December 2008 - As the Bush administration prepares to exit Washington, D.C., a legacy that officials hope to leave behind is the e-government initiative that includes e-travel services (ETS). One of the largest and costliest travel management consolidations ever planned, ETS was launched in April 2002 with the 10-year goal of cutting travel-related costs by 50 percent and saving $450 million. ETS this year finally appears to have gained some traction and is beginning to deliver savings.
Pre-ETS, government agencies had more than 250 different travel approval, authorization, reimbursement and booking systems to book billions of dollars worth of travel each year. Governmentwide, online adoption was just 6 percent, according to the White House. The government last year spent more than $14.8 billion on travel, but the military and defense portion was $9.4 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget. The ETS consolidation was designed to streamline the purchasing of the other $5.4 billion by dozens of federal agencies.
As of September, more than 1.6 million vouchers had been processed through ETS, according to Jeff Koch, OMB e-government and information technology portfolio manager. Some agencies are far ahead of others in their adoption of ETS, Koch acknowledged at a Society of Government Travel Professionals meeting in September, but ETS now has entered its "transformation phase" and started to de- liver savings.
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Company:
U.S. federal government's dozens of civilian agencies |
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Volume:
$5.4 billion in 2007 travel spend |
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Challenge:
Lack of visibility, control or ability to leverage travel costs or process,
along with substantial costs to support more than 250 custom-built travel programs and technologies to manage government travel |
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Approach:
Charge General Services Administration to spec and source development
of three commercially hosted, end-to-end travel systems to manage "travel planning and authorization through review and approval of post-travel reimbursement" for all government agencies, with top priority of adoption for 24 agencies that generate more than 80 percent of government's 2.9 million travel vouchers |
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Solution:
E-Travel Services (ETS), Web-based service to be provided by one
of three technology platforms of agency choice to provide standardized travel
management practices, consolidate federal travel, minimize costs and produce
superior customer satisfaction |
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Within some of the 18 agencies that have partially or fully adopted ETS, "online bookings are reaching 80 percent," Koch said. OMB reported the overall adoption rate at more than 60 percent. Travel reimbursement processing time has been reduced from more than seven days to an average of three days, federal officials stated in a progress report on e-gov initiatives. The General Services Administration under e-gov gained responsibility for delivery of the ETS contracts, along with its usual purchasing of airline city-pair deals, the FedRooms negotiated hotel rate program and
the new travel charge card program. But it is up to each agency to execute contracts for services, establish policies and mandates for travelers to use its preferred travel systems, and deliver the savings envisioned.
In the May 2008 "Report to Congress on the President's E-Government Initiatives," OMB said the benefits of ETS include "increased cost savings associated with overall reduction in travel management center transaction service fees, improved strategic source pricing through cross-government purchasing agreements, improved business process functionality as a result of streamlined travel policies and processes, and improved agency oversight and audit capabilities. OMB cited additional cost avoidance from traveler and manager time savings with the automated process.
"Using an ETS provider, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development decreased the voucher processing cost on average from $75 per voucher to $13.75," the report stated. The State Department "saved over $500,000 in travel management service fees for reservations in FY07, compared to pre-ETS pricing and online usage." State began migrating its travel services to Carlson Wagonlit
Government Travel in Q2 FY06. It also documented traveler and manager cost avoidance of $22,000 from the streamlined process. The U.S. Department of Treasury saved more than $407,000 in travel management fees in FY07 after it migrated to ETS.
"Before ETS, we had 250 stove-piped, standalone, expensive, agency-custom systems. None offered end-to-end processing. They had inconsistent or nonexistent financial controls around them and cost millions of dollars to operate," Koch said. ETS became one of 24 initiatives in the President's Management Agenda developed in 2002. GSA mandated that agencies by the end of the government's fiscal year in September 2006 migrate off of more than 250 existing systems to one of three approved ETS systems provided by Northrop Grumman Mission System's GovTrip, Electronic Data System's FedTraveler.com or Carlson Wagonlit Government Travel's E2. Delays pushed that target to next year.
ETS Fully Deployed
"By FY 2009, all executive branch civilian agencies will be fully deployed or migrating to e-gov travel. The FY 2009 online adoption rate target is over 65 percent," stated a GSA budget justification report submitted to Congress. The GSA report stated total investment in ETS by 2009 would reach $62.8 million.
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"ETS now has transformed (travel management) from what was an after-action report, from something [OMB deputy director for management Clay Johnson] read, to something he can now control. It becomes a knob that he can turn to control the function of his cabinet agency."
— Jeff Koch, Office of Management and Budget e-government and information technology portfolio manager
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ETS is not without critics. Government agencies, travel management companies, suppliers, Congress and the Government Accountability Office have all complained about such issues as the technology, process, deadlines, re-baselining of project scope and savings expectations of ETS. In its second annual study of OMB technology projects, GAO in July criticized the OMB and federal agencies' oversight of 413 IT projects, totaling at least $25.2 billion in fiscal-year 2008, "as being poorly planned, poorly performing or both."
