Hearing of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee - Can Dod Trevelers Book a Trip? Defense Travel System Update
Hearing of the Oversignt and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee - Can Dod Trevelers Book a Trip? Defense Travel System Update
CHAIRED BY: REP. VIC SNYDER (D-AR)
WITNESSES: PAM MITCHELL, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE TRAVEL MANAGEMENT OFFICE, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; DAVID FISHER, DIRECTOR, BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION AGENCY, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; ASIF KHAN, DIRECTOR, FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND ASSURANCE, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE; DR. WILLIAM B. MOORE, VICE PRESIDENT, LMI GOVERNMENT CONSULTING
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REP. SNYDER: The hearing will come to order. Good afternoon. Welcome to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations' hearing on updates to the Defense Travel System, the DTS system. The subcommittee last held a hearing on this issue in April of 2008, just short of a year ago.
As we said at that time, we thought this topic was an important one. It certainly is an expensive one, and we're here to get an update on the progress that has been made, as we said we would last year. And there's a lot of challenges that continue, and I think anyone would agree with that in the Defense Travel System.
DTS is supposed to be the primary end-to-end travel system for DOD personnel. The Department of Defense spends between 9 and 10 billion dollars on defense travel every year while the system has been plagued by developmental problems, operational test failures, premature deployments, functionality problems, low usage and general user dissatisfaction.
The importance of this kind of issue is that 60 percent of the Pentagon's procurement budget, the acquisition budget, does not go into equipment -- the sexy items that get all the attention, like rifles and tanks and planes. It goes into services contracts like the Defense Travel System we're considering today, and it's very important in a bipartisan manner for this Congress that we find out how money is being spent and figure out the most efficient way to accomplish the goals of the American people.
It's been reported that even though the Defense Travel System is operational in over 95 percent of DOD locations, the department is still allowing travelers to use legacy systems. This is an inefficient waste of taxpayer money, and the department needs to ensure that all personnel who should be using DTS are in fact using it.
This committee has heard repeated concerns from DOD travelers that DTS is a confusing, complicated system. In fact, a usability study conducted last year by LMI Government Consulting showed that only 42 percent of DOD travelers could successfully complete a task in DTS, whether booking a trip, canceling one, or creating a voucher. This means that over half of the travelers who were surveyed were unable to complete the basic tasks necessary for travel.
DOD has spent a lot of money and time on implementation of the Defense Travel System, and it must become the single, streamlined travel management system that was intended that we all want. It is essential that this is accomplished in a way that is both cost- efficient and user-friendly. We hope all of our witnesses today can help illuminate how much progress has been made toward achieving this goal, how far the department still has to go and where we can expect to be at this time next year.
We will hear from two witnesses from the department's Travel Management Office and Business Transformation Agency who will tell us what kind of progress has been made with DTS in the past year and what current efforts are under way to improve the system. We will also hear from LMI Government Consulting about the results of the DTS usability study they conducted last year for the department and any ideas they may have about how to make DTS more user-friendly for travelers.
Finally, we will hear from the Government Accountability Office, which has done extensive work on the reliability and cost-efficiency of DTS. In 2006, GAO issued two reports on DTS that included 14 recommendations for improvement. GAO will testify today on the implementation of those recommendations and will also tell us how far they think the department has to go to make sure that DTS is a reliable system for DOD for all travelers and administrators.
Our panel of witnesses today consists of Ms. Pam Mitchell, the director of the Defense Travel Management Office, the Department of Defense; Mr. David Fisher, the director of the Business Transformation Agency at the Department of Defense; Dr. William Moore, the vice president of LMI Government Consulting; and Mr. Asif Khan -- did I say that correctly? --
MR. KHAN: Asif Khan.
REP. SNYDER: -- Asif Khan, director of financial management and assurance, Government Accountability Office.
We appreciate you all being here, and I will turn now to Rob Wittman for his opening comments. And this is actually our first full hearing in the beginning of this new Congress, and we're very, very pleased to have Mr. Wittman on the committee.
REP. ROB WITTMAN (R-VA): Well, thank you, Chairman Snyder. I really appreciate it. It's an honor to be here with you and to be serving as the ranking member.
I want to say good afternoon to our witnesses. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to join us today. We look forward to hearing from you.
As Chairman Snyder had pointed to, before I begin the comment about today's hearing I would like to note my appreciation in the bipartisan spirit in which Chairman Snyder has reached out to make sure that this committee works in a collaborative effort in making sure that we look at all the different things that are involved with the House Armed Services Committee in finding ways that we can improve the Department of Defense and other government programs.
So Chairman Snyder, thank you. That's great, great leadership on your half and great way to run a committee, so I appreciate that.
And this afternoon, we return to a topic that we examined last year, and that's the Defense Travel System, or DTS. DTS was initiated more than 10 years ago to better account for DOD travel costs, and in other words, the initial focus was to benefit the accountant, not the user. And while accountability is a worthy objective, the early efforts gave little heed to user friendliness, leading to lots of frustration and ultimately user rejection of the system.
And since travel processed online is substantially cheaper to book than travel booked the traditional way, this failure to consider user friendliness was counterproductive. Indeed, widespread user frustration has brought this issue to the subcommittee's attention, and, you know, the average sergeant and captain in the field was literally fed up with being ordered to use a system that didn't produce results, and we've heard loud and clear that frustration and we are looking at ways we can overcome that.
I understand that DTS has continued to make progress in this regard and that usage statistics and user acceptance has improved since last year, and I applaud all the efforts to make the system work better and to make it more user-friendly. And as we all know, we're encouraged any time those sorts of improvements happen, but we understand that there are still some ways that we can improve further.
