Hearing of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee - Oversight of the Defense Travel System

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REP. HANK JOHNSON (D-GA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Congress has passed legislation called the Fly America Act that requires government employees to use American commercial carriers when at all feasible. However, DTS sometimes gives travelers the option to fly on a foreign-flag carrier in violation of that statute or code, sharing -- which makes the distinction moot.

How would the Department make sense of this, Mr. Dominguez?

MR. DOMINGUEZ: Sir, the DTS is designed to enforce -- and it's part of the user complaints ironically. It does limit choices by virtue of enforcing through the software statutory and policy restrictions with regard to defense travel. And the -- so it should not be offering options in violation of Fly America Act.

So it will offer options, if you buy a ticket through United Airlines, for example, and they book on their United Airlines partner for an overseas leg, that's -- that complies with the Fly America Act. Similarly, if you are stuck in Turkey and if you need to get of out there or something, and there's not a U.S.-flag carrier or partner to do it, you know, DTS will allow you, with the right authorizations, to book a flight on some other airline. But you -- but DTS does enforce the rules and requires the appropriate approvals if you're going to need to go outside of those rules.

REP. JOHNSON: Thank you, Mr. Dominguez.

Some travelers have complained that when they are on extended travel, their credit card bill comes due before their travel is complete. For long periods of temporary duty or travel to overseas locations, this can be a lot of money, putting the burden on the traveler.

The responsibility to pay credit card bills belongs to the traveler, but sometimes the reimbursement from the government arrives after the bill is due. What policies have been put in place to prevent members from being charged late charges or being punished?

MR. DOMINGUEZ: Sir, specifics on those I would like to take for the record, but I can say today there're a couple of things; the first is the ability to get travel advances. So if you anticipate or your boss anticipates that you'll be gone for a long time, we get you an advance on that travel so that you could, you know, you have the cash to be able to defray expenses including with your travel card.

The second thing is that DTS, once the things people do acknowledge that it has done, this has really compressed the time to get paid. So people are being paid in the three days from the time they submit a voucher through DTS instead of two weeks and longer. If you can't -- if you haven't completed your travel, and you know, and you're still on TDY and still on current expenses, sir, I'll get back to you, sir, on the record with an answer to that.

REP. JOHNSON: Thank you. Mr. Brinkley, has the Department of Defense developed a capability to support all types of travel with DTS and --- IDA's report listed 61 different types of travel with Department of Defense personnel, each governed by different rules within the joint travel regulations in the joint federal travel regulations.

What has been done to reduce the number of different travel types and integrate all of them into the DTS system?

MR. FISHER: Well, I'll take the first part of that and then Mr. Dominguez, I think, can talk about the reduction of travel types. Our role is to accommodate those that are defined.

We have accommodated about half of the travel types to date, as of 2009, the end of FY09. There will be two major releases in 2009 that will add significant on the TDY and the permanent duty travel that will come into place in 2009, which will get us up to, in terms of number of travel types, I think above the 80 percent range. And by the end of Fiscal Year 2010 all of those -- all travel types that are defined will be accommodated in DTS. So we will be at 100 percent accommodating for travel by the end of 2000 and FY 2010.

In terms of reducing those or consolidating them, that would be more of a policy question that I would refer to Mike on.

MR. DOMINGUEZ: And sir, we are undertaking right now a policy review, of looking at all those different types of travel and how we might compress them and consolidate them both through policy and through legislation that we would seek help from the Congress on probably in the Fiscal Year '10 legislative change proposal.

REP. JOHNSON: Thank you.

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