As a result of GAO and congressional scrutiny, OMB identifies high-risk projects and how it plans to manage them. Several ETS deployments are on the high-risk list, including those at the U.S. departments of Justice and Treasury,
as well as the Agency for International Development, Environmental Protection Agency and the Defense Department, which is implementing its own travel consolidation program and technology outside of the GSA contracts.
Nevertheless, OMB and GSA have continued to push agencies to drive adoption, standardization and reporting on the back end of all the technology to allow the government to procure and manage travel as well as, if not better than, corporations.
E-Gov Travel Metrics |
FY07 Target |
FY08 Target |
March 2008 |
Percent of agencies fully deployed on ETS |
42% |
29% |
71% |
Percent of agencies migrating but not fully deployed |
42% |
50% |
29% |
Percent of agencies scheduled to deploy |
17% |
21% |
100% |
Percent of trips completed online using ETS |
67% |
47% |
65% |
Agency satisfaction of ETS effectiveness |
63% |
75% |
75% |
Notes: OMB charts progress of 24 key agencies that constitute 80+ percent of executive branch civilian travel (excluding U.S. Department of Defense), although 80 civilian agencies as of July 2007 contracted for ETS and 47 were fully deployed as of January 2008.
Source: White House Office of Management and Budget "E-Gov Travel Performance Measures," March 2008
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OMB relies on scores of metrics to track progress on the President's Management Agenda, including quarterly scorecards that rate agency performance on five key objectives. As of September, "11 scorecard agencies were fully deployed and eight scorecard agencies will complete deployment in the next six months." In addition, 38 non-scorecard agencies already had deployed ETS, Koch said.
"No longer do we have math errors in travel vouchers or people traveling with- out authorization, staying in the wrong class of hotels, taking the wrong class of flights, double-reimbursing tickets, forgetting their mileage, losing receipts," Koch said. "We've improved all these processes.
"The net result, the punch line that [OMB deputy director for management] Clay Johnson enjoys," Koch added, is that ETS empowers him to " 'manage travel strategically. Travel used to be a report that I got at the end of the year to see what we spent. Now I can see where we're spending money, who's traveling and for what program. If I have a program that's more important, I can tell them strategically to travel more or less,' " Koch said of Johnson's view of the technology.
"It becomes a knob that [Johnson] can turn to control the function of his cabinet agency. ETS now has transformed (travel management) from what was an after-action report, from something he read, to something he can now control," Koch said. "Beginning in 2008, we've actually measured $508 million in cost avoidance by agencies on the top part of that curve shutting down their systems and moving to the shared system," Koch said of e-government initiatives that include travel.
Feds' Travel Management Scorecard |
Measure |
2007 Target |
2007 Actual |
2008 Target |
Direct costs as a percent of revenue |
63% |
54% |
62% |
External customer satisfaction score |
71% |
75% |
100% |
FedRooms percentage off consortia rate |
18% |
19% |
31% |
City-pair program percentage off lowest published full economy fare |
66% |
67% |
66% |
Source: White House Office of Management and Budget ETS performance measures
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Report Cards
GSA this year asked agencies to complete surveys on seven key areas of management, including travel management, to assess whether the policies and practices of each federal agency were "strong," "OK" or "weak" in efficiency/effectiveness, accountability, safety/environmental issues and compliance with identified best practices. The findings are scheduled to be released by mid-December. Agencies were asked if they have documented policies that designate an agency official or office as the centralized travel coordinator, require travelers to provide current contact information while traveling and offer incentives to encourage travelers to save money while on official business travel. The survey also asked agencies if they have "undertaken or considered consolidation of any travel management function" or established performance measures to gauge the travel program; and if they require reimbursement to the traveler within 30 days of submission of a proper travel claim, advanced authorization for special travel and/or the establishment of categories of employees allowed to use a government travel card.
Meanwhile, Koch and other political appointees within OMB are planning how best to continue oversight of e-gov during the transition to the new president. "I don't expect to see a change of course," Koch said. "We have in place the people, the commitment and the budget to make sure these implementations continue through the transition. Once we get through [that], I do see the maturing of the financial management interface with travel. There have been a lot of lessons learned by agencies."
As ETS matures, Koch said, "We may see some agencies changing the mix of goods and services they get from vendors." In its budget justification to Congress, GSA noted that it planned a "recompetition" for ETS service providers.
Koch said federal officials plan to ask travel providers what they are selling to corporations to help them best manage travel. Instead of a knob to control travel, Koch asked suppliers if they're providing joysticks to corporations these days. "Maybe we need a joystick to control travel."
Adoption By Agency |
Fully deployed |
U.S. departments of Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, Transportation, Veterans Affairs; General Services Administration; National Archives; National Science Foundation; and Office of Personnel Management
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Partially deployed |
U.S. departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, State, Treasury; Agency for International Development; Environmental Protection Agency; and Small Business Administration
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Migrations scheduled* |
U.S. departments of Commerce, Interior, Justice; NASA; Nuclear Regulatory Commission; and Social Security Administration |
* Some agencies already have begun migrating
Source: OMB and the "2008 Report to Congress on the President's E-Government Initiatives"
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