And daunting as the DTS mission may be, given all the different scenarios and travel rules that DOD travelers encounter, we all know from personal experience that online systems that are hard to use will not be used.
But again, I'm encouraged by your progress and would like to know how and when you expect to complete the job and shut down redundant legacy systems.
And again, I want to thank our witnesses for being here today, and I look forward to your testimony.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
REP. SNYDER: Thank you, Mr. Wittman.
We'll now go to your opening statements. We're going to have a light go on here that will turn red at five minutes. We'll put the same clock on ourself, and most of us will pretty much stop at the end of five minutes. If there's things that you need to tell us after the five minutes, you should go ahead and do that, but I want you to have an idea about the length of time.
It's my understanding that Ms. Mitchell and Mr. Fisher, you all have a joint statement, and we'll begin with you, then we'll go to Dr. Moore and Mr. Khan.
And I don't want to be tacky, but I just can't resist -- I understand in the spirit of transparency the first draft you sent over of your statement actually said at the top, "To OMB." And I appreciate that candor that actually your statements did have to be cleared by OMB. So you should feel free at my request to share with us anything they edited out -- (laughter) -- that you think that we -- or perhaps, more appropriately, that they added that you think that we ought to know about.
Ms. Mitchell, are you leading? Ms. Mitchell.
MS. MITCHELL: Chairman Snyder, Congressman Wittman and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to be here today to update you on progress the Department of Defense has made with the Defense Travel System.
In the fall of 2006, Dr. David Chu, the undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness, stated to the Senate Armed Services Committee, "Commercial travel within the department, including DTS, is under new management."
The new management to which he referred evolved into an extremely effective partnership between the Defense Travel Management Office -- DTMO -- and the Business Transformation Agency, or the BTA.
Three years ago, the Travel Assistance Center did not exist. Today it is a single, one-stop shop helping DOD travelers around the world 24 hours per day, seven days per week.
Three years ago, there was no customer satisfaction program, no meaningful opportunity for users to provide feedback and no reliable means of effectively gauging customer opinion. Today the department is well on its way to integrating customer feedback into DTS improvements in the entire scope of travel.
A key component of this program is the Quick Compass survey, a new scientific polling methodology. The 2008 Quick Compass is our baseline going forward and provides early evidence that the department's efforts to increase usability and functionality are working.
For example, 69 percent of DTS users in this survey find DTS easy to use when making airline reservations, 79 percent find it easy to use for rental car reservations, 71 percent of those responding were either satisfied or very satisfied with expense reimbursement time, which is three times faster than the statutory requirement, and 46 percent noted they would rather use DTS for making reservations than call their commercial travel office agent.
Three years ago, DTS processed about 257,000 temporary duty, or TDY, vouchers during the first quarter of the fiscal year. During the first quarter of this fiscal year, DTS processed almost 867,000 vouchers, a 237.4 percent increase.
Three years ago, the department lacked a comprehensive training program for travelers. Today the program includes a variety of classes, with more on the horizon. Since July 2008, five new Web- based courses have provided traveler and instructor knowledge to over 38,000. Twenty-three distance learning courses were launched in early 2008 and are in active use.
Three years ago, 100-plus commercial travel office contracts were managed by over 50 organizations across the department. Today the DTMO manages 31 small business contracts and has awarded an umbrella contract to eight commercial travel vendors.
We have awarded seven of 11 planned task orders under this contract and expect to award the four remaining by the end of this year.
Three years ago, usability and additional capability were only topics of discussion. Today the enhanced reservation module in DTS, commonly referred to as reservation refresh, is regarded as a significant improvement for travelers.
Other important, more recent enhancements include an easy way to request commercial travel agent assistance from within the system and a simple method to cancel a trip. Further, the results of the recent LMI usability review will guide department improvement of the user interface over the next two years.
Three years ago, the focus was on basic business travel in DTS, with the system supporting 27 of the 73 travel types identified by the Institute for Defense Analyses. Today work is under way to implement capability for those remaining. By October of this year, we plan for DTS to support 66 of the 73 travel types.
The department has charted an ambitious path ahead as we continue to improve the Defense Travel System.
Thank you for your continued support, and I look forward to answering your questions.
REP. SNYDER: Thank you, Ms. Mitchell. I should have said you'll have a joint written statement, but you each are doing oral statements.
Mr. Fisher.
MR. FISHER: Thank you, Chairman Snyder, Congressman Wittman, members of the subcommittee. It's a pleasure to be here again to discuss our continued progress with the Defense Travel System.
As Ms. Mitchell has detailed, both usage and satisfaction with DTS continue to increase, as does the savings that increased usage brings to the Department of Defense. Reservation percentages, vouchers processed, percent of TDY travel managed -- all the metrics indicate increased adoption of the tool, and the recent survey provides another clear indicator that user satisfaction with the system continues to improve as well. And since the economic model for DTS is predicated on a usage-based savings, these metrics all indicate increased bottom line success.
Now, our colleagues at GAO continue to provide valuable, independent oversight and assessments of DTS. We appreciate their acknowledgement of some of this progress, and the preliminary results from their current audit indicate we still have some room for improvement, specifically in the area of thoroughness of testing. And that point is well taken. It's been an additional focus area for us over the last few months and it's a recommendation that we take to heart and continue to look at.
The Business Transformation Agency is now three and a half years old, and DTS is one of the 27 inherited systems that are in our portfolio. I believe it's one of the best examples of the value that we've been able to bring to previously troubled enterprise systems.
At BTA, we have adopted a set of guiding principles, something we call the six S's of success, and I'd like to spend just a couple of minutes talking about DTS in the context of those six guiding principles. Those are: strategic alignment, stovepipe elimination, standardize, streamline, simplify, and systems and services.
