Travel Spenders Charge Ahead

n fiscal 1999, federal agencies spent $8.5 billion on travel expenses for mission-related business around the world. Overall travel spending was up almost 7 percent from the nearly $8 billion agencies spent the year before.

The 25 top-traveling agencies accounted for more than 99 percent of total federal travel spending last year.

The year followed the typical pattern: The government predicts a decline in travel spending and then outspends its budget. For 1999, agencies made $551 million in unplanned expenditures. Looking ahead to 2000 and 2001, signs point to more of the same.

The Defense Department accounts for almost two-thirds of the federal travel budget, so as DoD goes, so goes the government. (Another nine agencies account for most of the rest of travel spending.) Last year the Pentagon outspent its budget by 12 percent, so overall the government would have been at or below its target, but for the DoD spending.

Several other agencies also missed their targets by quite a bit, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (over budget by 10 percent) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (over budget by 12 percent). But these were balanced out by some significant underspending on the part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (23 percent), the Education Department (21 percent), the Justice Department (11 percent), the Agriculture Department (15 percent), the Energy Department (10 percent) and the Environmental Protection Agency (10 percent).

For fiscal 2001, most agencies are anticipating only slight adjustments in travel spending, but a few are expecting changes in the double digits. The Commerce Department, for example, requested a travel budget 68 percent lower in 2001 than in 2000, because it will be scaling down from the Census. The Federal Emergency Management Agency's travel budget, which is about as predictable as the disasters it responds to, is slated to drop 75 percent. But don't count on it.

HUD, on the other hand, expects its employees to hit the road in far greater numbers in 2001. Its is seeking a travel budget increase of more than 40 percent. Other double-digit increases are slated for the Energy (13 percent) and Labor (11 percent) departments.

When travelers at those and other agencies embark on their journeys, they'll be bearing their travel charge cards to use for their expenses. In fiscal 1999, federal travelers put almost $4.4 billion in charges on government travel cards, according to Jeffrey Koses of the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service. That's up from $3.9 billion in 1998.

Of the total charges, $3.4 billion is reflected in the chart in this section on the top travel vendors. Some of the charges are missing, due to the government's switch from a single charge card vendor (American Express) to multiple vendors. The chart covers only 10 months of the year; the missing two months were with American Express. In addition, with the switch to multiple vendors, data and reports are more difficult to get. GSA itself does not know where agencies spent all their travel dollars using the cards.

In the new card contracts, GSA apparently failed to require vendors to provide consolidated travel spending data, an oversight one federal travel expert calls "unconscionable-an incredible oversight."

GSA services acquisition director Sue McIver says the agency will amend its contracts with the card vendors to require such reports in future years. In the past, only about half of all spending by federal travelers was put on government cards. But with a new law, which went into effect in the spring of this year, requiring that travelers use the cards on the road, a higher percentage of travel spending should show up on the cards in the coming years.