Defense officials to craft new military relocation program this summer

The Military Traffic Management Command (MTMC) will deliver a plan by the end of August for drastically overhauling the Defense Department's military relocation program, according to agency officials. Seven work teams made up of representatives from the military, the moving industry and MTMC will spend seven weeks hammering out a prototype relocation program that could be in place as early as fall 2004, if approved. The teams will focus on areas such as moving rates, payment methods, quality control measures and claims processing. "We want to give service members the services they want and deserve," said Air Force Col. Patty Hunt, deputy chief of staff for passenger and personal property at MTMC. "We are going to do this by improving the processes and adopting more commercial practices." The Pentagon spends about $3 billion each year moving military service members and their families, including the transportation, storage and management of household furniture, goods and baggage. MTMC, the Army component of the U.S. Transportation Command, performs, on average, about 500,000 moves a year. "We are the nation's biggest single mover, period," said MTMC spokesman John Randt. "But in the last 30 years our program has hardly been changed, and it has problems." Nine years ago complaints from military personnel led Pentagon officials to look for ways to improve its relocation program. Since then, the Defense Department has sponsored several pilot programs aimed at improving the moving process for military personnel and their families, including MTMC's Full Service Moving Project. A recent evaluation by the U.S. Transportation Command of the various pilot programs found that three elements must work well to have a successful moving program: the acquisition process, information systems technology and the liability and claims process. "We've learned a lot from our pilots," said Cullen Hutchinson, former director of the Full Service Moving Project. "If we use that knowledge we can leverage our progress." Team members are ready to get moving on the long-awaited revamping process. "I'm extremely excited," said Maj. Fred Hyden, the Marine Corps representative. "We have wanted to do this for some time. There is definitely an opportunity for us to provide quality of life for our service members."