DOD-wide strategic alignment around DTS is finally occurring after a long period of resistance. Initially, the tool was clumsy to use. It was geared more to back-end finance processing than up-front travel management by DOD travelers. Usage and satisfaction were both low.
Beginning with the 2007 implementation of our reservation refresh module, alignment began to come into being. The tool became easier to use, adoption increased and the mandate policy was issued from OSD.
Alignment is now in place between the finance and the travel communities and increasingly with the DOD individual traveler as well, for DTS as the tool for travel management in the department.
Stovepipe elimination: This has also occurred in the last couple of years as the seamless integration between the travel and finance communities has been accomplished in DTS. Both communities needed individual capabilities to be implemented without sacrificing the ability for tight integration. The updates to DTS in the last two years have facilitated that, breaking down the functional stovepipes that had hindered effective processing of individual travel transactions.
Standardize: absolutely. The department has used DTS to standardize business rules and policies as enforced by the tool itself for most of our TDY travel. PNR owns the policies; BTA implements them and the tool for travelers to use. DTS now ensures that our DOD travelers see the same available inventory, the same rates, and follow the same business rules no matter who uses the tool or where. DTS use gives us a high degree of confidence about compliance to travel standards across the department.
Streamline: again, absolutely. The results are in our metrics. Payment for travel vouchers is provided in about a week, beating the requirement by three times and besting the old manual processes by even more. This is one of the greatest benefits for our people -- timely and accurate pay for travel.
Now, could we do more in the area of streamlining? I believe we can, but that's dependent on the next S, which is simplify. This is the area where we've made the least progress in trying to optimize the user experience of our travelers. DTS remains quite complex in some areas; it inhibits our ability to streamline some of the elements of that front-end travel process.
If we could simplify the rules that we need to embed in the tool, we could simplify and streamline the process better for our travelers. I believe we collectively have more work to do in this area.
Finally, in terms of systems and services, DTS is both -- it provides the capability which embodies most of our guiding principles. We will continue to add to both the capability of the tool and the usability of the tool, in part based on the excellent recommendations from the study from LMI. These ongoing enhancements, consistent with our guiding principles, will enable the department to achieve our seventh S, which is savings.
We can clearly make the case that DTS saves money for the department. Each voucher processed saves on the back-end transaction costs to make that payment. Savings are also accruing on the front end of the reservation process as the new contracts with our commercial travel partners embed lower fees when most of that work is done in DTS. Every reservation made, every voucher paid through DTS, this saves us money.
Adoption of the six S's through our close partnership with the DTMO has enabled us to improve this tool, improve the experience for our travelers, and improve the bottom-line savings for the department, and we're not done.
We are continuing to update DTS to account for even more types of travel and continuing to make improvements in the travel experience, and we believe these steps will continue to add to an already vastly improved DTS.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I do look forward to answering your questions.
REP. SNYDER: Thank you, Mr. Fisher.
Dr. Moore.
MR. MOORE: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of this distinguished subcommittee. My name is Bill Moore, and I'm the vice president of the Logistics Management Institute, known as LMI.
Thank you for inviting me to testify before the subcommittee. Your letter of invitation asked for a discussion on the Defense Travel System usability study that LMI completed in September of 2008.
You have asked that I focus on LMI's findings, recommendations and the improvement strategy contained in our study. Following an independent study of DTS by the Institute for Defense Analysis, the Defense Travel Management Office asked LMI to assess the usability of the system for various types of users performing various tasks.
I will provide a brief overview of our approach to that review, discuss our findings and end with our recommendations for improving the usability of DTS.
Our team conducted usability testing with approximately 280 participants having a mix of demographic characteristics and level of experience with computers and the Internet. The participants included military, civilian users from the four military services, as well as other DOD components.
We grouped participants into four categories: travelers and three separate administrative functions. Participants in each group attempted to complete several role-specific scenarios representing common tasks, such as setting up a trip, canceling modified portions of a trip or approving vouchers.
We observed their performance of the task, captured usability metrics with automated software and gathered participant comments and suggestions. Our findings fall into three broad categories: performance-based issues that show statistical differences in success rates based on user demographics, DTS-wide issues that affect the design of the overall system, and scenario-based issues stemming from specific tasks given to users.
We found large differences in overall success rates for different types of users and the kinds of tasks they perform. The average success rate for a traveler was only 42 percent, with a success rate for the remaining three roles ranging from 61 to 88 percent.
In general, we found that many ordinary tasks are difficult, require users to understand complex underlying business processes, invite confusion and error, lack sufficient online help and are hampered by poor interface design.
On the basis of our findings, we developed recommendations in three broad areas: performance-based recommendations, which include making changes to the interface to better accommodate less-experienced users; improving opportunities for training and system learnability; and ensuring that DTS provides enough feedback so that users know whether they have successfully completed a task.
Systemwide recommendations are to design DTS to be more like a traditional Web application that functions within one browser window, complete with a back button and a link to home; make the system more like commercial travel sites, with which many users are already familiar; ensure that the welcome screen has links that allow travelers to interact with trip documents; revise the format of travel documents and the organization of tasks; revise the global navigation throughout the site; make link labels clear, unambiguous and intuitive; and improve the help information for each screen.
We also make specific recommendations for several task scenarios, such as trip cancellations and updating user profiles.
Future improvements should be user-centered, data-driven and research-based. The focus of initial design efforts should be on the scenarios where users have the most difficulty, are the most critical and have the greatest impact on user performance.
In particular, DTMO should focus first on the traveler's portion of the system. We provided a strategic implementation plan that outlines the iterative steps for changing critical portions of DTS, assessing the results and then using the results to guide further refinements.
