually tailored contracts 

that provide a unique service. This consolidation will ensure all contracts contain 

standardized language that includes specific requirements for all-hours, worldwide 

support for travelers. 

82 

Dr. SNYDER. In 2006, the Government Accountability Office recommended that the 

Department identify unused travel tickets and process them for refunds. What is 

the status of this effort? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) report found 

27,000 instances of potential improper payments and recommended that the Department of Defense (DOD) determine if improper payments were made and, if so, to 

recover the cost of the airline tickets. To date, all the potential improper payments 

have been researched. In those cases where an actual improper payment was found, 

and where extenuating circumstances (death of traveler/statute of limitations) did 

not preclude it, collection has been made, with the exception of 66 transactions that, 

for various reasons, cannot feasibly be researched further. 

Additionally, as a result of GAO’s recommendation, DOD Commercial Travel Office (CTO) contracts, both the Defense Travel Management Office (DTMO) worldwide contract and those contracts managed by the Military Services and Defense 

Agencies, require the CTOs to identify and cancel unused tickets 30 days after the 

planned trip date and then initiate the process for refund. CTOs are also required 

to provide quarterly unused ticket reports to DOD in accordance with policy guidelines. All CTOs will be required to provide monthly reports as the Department continues to consolidate management of CTO contracts, scheduled for completion by 3d 

Quarter, Fiscal Year 2009. 

Dr. SNYDER. DTS currently allows a user to designate a ‘‘group travel’’ option if 

traveling in a party of ten or more, in accordance with airline ticketing policies for 

group discounts. Is it possible for DTS to also treat parties of less than ten as a 

group even without an airline discount, in order to relieve data entry and travel adjustment burden on the user? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Parties of two or more travelers can be treated as a group in 

the Defense Travel System (DTS). The DTS Group Travel function is a workflow 

tool that streamlines the administrative burden associated with data entry and reservations. A designated lead traveler is able to create a single travel authorization 

for all travelers, view airline, lodging and rental car information, e-mail a reservation request to the Commercial Travel Office, and route travel documents for review 

and approval. 

Dr. SNYDER. You said that you plan on asking Congress for legislative help in 

simplifying and streamlining certain travel procedures and policies. When will your 

review be complete? When do you anticipate making a request to Congress? In general terms, what types of policies do you envision changing, and what kind of legislation would Congress be asked to consider? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. We are currently working on a complete travel policy review 

with the General Services Administration (GSA). Overall, this is a major action that 

will require implementation of changes incrementally, working as an inter-agency 

effort. To materially reduce ‘‘travel types’’ and simplify travel policies will require 

two-to-three years extending into Fiscal Year (FY) 2010. 

Specifically, Permanent Change of Station initiatives are currently being vetted 

and recommended temporary duty travel policy changes and legislative proposals 

will be developed/processed in the first quarter of FY 2009. It is anticipated that 

GSA/Department of Defense will propose legislation in FY 2010. 

Dr. SNYDER. In reference to the ‘‘Buy America Act,’’ isn’t allowing DOD passengers to fly on foreign carriers as code-sharing partners creating a distinction 

without a difference in barring them from flying on foreign carriers otherwise? 

Would you recommend a change Congress could make to clarify this? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. No, the distinction in allowing the Department of Defense (DOD) 

passengers to fly on foreign carriers as code-sharing partners does not create distinction without a difference in barring travelers from flying on foreign carriers otherwise. Code sharing is common industry practice that allows, by law, an airline to 

put its two-letter identification code on the flights of another airline. Code share 

flights are marketed by United States (U.S.) carriers as their own flights and as 

such, the U.S. carrier assumes responsibility for the flight. 

DOD is currently performing a travel policy review in collaboration with General 

Services Administration. This effort will take an in depth look at the complexities 

of foreign travel, to include the ‘‘Buy American Act’’ (Fly America Act). During the 

review process, there may be areas identified that require congressional assistance, 

to include clarification of certain portions of the ‘‘Fly America Act,’’ and recommendations will be made accordingly. 

Dr. SNYDER. Why do DOD civilians not have to get non-availability statements for 

billeting and therefore can use DTS for hotel reservations, when military travelers 

cannot? Shouldn’t uniformed and non-uniformed passengers, especially those traveling together, be either able to use DTS, or be required to get non-availability 

statements, equally? 

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Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Both Department of Defense (DOD) civilians and military members can use the Defense Travel System; however, in some instances, different regulations apply to each. Government civilians are not required to stay in government 

quarters in accordance with the Comptroller General (44 Comp. Gen. 626) decision 

interpreting Title 5, United States Code, Section 5911(e). That same decision contains language that allows the Services to require military members to stay in government quarters when available. However, DOD does allow the military member’s 

supervisor to determine when use of government quarters will adversely affect mission performance and to subsequently approve commercial billeting. In those cases, 

service members do not need to obtain a non-availability statement. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. AKIN 

Mr. AKIN. What is the Department’s priority list and timeline for incorporating 

the different types of defense travel types into DTS? What is its priority list and 

timeline for phasing out legacy travel systems? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. The Department’s priority and timeline for incorporating different types of travel into the Defense Travel System by summer 2010 is specialized 

types of temporary duty travel (e.g., emergency and witness travel), permanent 

change of station travel, deployment travel, and recruit travel. A sunset plan for legacy systems will be developed by the end of Fiscal Year 2010. We anticipate these 

systems will be mandated for shutdown within two years following that date. 

