Online system seeks to improve federal travel

Imagine you could go out on the Web-from anywhere-to a single site and make all your travel arrangements.

Imagine the site would remember what cities you usually go to, what hotels you like to stay in, what size car you prefer and the special airline meals you order. Imagine the reservations you put in would be automatically forwarded for supervisor approval, and the information on your trip would stay in the system to ease the reimbursement process when you return.

At the National Travel Conference in Nashville earlier this summer, the General Service Adminstration's Marty Wagner launched the agency's eTravel Initiative: a governmentwide, Web-based, end-to-end travel management system. The system aims to automate and consolidate travel processes from planning through reimbursement and reconciliation. Boosters say it will save money and be paperless and simpler.

This may sound familiar to federal travel-watchers: They have heard similar claims from the Defense Travel System since the mid-1990s, but that system is not yet off the ground. E-travel boosters say GSA's project will be successful in part because of lessons learned from DTS, which now is scheduled for worldwide deployment by 2006.

The team of agencies working with GSA on the project includes Transportation, Treasury, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Veterans Affairs, Navy, the Environmental Protection Agency and others. GSA plans to have an online booking process available governmentwide in December and the entire system by the end of 2003.

Some companies already have developed products to meet the government's e-travel needs. In Nashville, Cendant and Gelco launched Travelport, an end-to-end, Web-based travel procurement and expense management tool that they developed for the federal government.

The automated system lets travelers use a single portal to plan, authorize, book, fulfill and submit vouchers for reimbursement. The system ensures compliance with city pair contracts, fire safety rules and other federal mandates. A travel agency call center provides customer support with the system.

Travelport "takes federal agencies out of having to be their own integrators of all the travel systems components," says Jon Klem, president of Gelco Expense Management. Zegato also entered this arena, with Zegato Travel Service, which is up and running at several federal workplaces.

Conference participants were wary about how a unified system would work at their agencies. Project leader Tim Burke warned those working on travel improvements against committing to other processes or systems in the next year or so. GSA ultimately plans to require agencies to use its system. A common approach, he said, will reduce costs, redundancy and inefficiency. For more information on GSA's initiative, contact etravel@gsa.gov.