By making changes to the system and continually measuring progress, DTMO has a much greater chance of ultimately improving the usability of the DTS on the dimensions of user effectiveness, user efficiency, and user satisfaction with the system.
Thank you once again for the opportunity to appear before you. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.
REP. SNYDER: Thank you.
Mr. Khan.
MR. KHAN: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and the members of the subcommittee.
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss our prior work and our ongoing review of the Defense Travel System. Your subcommittee has been at the forefront in addressing issues related to DOD travel management issues.
Our testimony today will be based on the status of DOD three actions. The first action that we'll be discussing is the implementation of GAO's prior recommendations, the second one is DOD's progress in phasing out legacy travel systems, and the third one is the cost savings associated with electronic versus manual voucher processing.
After completing additional work we plan to issue a report on the status of DOD actions on GAO's prior recommendations for improving the department's management and oversight of DTS to help ensure its success in the future.
Mr. Chairman, GAO has made numerous recommendations to help the department improve its oversight and implementation of DTS and related travel policies. We are currently reviewing the status of DOD actions to implement the recommendations in our January and September 2006 reports. My testimony today is based on this work.
First, I would like to discuss the status of our prior recommendations. Our analysis indicates that of the 14 prior recommendations, DOD has completed action on seven. The closed seven recommendations dealt with premium-class travel, unused airline tickets, use of restricted airfare, proper testing of system interfaces, and streamlining certain travel processes, such as approving travel vouchers or expenses.
While DOD has made progress, there is still significant work to be done. Of the (open ?) seven recommendations, three relate to the adequacy of DTS requirements management and systems testing, three to DTS underutilization and one to streamlining the process to reduce the need for hard-copy receipts.
Moving to my second point, the phasing out of legacy travel systems, a key component of DOD's travel transformation effort is the elimination of legacy travel systems. Our analysis shows the department has not yet identified and validated the number of legacy travel systems currently being operated. We received inconsistent information on the number of systems in operation.
According to DTMO, there are 23 legacy travel systems in operation. However, according to the military services, there are 12 legacy systems in operation, 10 of which were on the list provided by the DTMO. Without accurate information on DOD legacy system, there's a risk of not fully achieving the goal of eliminating redundant travel management systems.
It should be noted some existing legacy travel systems will continue to operate after DTS becomes fully operational. This is because the legacy travel systems have a functionality which will not exist in DTS. A prime example of this is permanent duty travel by civilians.
Moving to the third point, the cost of electronic versus manual voucher processing, the continued use of legacy travel systems, particularly where DTS has been deployed, diminishes the savings through electronic voucher processing.
We found it significantly cheaper to process a voucher electronically versus manually, a cost saving of almost $35 per voucher. Continued use by the military services of manual voucher processing diminishes the cost savings that could occur through the use of DTS.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, transforming DOD's financial management and business operations is a challenge; however, it's necessary for effective and efficient business operations. DTS is intended to be the department's comprehensive travel management across all locations and organizations within DOD. With over 3 million potential travel systems users, the sheer size and complexity of deploying DTS overshadows any similar effort in the private sector.
DOD has made important progress. Nonetheless, standardizing business systems across the department would be a key to saving billions of dollars annually.
In closing, I commend your subcommittee for holding this hearing as a catalyst for improving the department's travel management processes.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared remarks. I would be pleased to answer any questions that you or any other members of the subcommittee may have. Thank you.
REP. SNYDER: Thank you to all of you for your both written and oral statements today.
As one little courtesy thing, if you see me reach and look for my BlackBerry, please forgive me. My wife is home with three two-month- old baby boys, and that's how she fires off her red flares -- (laughter) -- from Little Rock.
We'll put ourself on the five-minute clock here and we'll go around, I'm sure, at least a couple of times, if not more.
I wanted to ask the question about Dr. Chu's memo from March 28th of 2008, which, if it's not part of the record, we'll make part of the record. And just the last paragraph -- it says: "Accordingly, pursuant to the authority conferred by Management Initiative Directive 921, DTS will be the single online travel system used by the department. This mandate applies to all travel functions currently supported by the system and those that will be supported in the future as they become available."
And where I get confused is in -- at the end of -- Ms. Mitchell and Mr. Fisher, at the end of your written statement you say, "With continued progress, it is expected that DTS will be DOD travelers' preferred method for making travel arrangements.
"
Now, since when do they have a choice? What is this "preferred method" business? I don't care if they have a preferred method or not. I mean, there's a lot of things we do, and when I fill out my vouchers I don't get a preference about, you know, which form I fill out to get my travel paid for here. What is this preferred method when you have that mandate?
MS. MITCHELL: Mr. Chairman, the preferred is really a reference to the usability of the system. Certainly the mandate exists and the services have, in fact, issued their own mandates, but we want to go beyond mandate. We want it actually to be the system they want to use because we have made those improvements for them.
REP. SNYDER: All right, so that was a poor choice of words, then, in your statement, because it implies that they have a choice.
But we would all agree, would we not, that there are clearly people out there that are making a choice that are using the legacy systems, right? That is, that they should be using the DTS but they are continuing to use the legacy system. Do you agree with that?
MR. FISHER: Sir, there are some.
REP. SNYDER: How many?
MR. FISHER: And also -- I'll defer to Ms. Mitchell on that. The point I wanted --
REP. SNYDER: Well, let's here from Ms. Mitchell.
MR. FISHER: Okay.
REP. SNYDER: Do you know? I don't think we know, do we?
MS. MITCHELL: Sir, we are actually able now to publish quarterly metrics. We have been able to go -- one of the points I'd like to make is that we all, over time, certainly in the department, and I suspect you do, also, hear a lot of anecdotes.
