[Infowarrior] - Apparently DOD hasn't heard of Expedia or Travelocity

[Richard Forno]

It Sounded Like A Good Idea...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/16/tech/printable2188041.shtml

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16, 2006(AP) The Pentagon that gave taxpayers a $434 hammer
and a $600 toilet seat cover now has a half-billion-dollar travel booking
system that is bypassed by more than eight in 10 users.

Senate investigators found the Pentagon's Web-based product - despite its
high price tag - fails to find the cheapest airfares, offers an incomplete
list of flights and hotels and won't recognize travel categories used by the
National Guard and Reserves.

The investigators found that Defense Department travelers are contacting
professional travel agents to find their hotels, flights and rental cars,
and then using the computer system to enter those choices. Once the system
is activated at an installation, travelers must use it to make their
reservations, the Pentagon said.

The result: a half-hour booking process that, according to testimony before
the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, would take travel
professionals only five minutes.

The Defense Travel System was designed as the Pentagon's moneysaving version
of an Internet travel site, where a traveler can make reservations without
the need for fee-based travel agents.

The contract for the travel system was awarded in 1998 to a company that is
now part of Northrop Grumman Mission Systems.

The subcommittee, in checks this year of 41 military installations and the
Pentagon, found that 83 percent of travelers have been contacting
professional travel agents before entering the information in the new
system. Investigators said they checked 755,000 trips between January and
September.

At the Pentagon, less than 20 percent of travelers used the Defense Travel
System as intended, without the travel agents. Virtually no travelers used
the system at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, and Fort Leavenworth, Kan.,
investigators found.

Pentagon officials insist the new system is working well.

"If my boss said I had to leave in a couple of hours, I could do that," said
Marine Maj. Stewart Upton, a Pentagon spokesman. "The future is in Internet
booking. The system is effective, it's efficient, it gives you options on
airlines, rental car agencies and hotels. We're very impressed."

Investigators and Congress' Government Accountability Office are now
questioning the Pentagon estimates of how much it saved by replacing the old
paper form system with the expensive computerized one.

A senator plans legislation to force the Pentagon to use travel agents,
saying military staff is wasting too much time using the cumbersome new
system and therefore erasing any cost savings.

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., chairman of the investigative panel, said the
Pentagon's idea of eliminating travel agents "would be the same as directing
all DoD personnel to speak Arabic in order to save money on translation
services.

"DoD is claiming the savings from reduced travel agent fees without
considering the cost of having the troops do the work," Coleman said.

For 2006, the Pentagon estimated savings at between $13.9 million and $33.4
million. After 2007, the savings would range between $56 million and $177
million annually, with recent estimates supporting the higher figure, the
Pentagon said.

But the cost of the Defense Travel System has skyrocketed. It grew from an
initial estimate of $263 million to $474 million, bringing to mind some of
the Pentagon's classic wasteful expenditures.

Coleman said further efforts to save the computer system are a waste. "I am
appalled that DoD did not pull the plug on the travel function" of the new
system long before now, he said.


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