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emo to service members: Your next move probably won't go any better than your last one did. But there's hope for the one after that.

After almost a decade of testing, studying and negotiating a new way of getting service members and their families from duty station to duty station, Defense says it is ready to change the way it does relocations.

A June report from the U.S. Transportation Command summarized the lessons learned from more than three pilot programs. It pulled the best of those programs and the best from the private sector to design a new system for moving service members and civilian employees. Defense is setting up a program management office to put it all in place, and plans to launch the new procedures in two years.

LONG TIME COMING

Defense has known for years that the current program, which is three decades old, is broken. The department has been trying to fix it since 1993. By April 2000, even Maj. Gen. Kenneth Privratsky, then commander of the Army's Military Traffic Management Command (MTMC), which oversees relocations, was growing impatient: "Military service members can benefit now from changes to the existing personal property move program," he said. "We cannot wait."

Each year, the department moves more than 600,000 service members and Defense civilians, with their families, at a cost of $1.7 billion.

Problems with the program are abundant-and infamous. Vendors are selected primarily based on price, not on quality or performance. About half of all moves take place over the summer, so moving companies hire temporary workers to staff up for the huge surge in demand. Loss or damage occurs in 65 percent of moves, a 1997 survey found, and claims cost the government about $100 million a year. The rate of loss and damage is probably much higher, because many people don't file claims because they are discouraged with the system.

Horror stories abound: Movers that show up days or weeks late, or not at all. Movers who show up drunk. Families' belongings dumped out on the highway, set on fire, delivered soaking wet or covered with mold. Whole loads lost.

Despite the dysfunction, and after almost a decade of efforts to improve the program, it remains essentially unchanged. Why? Paul Taibl, defense policy analyst at Business Executives for National Security (BENS) sums it up this way: "The wheels of government turn exceedingly slowly." He points to universal truths-change is tough, somebody's job is "at the bottom of this," and leadership turns over too often for people to see projects to fruition-as the hurdles to improvement.

Moreover, the moving industry fought change in a big way. Associations representing moving companies said firms were already being asked to do more for a bare-bones fee, and said that reengineering would squeeze out small businesses-the bulk of their members.

Another reason the old way has hung on so long is that doing a better job would cost more. One pilot, the Full Service Moving Project, cost about 50 percent more than the current system, and MTMC's pilot cost about 30 percent more.

WHO MOVED MY STUFF?

Barriers to change aside, all the pilot programs improved quality of life for service members and their families. Hot buttons for service members, according to a Defense Department survey, are the condition of their property and fair and timely payment for damaged or lost goods. For example, it now takes an average of almost five months to get a claim settled; in the pilots, claims were settled in an average of one month. In evaluating the pilots, Defense also took into account each program's cost and small business participation.

With the lessons learned, the long-awaited new program, dubbed "Families First," has started to take shape. Some of its basic features, drawn from the pilots' successes and from what works in the private sector, have been agreed on, including:

• Service members will be able to get full-replacement value for lost or damaged property.
• Service members will be able to settle claims directly with a moving company rather than having to work through the Defense Department.
• Movers must have toll-free numbers for members to call to ask questions, resolve problems, or check on the status of a move.
• Carriers must meet stricter business and performance criteria to get business from Defense.

So will it really happen this time? Most observers are optimistic. "They are close to having all the I's dotted and the T's crossed," says BENS' Taibl. "Details are being worked out-every day the program's content is clearer," says Linda Rothleder, director of the Military Mobility Coalition, a group of private sector relocation and move management companies. "I don't think there is any great disagreement anymore."

Col. Silvia Anderson, MTMC's deputy chief of staff for passenger and personal property, is among the "glass half full" crowd. "At this juncture, there does not appear to be any show stopper," she told Government Executive. "The hard part was getting everyone on the same sheet of music." Now that industry and the services are singing the same song, she expects the rest of the project to go smoothly.

Some are skeptical that Defense can find the money to make this happen. The services will have to go to Congress with their hands out, looking for appropriations to get the program off the ground. So once again, the department's 1.4 million active duty personnel and 700,000 civilian employees will have to wait and see.