One of the major things we've tried to do is move from the anecdotal to the empirical, and so we are now able to publish quarterly metrics that give us a lot of information on who is using the system and who's not.
REP. SNYDER: Okay. And how many people in the last quarter for which you have metrics arrange their travel and vouchers and all through a legacy system that should have been done through the DTS system because of Dr. Chu's mandate? How many is that?
MS. MITCHELL: We know that for vouchers filed, which is our best measure of usage of the system, that as of December, DTS was processing about 73 percent of those.
REP. SNYDER: That doesn't answer the question, though, does it?
MS. MITCHELL: Well, we know of the overall universe of TDY travel, DTS processed 73 percent of that.
REP. SNYDER: Okay, of that universe, are 100 percent of those supposed to be processed by DTS?
MS. MITCHELL: No, sir, 100 percent of those cannot be.
REP. SNYDER: No. So then we don't know the answer to my question, then, do we?
MS. MITCHELL: Frankly, we do not know why, shredding it out into the eaches, how many of that 27 percent remaining could be processed in DTS, and that's because the legacy travel systems don't afford us that level of detail.
REP. SNYDER: And the concern, I think, for the committee is -- I can't remember if it's in your statement or in the background information -- about the level of savings that occurs. If somebody uses the DTS system, what, it's about $2.57 a pop. If somebody uses a manual voucher system, it's $47? Is that about the range?
And so when you tell us that you don't -- that we don't know how many people are using the other systems, we're saying we don't know how many people are wasting $42 a pop of government money, isn't that right? Isn't that what we're saying?
MS. MITCHELL: We are saying that of that 27 percent who did not use DTS in December, we don't know how many of them could have used DTS.
REP. SNYDER: Yeah. My time is winding down here, but one of the frustrations we've had is can you give me -- can you just tick off for me right now the names and contractors of the legacy systems? Are there 12 of them or are there 23 or are there 31?
MS. MITCHELL: Sir, we have reached out to GAO yesterday because we believe we have identified at least most of the source of the confusion. We did provide a list of 23; however, there were redundancies in the list because across the services, some of them use the same systems.
The best information I have today -- and let me just step back and say that the list that we have was provided by the services and validated through our governance process, so that is the list that we shared with the GAO.
The list that GAO has -- as was noted, 10 of those were on our list, two of those were new to us, and we've not had an opportunity, because we just got the list, to really be able to take a look at that and see what those two were, or if they were overlooked at some earlier time.
So what we believe right now is that it appears that there are 12 legacy systems that are currently still in existence, processing travel.
REP. SNYDER: Well, my time is up; we'll pursue this, but you know -- and you all are good people here, but when I -- and you're taking on a very difficult task and have been for some years. But when I hear you say it appears to us there are these many legacy systems in an enterprise that is a $10-plus billion enterprise, and we don't even know for sure -- I mean, like, what happened? Did one of them get Harry Potter's invisibility cape and disappeared? I mean, we can't even tell how many legacy systems we have out there, or how they are paid for, or who the contractors are? I mean, I don't get it. I don't get it.
Mr. Wittman, maybe you got it.
REP. WITTMAN: (Laughs.) Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Mitchell, you heard from Dr. Moore about LMI's report and the 39 recommendations contained within to enhance the usability of DTS. Can you give us your estimates about what the costs are associated with those particular improvements, how many can be incorporated into parts of the improvement to the systems that are ongoing now, how much would be separate and what the costs would be associated with those?
MS. MITCHELL: We are going to approach usability essentially in four ways. One is incremental improvements that we have been making over time; one is when we release the permanent duty travel capability this fall. That's going to represent a major change in how users see the system for processing their PCS reservations and voucher.
And then there will be two usability releases, one in FY '10 and one in FY '11, that will get larger. So for the FY '10 release specifically, our estimate at this point is that it will cost about $4 million, and that is a preliminary estimate because a lot of analysis is still going on as to what that will really entail. I do not yet have an estimate for the second usability release.
REP. WITTMAN: Okay. So those two usability releases, then, will fully implement these 39 recommendations and allow you to accomplish the objectives of those recommendations?
MS. MITCHELL: That is our intent, yes, sir.
REP. WITTMAN: Okay. And when you get the dollar amount on the second implementation of the usability function, if you could let us know that, that would be very helpful.
MS. MITCHELL: Sure.
REP. WITTMAN: Another question is the department told the subcommittee last year that it was performing a travel policy review in collaboration with the GSA to look at the complexities of foreign travel, including the provisions of the Fly America Act, and I wanted to know, has this review been completed, and if so, can you tell us about the findings, and in particular were there any weaknesses identified in the Fly America Act that are allowing DOD passengers to fly on foreign carriers if they have U.S. partners, versus foreign carriers who do not have U.S. partners but are less expensive?
MS. MITCHELL: First of all, that phase of the travel policy review is complete and we are pending the final report from LMI. There were three major recommendations that came out of that, one, to create a framework for proactive policy development. And one of the things I think that it's important for me to note is that this review was conducted in partnership with GSA and the State Department, which is the first time that this has happened in several decades.
For creating that framework, one of those things, one of the underliers there is to strengthen the governance process across the department, and in fact, GSA has taken that on and we do participate in some new governance boards that they have set up.
Another one is to enable data-driven business-case development, and that goes back to my earlier comment about trying to move from anecdotal to empirical; and then lastly, to expand governmentwide principles -- for example, standardizing air travel and hotel standards across the government as opposed to differences among agencies.
Their second major recommendation was to simplify and streamline policy, to simplify reimbursements and to submit a travel reform legislation package. We are actively working on both of those things in this currently phase two of the process.