Mr. AKIN. What is the projected annual cost of maintaining the DTS administrative and technical infrastructure once it encompasses all Departments of Defense 

travel? What would be a standard industry projection of costs for required RDT&E 

and upgrades during sustainment? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. That costs associated with maintaining the Defense Travel System (DTS) administrative and technical infrastructure (sustainment costs) once the 

system encompasses all Department of Defense travel, is on average, for the first 

five years (Fiscal Year (FY) 2011–FY 2015) $40 million per year. This estimate includes the following: 

• DTS-Program Management Office support 

• Technology refreshes; interface connectivity; testing 

• Non-Classified Internet Protocol Router Network connectivity to DTS 

• Business Intelligence software maintenance 

• Defense Manpower Data Center archival of travel vouchers and related documents 

• DTS reservation module’s airline pricing and availability query services; the 

costs associated with the Defense Travel Management Office’s (DTMO’s) 

Travel Assistance Center 

• DTMO’s DTS training initiatives 

• Service and Agency semi-annual DTS operations fees to run and maintain 

system operations and sustainment. 

Additional requirements for enhanced capabilities would be over and above this 

level of system sustainment. 

A standard industry projection of annual costs for required research, development, 

training and evaluation (RDT&E) and system upgrades, above and beyond system 

sustainment support as mentioned above, for large information technology systems, 

is approximately 17% of the lifecycle development costs (Gartner, Management Update: How to State Estimating Software Life Cycle Costs, July 2005). Throughout 

the sustainment phase of the DTS lifecycle, the projected annual costs for DTS 

RDT&E and upgrades is below industry standards (approximately 4% of the 

lifecycle development costs). 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. CONAWAY 

Mr. CONAWAY. What are the total travel costs per year managed by DTS over the 

past five years? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Below are the Defense Travel System (DTS) disbursements and 

Department of Defense total travel budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 through FY 

2007. DTS disbursement data was not consolidated for reporting until Fiscal Year 

2005. DTS disbursements for FY 2003 and FY 2004 are estimates based upon the 

number of vouchers processed in DTS and the average disbursement per voucher 

in FY 2005. We expect DTS usage to continue to increase at a significant rate not 

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only because of further fielding and proliferation, but also as we expand the system’s capabilities to handle additional types of travel through FY 2010. 

DTS Disbursements 

Fiscal Year Dollars 

(Millions) 

2007 2,370 

2006 1,131 

2005 395 

2004 111 

2003 16 

DOD Travel and Transportation of Persons 

Fiscal Year Dollars 

(Millions) 

2007 9,368 

2006 8,461 

2005 10,294 

2004 8,828 

2003 8,262 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. JOHNSON 

Mr. JOHNSON. Some travelers have complained that when they are on extended 

travel, their credit card bill comes due before their travel is complete. For long periods of temporary duty or travel to overseas locations this can be a lot of money, putting a burden on the traveler. The responsibility to pay credit card bills belongs to 

the traveler, but sometimes the reimbursement from the government arrives after 

the bill is due. Besides taking a limited travel advance before the credit card bill 

is due, what other policies have been put in place to prevent members from being 

charged late charges or being punished? 

Mr. DOMINGUEZ. Cardholders who are on extended travel orders do not have to 

wait until they return from travel to submit vouchers for reimbursement or to pay 

their outstanding travel card bills. Cardholders have the option to submit vouchers 

at specified intervals during their travel through the Scheduled Partial Payment 

process. This allows them to receive reimbursement while on long-term temporary 

duty (TDY) so that payment can be made on their account through the bank’s electronic access system. If a traveler knows ahead of time that this is not a feasible 

option, they can be placed in ‘‘mission critical status’’ by their Agency Program Coordinator prior to travel. ‘‘Mission Critical’’ is a designation used to accommodate the 

unique requirements of Department of Defense (DOD), and is designed for individuals who may be TDY to locations that preclude filing interim vouchers and making 

prompt payments. It requires prior approval by the cardholder’s commanding officer/ 

supervisor. 

Reimbursement through the Defense Travel System currently takes, on average, 

8 days or less, from the time the traveler signs his travel claim, including approval 

and disbursement. By law, DOD must pay reimbursements to travelers within 30 

days. In cases where reimbursement is outstanding beyond 30 days, through no 

fault of the traveler, the traveler will be paid interest on authorized reimbursement 

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amounts. If a cardholder is charged a late fee as the result of a late payment, they 

will be reimbursed (interest rates are never applied to the DOD Government Travel 

Charge Card (GTCC)). However, a bill does not become delinquent until 60 days 

after the billing due date and late fees are not incurred until a delinquent account 

becomes 75 days past due. Further, an outstanding bill will not be reported to the 

credit bureau unless the bill has remained unpaid for 210 days. These are extraordinary measures, put in place to protect DOD travelers, that make the GTCC very 

different from other commercial travel cards. 

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