Stay Alert: Roadwork Ahead

ig changes in the way the federal government manages travel may affect your next business trip. Changes are in store in everything from travel regulations to how travelers book their hotels to how they pay for lunch. Here's what you need to know before you go.

Charge It-Or Else

Federal employees traveling on business must pay their expenses with government-issued travel charge cards starting Jan. 1. The General Services Administration issued the rule in July to implement a 1998 law.

Only expenses that cannot be paid with a charge card, such as laundry, parking, local transportation and tips, are exempt. Each agency also can grant its own exemptions-for example, if an employee needs to be undercover.

If expenses cannot be paid with a charge card, employees must use their own funds, a centrally billed account, travel advances, government issued travelers checks or a government transportation request.

Agencies must reimburse allowable expenses within 30 calendar days of receiving an employee's voucher. Agencies that do not reimburse travelers promptly must pay interest to the traveler at the current Treasury rate and the late payment fee that appears on the card.

"The only problem from the traveler's point of view is the concern about being held accountable if the agency won't reimburse in a timely manner," says Bill Rivers, acting director of travel management policy at GSA. "But there's a punishment if agencies don't do their job-if they don't pay in 30 days. Travelers appreciate that fact. We have to make sure the employees are made whole."

The rule forbids the use of travel charge cards for anything other than official government travel. Employees can expect disciplinary action for buying personal items with a government card, and the regulation outlines steps agencies can take if employees don't pay their bills on time.

The new rule puts into effect the Travel and Transportation Reform Act provision requiring federal employees to pay travel expenses with charge cards.
-Katy Saldarini contributed to this report.

Card Contract Kinks

Meanwhile, a year after the new travel card contracts went into effect, those who manage the card programs for agencies are still finding it rough going.

The November 1998 contracts expanded the travel card program from a single vendor to a choice of four-Citibank, First Chicago, NationsBank and U.S. Bank. Agencies can tailor their contracts to meet specific needs and to take advantage of new technologies and services as they emerge. Travelers use the cards to cover about $4 billion in travel spending each year.

But the transition to the new cards was rocky. Agencies had problems managing data and getting accurate and timely reports.

Sue McIver, director of GSA's Services Acquisition Center, says most problems have been with the electronic access system (which allows managers to do program maintenance and check data on screen), invoices and reporting. As a result, managers are forced to "do a lot of things manually that they expected the system would do for them. It has increased their workloads, and probably decreased their trust in the system," says McIver.

McIver says the data problems may make it difficult for agencies to do their end-of-year closeouts. Her office is working with banks to get agencies the data they need.

"We have a ways to go till our customers will be satisfied, and we won't be satisfied until they are satisfied," says McIver.

GSA is looking to the future of its card programs. In August, the agency held a "SmartPay" conference in Nashville, Tenn. Almost 2,000 people who manage card programs in the government and at banks attended. "We wanted to get people thinking about the tool they have in their hands and how to use it differently," says McIver. Conference attendees discussed uses of new technologies, e-commerce, risk mitigation, digital signatures and more.

New Travel Agent Pact

In April, GSA put out a request for proposals for a new travel management contract. When the contract is complete, any agency will be able to issue a task order to buy travel management services. The agency was expected to announce awards in the fall.

The five-year agreement signals a shift in the way the government manages its travel business. Under the contract, government agencies will pay travel management firms directly for services instead of relying on commissions from airlines and others in the travel industry. The commissions will be refunded to the government agency. The Transportation Department was the first agency to experiment with this contract structure.

The contracts will allow agencies to issue task orders to the vendors of their choice. Agencies can elect to pay more for additional services, such as on-site travel management and specialized reports.

Susan May, director of the travel management division at GSA's Federal Supply Service, says the agency moved to the new contract structure because of changes in the travel industry, especially airline commission cuts (another round of which hit in October). "We value the services [that] travel managers provide and didn't want them to depend on another source of compensation," May says. "We also wanted to be able to adjust in the future to any changes in travel agency compensation in as simple a way as possible." Under the new contracts, commission changes will not require contract changes.

May doesn't expect the new contract structure to affect travelers directly, except that the fee structure may include incentives for automated booking, e-tickets and the like.

"It will involve more work on the part of travel managers inside the government, though, to weigh the costs and benefits of different services," May says. "They will have some thinking to do to make choices in their task orders. But we hope the results will be well worth it."

Onus on Agencies

GSA hopes to finish putting federal travel regulations into "plain language" by the end of December. The rules dealing with temporary duty travel are complete, but relocation is still in the works.

"The section dealing with permanent change of station is "probably more complicated, but it doesn't impact everyone as much as TDY [temporary duty]," says Rivers.

The translation fulfills a National Partnership for Reinventing Government mandate. GSA rewrote the regulations for clarity and made some substantive changes, putting more onus on the agency to implement the regulations, according to Rivers. The regulations affect all civilian workers. They also set the tone for military travel regulations.

"Response [to the plain language regulations] has been fairly positive," says Rivers. "It's easier on the traveler, and a little more difficult for the agency travel manager, because we've given more flexibility to agencies. We want to put the authority out where the responsibility is."

Still in the Shop

The Defense Travel System, which was slated to debut in 11 Midwest states in November, has been stalled by information technology glitches. "We've run into some challenges," project manager Col. Albert Arnold told participants at the Society of Travel Agents in Government's September meeting. "But they are not in the functional areas."

DTS is an end-to-end automated travel system that will integrate and streamline travel authorization, reservations and claims processing. TRW is coordinating a team of vendors providing the system.

"We found that to field this thing, we'd basically have to punch through 1,600 different firewalls," said Arnold. "Getting computers to talk to computers throughout DoD is not the easiest thing to do." Arnold cited security concerns, noting the need for "increased vigilance" to make sure the travel system does not become a hacker's entry into DoD's computer systems.

DTS officials did not estimate when the project would be fielded.