Their third major recommendation was to revise and standardize governmentwide regulations across the agencies and across military and civilian. So those are the results of that review.
In answer to your question about the Fly America Act, the group did look at that and across the government, the consensus was that the Fly America Act probably does need some revision to enable government travelers to take advantage of the most effective and efficient travel available. So we are continuing to look at that as we look at the broader recommendations, and we'll consider that for inclusion in the reform package that we submit.
REP. WITTMAN: Okay. So your recommendations as to how the Fly America Act should be revised to make sure that the most efficient use of funds and decision-making in travel can be implemented?
MS. MITCHELL: Yes, sir.
REP. WITTMAN: Okay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield the balance of my time.
REP. SNYDER: Ms. Sanchez for five minutes.
REP. LORETTA SANCHEZ (D-CA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, when we put up the DTS project, it was really to standardize and to really be able to have people do end-to-end travel within the department.
Mr. Khan, is that really happening? Does this system really have the potential, in your opinion, to be able to do that, and how do we get from where we are right now, using legacy systems and 27 percent of the people off of the system, to really having what my service members and others say -- go to the system and be able to get their travel done all sitting down at one point?
MR. KHAN: I mean, the system certainly has the potential to handle end-to-end travel. However, based on our work, our concern is being able to capture what the user requirements are, which is going to give it functionality to enable it to do that end-to-end travel.
There are some deficiencies in how that information is captured and how the testing is proceeded with, so there is a risk that some of the user requirements may not end up in the functionality of the system.
REP. SANCHEZ: I didn't really understand what you meant by that. Can you explain more?
(Aside.) Did you understand that comment?
The functionality -- how it would be caught in the functionality of the system; explain to me what you mean by that.
MR. KHAN: By how the system is going to be used. That's based on user requirements.
REP. SANCHEZ: Oh, I see. Okay, okay, okay. Thank you for clarifying that for me.
I was struck by something that you said your second to the last sentence, and I didn't get a chance to write it all down because I was listening to the question that the chairman had. You said that we could save billions of dollars if we had standardization. What do you mean by that, and can you give us examples of what you're talking about in billions of savings if we standardized? What standardization? I thought that's what we were doing in DTS.
MR. KHAN: Right. I mean, that -- I mean, was at the end of my statement was more meant across DOD itself standardizing other business processes. But as far as it relates to DTS or the defense travel, it's standardizing the process so it'll eliminate the need for using legacy travel systems.
REP. SANCHEZ: Okay. And my last question to you has to do with unused tickets. Can you walk us through -- what did you find with respect to unused tickets and what would be the solution to get those back into the system and get those credited?
MR. KHAN: That was a finding in our prior report in 2006. When tickets were purchased centrally and they were not used by the traveler, there was a possibility, and we did find evidence that a refund was not obtained by the department itself. And one of our recommendations was that they put in controls so that if the tickets were unused there was a method to claim refund from the airlines.
Based on our recent work, it appears that they have put in processes where the travel management office or the commercial travel office will be able to generate reports and be able to claim this money back from the airlines. That is an intended policy and I would defer to my friends from the DTMO and the BTA to confirm that.
REP. SANCHEZ: Is that happening, in your opinion?
MS. MITCHELL: That's correct, that is happening. Another important thing to note is that paper tickets are almost gone, and that really has been the larger source of the problem because a paper ticket requires the individual traveler to turn that back in so that reimbursement can be processed.
With electronic tickets, the CTOs are required by our contracts after 30 days -- first of all, they can see what ticket has not been used through their systems and that they have no longer than 30 days to process those for refund. And we get regular reports from them so that we may check that.
REP. SANCHEZ: So on a foreign travel ticket, you're no longer requiring it that it be a paper ticket?
MS. MITCHELL: Well, unfortunately, it isn't up to us to request that. We prefer electronic tickets because we do have an automated means of tracking them, but there are some locations -- I believe -- and I'll take this, but I believe Turkey, for example, still requires paper tickets.
But, for example, a recent check with the commercial travel office providing support to Army indicated that less than 1 percent of all the tickets being issued to Army travelers were still paper.
REP. SANCHEZ: Okay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
REP. SNYDER: Ms. Davis for five minutes.
REP. SUSAN A. DAVIS (D-CA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I'm sorry, I'm going to have to leave right after this question.
But Ms. Mitchell, I think one of the issues raised, particularly by the GAO, was how the legacy travel systems are actually funded, from what accounts they're funded from. I'm not sure of -- I don't think I heard you answer that before. Can you be specific about that? Where are they being funded from?
MS. MITCHELL: Ma'am, I do not have the answer to that question. I will have to take it for the record.
REP. DAVIS: Why don't we know that?
MS. MITCHELL: They are not centrally managed. They are managed by the individual components who use them, and unfortunately, I would have to say that we are also frustrated in not being able to obtain the information in a timely manner.
REP. DAVIS: Is there sort of a ballpark idea of where they're funded from, or is it just actual single-line accounts?
Mr. Khan, you looked at this issue. How do you think we, in your capacity, can try and get to that answer?
MR. KHAN: Yeah, we were somewhat puzzled, as well. We weren't able to get the information how they were funded. We looked at the budget and some of the additional reports there are which DOD has, but we were not able to get any visibility as to how they were funded. Don't have an answer for that.
REP. DAVIS: Do you have any thoughts about that, Mr. Fisher? Any thoughts about why that's so difficult to look at? Is there something inherently classified about that?
MR. FISHER: I honestly don't know. It's beyond our purview and our role in managing the DTS program, so I don't have any visibility into the other systems. Our focus is exclusively on the DTS system, so I don't have any visibility into that.
REP. DAVIS: Okay, thank you.
One question would really be whether it's realistic or not for all travel to be consolidated within DTS. Is it realistic to do that, or are the issues that you've identified as problematic, do they constitute an impossibility, or -- I still am having a little trouble too understanding why this doesn't come together a little more easily.
MR. FISHER: I believe that the -- oh, I was going to give a suggestion that there will be some elements of DOD travel that it may not be cost-effective to build into the capability of the tool. We've had a discussion about PDT -- permanent duty travel -- change. For the military, there's about 700,000 of those trips a year. That's a fairly significant number, and it's certainly cost-effective for us to implement that capability in the tool, and we're doing that this year. It'll be released in the fall.
Civilian PDT, which has different rules, will require a different set of requirements in the implementation, there's only about 30,000 or 33,000, I believe, of those each year. So the cost-effective element of that, of what it would cost us to enable that capability in the tool versus the savings that we would have, doesn't put it on our priority list to get that done right now.
I believe, as Ms. Mitchell said, we'll have 66 of the 73 trip types in place by the end of 2009. Of the balance, there's a couple that we probably won't do because there are not enough of them to warrant the investment in the tool to automate that capability.
But as we continue to add more trip types, obviously the expanded universe of travel that can be handled within the tool will expand, as will the savings we'll accrue.
REP. DAVIS: Mr. Khan -- because part of the question -- we're trying to get there by 2013, is that right, to try and eliminate most of the legacy system? Mr. Khan, did you want to comment?
MR. KHAN: Our issue is kind of getting to the metrics itself. When we are doing the analysis we could not find a complete list of what the legacy systems were, so it was a big question as to if there was an identified baseline of how many legacy systems there were, then it would be difficult to say when they would all be put out of service.
Like Ms. Mitchell did say --
REP. DAVIS: That would be difficult to do, I would agree with you. (Laughs.)
MR. KHAN: It would --
REP. DAVIS: If you don't know what they are or when you're --
MR. KHAN: Like Ms. Mitchell did mention, they have sent over a list and we'll be having a meeting with them just to make sure that we understand what those existing 10 legacy systems she referred to there are, and then we can follow up from there.
REP. DAVIS: Thank you.
One other question, just to follow up, Mr. Chairman: Is every attempt made to do teleconferencing when it's possible? It seems today that there really are ways that we can get a lot of work accomplished without necessarily having -- I don't know whether that's something that is pursued aggressively or whether it just doesn't work.
I mean, there are certain things -- obviously bringing people back from the theater. I mean, there are a lot of reasons why you have to have people engaged in travel, but I'm just wondering whether that's a fairly exhaustive question that happens before.
MS. MITCHELL: We do know that teleconferencing does work and it is used, but I would not be able to tell you to what extent.
REP. DAVIS: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
REP. SNYDER: Thank you, Ms. Davis.
I wanted to continue this discussion that was continued by Ms. Davis about the legacy systems.
And Mr. Khan, do we know, are any of those legacy systems managed by contracts, by contractors? Are they all managed by contractors, are they in-house? Do we know?
MR. KHAN: I do not have this information. I can provide that for the record.
REP. SNYDER: Do you know, Ms. Mitchell or Mr. Fisher, if any of the legacy systems are managed by a contract?
MS. MITCHELL: No, Mr. Chairman, I do not know.
MR. FISHER: Again, I don't have insight into those legacy systems.
REP. SNYDER: Now, you use that phrase a little bit ago, Mr. Fisher, about no visibility into the legacy systems, but if I have -- if I'm trying to put together a travel system and I've got a group of people that we think are in the several hundred thousand range that apparently are liking the other systems better, I would think you would want to get some visibility in those systems and find out what they're doing that you all are not doing.
MR. FISHER: So let me characterize, again, an element of why some people aren't using DTS. In many cases, it's because DTS does not yet provide the capability for those types of travel.
REP. SNYDER: No, I understand that. I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about the ones that have the mandate that aren't using it.
MR. FISHER: Again, our focus is on DTS and making that capability available. What is done in the legacy systems other than the capability, which we are cognizant of, of the types of travel that DTS doesn't deliver yet, that clearly is something that is resident in some of the legacy systems.
On the usability side, again, our intent is to make DTS the, as Mitchell said, preferred usage tool so that they're not only mandated to use it, they will want to use it. And that is our focus.
REP. SNYDER: Mr. Khan, the number that we throw around is we think it's about $1 billion a year or so in the legacy systems. Is that a fair guesstimate?
MR. KHAN: We were not able to get any information -- not a lot of information on how much was being spent on legacy systems. However, we do know -- I mean, they need money to sustain and operate, and also the other concern is the use of manual budget processing, which most of the legacy systems do require. I mean, that diminishes the cost savings.
REP. SNYDER: Okay, so most of the legacy systems use the manual voucher, which is about $40 more per voucher to process.
MR. KHAN: About ($)35, approximately.
REP. SNYDER: Thirty-five dollars more?
MR. KHAN: Right.
REP. SNYDER: Paid for by the taxpayer. Well, it's perplexing. I don't know how to get a handle on it. You know, we're interested in the Defense Travel System and you are saying that that's your area of expertise. It sounds like a lot of the inefficiency right now is in the legacy systems side of it because they haven't moved over to the DTS.
Now, you all have a responsibility to make this system available, and we've talked about that, but the longer -- we're now saying 2013, another four years at $35-plus a pop wasted every time a paper voucher goes through. It just seems like that's a huge chunk of money that we don't even know who these people, computer, some old remnant of -- I mean, I don't know, it's the strangest dang thing I've seen around here.
Maybe, Mr. Khan, you can get a handle on it.
We may need to revisit this again here in the next month or two to try to sort this out, because maybe it would be helpful to the DTS to try to sort out exactly who are these systems, who are these mystery people that we can't even seem to get an accurate list of that seem to change day by day exactly what the list of them is.
Did you have another comment, Mr. Khan?
MR. KHAN: No, I was going to say that as Ms. Mitchell did say, we did receive a list from them which appears to be a pretty final scrub of what the legacy systems are, so we'll continue with our analysis on that one. So that will help to answer some of the questions you have.
REP. SNYDER: Mr. Khan, when you do these calculations as the General (sic) Accountability Office, formerly the General Accounting Office, does it enter into your discussions -- and I'll ask the same question to you, Ms. Mitchell and Mr. Fisher -- the amount of hours it takes or the amount of time it takes somebody sitting at their desk during work hours to work theirself through this system?
Do you have any -- has anybody done any studies on exactly how long it takes to do the system -- the DTS system?
MR. KHAN: Our focus was more looking at the quantitive (sic) numbers itself as opposed to the time spent on processing.
REP. SNYDER: How about -- or Dr. Moore, did you touch on that in your study?
MR. MOORE: We, for the samples when we surveyed them, we do have statistics on that, on how long it takes by various group and for various tasks, but that's just a sample. It's not extrapolated.
REP. SNYDER: So what was -- for the travelers, what was it?
MR. MOORE: Let me look that up for you.
The average time for updating and routing was eight and a half minutes -- these are all in the minutes -- and less than 10 minutes for the various tasks.
REP. SNYDER: So if somebody sits down there, they just found out they're being -- they have to go somewhere, it's about less than 10 minutes to put the whole trip together?
MR. MOORE: Well, that's for the individual components of the task. There may be two or three tasks associated with getting a trip together, so it could vary from somewhere, say, between from 10 minutes and 20 minutes maybe total.
And again, that's based on what we -- the folks we tested.
REP. SNYDER: Right.
Ms. Mitchell -- I'm sorry, my time's up.
Mr. Wittman.
REP. WITTMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Moore, I want to follow up a little bit more on LMI's study there and the 39 performance-based scenario recommendations that you all make, and you heard a little bit earlier Ms. Mitchell talk about phasing them in a first phase of usability and a second phase of usability.
Are you aware of if those phasings have been based on the importance of your recommendations and the ranking of your recommendations, and if not, would you make a recommendation as to which ones are most important in the phase of implementation?
MR. MOORE: We identified the ones that we thought were of the greatest hit value. Some of them, in fact, have actually been already completed. For example, one was the ability to cancel travel was quite difficult and that was a quick fix, and DTMO made that immediately, almost, on that, so that took one part of the problem out.
And from what we know -- and we have not been intimately involved in the scheduling of the activities, but of what we have seen on that, they have been based on the high-priority ones that'll provide the greatest benefit quickest.
REP. WITTMAN: So for what you know, you're in agreement with the implementation of those based on their ranking of importance?
MR. MOORE: Yes, sir.
REP. WITTMAN: Okay, very good.
Also in your study, it recommends that DOD should encourage DTS users to prepare their own travel documents. I was wondering if you found that reliance on legacy systems affected the travelers' ability to prepare documents in DTS. And again, we go back to that whole issue of trying to get our arms around what's going on with legacy systems.
Is there an artifact there that's holding people on to those instead of getting them over to the DTS system?
MR. MOORE: There likely could be. We did not look at that in our study.
Our study was confined to basically testing the specific functionalities of DTS.
REP. WITTMAN: Okay. All right.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll yield my time.
REP. SNYDER: I wanted to ask -- I'm not going to ask a question about the legacy systems; you'll be glad to know that. (Laughter.)
I wanted to ask about -- and I'm not sure if it's a conflict in information or not, but the -- in your all's written statement, Ms. Mitchell and Mr. Fisher, on Page 7, you have a higher satisfaction reporting of I guess 69 percent of DTS users find the system easy to use. This is your Quick Compass survey. Dr. Moore's is a more negative 42 percent.
Would you describe for me, please, the Quick Compass survey? Is that something that people complete at the end of having done the process, or how do you -- what do you think of the 42 percent.
And Dr. Moore, what do you think of their numbers?
MS. MITCHELL: The Quick Compass survey is a scientific polling methodology that's Web-based that is sent to a sample that is statistically set by the defense data management center, and it had a great return rate of 39 percent. It targeted a variety of travelers from less experienced to more experienced, and we were of course very happy to see those numbers.
But let me comment on what we think the difference is between those numbers and what we saw on the LMI survey. We wanted to do the LMI survey because we really wanted to find out the difficulties that people were having with the system if they were sitting in a lab environment, which essentially they were for the LMI study, unable to talk to fellow travelers, to defense administrators, unable to call the assistance center for help.
And so we have, I think, what is a very -- it's not quite a sterile condition but it's a more sitting by yourself trying to do something as opposed to being able to reach out to others for help. So I would suggest that that accounts for the differences, but that that's exactly what we wanted to target and to find out, because that helps us determine what we really can do to help travelers across the board.
MR. MOORE: Mr. Chairman, I would agree with that in that our study was designed in conjunction with DTMO to provide probably the worst-case scenario in terms of determining usability. And what I mean by that is that the only assistance beyond looking at a screen that was available was help function within the software, so there was no ability to call the help desk number, there was no ability to call co-workers or anybody else.
So this was kind of the worst situation, where someone would be sitting in a room somewhere and they didn't have the ability with a landline to get a hold of the help desk, nor could they ask anybody else. So it's not surprising to me that their numbers would be higher if they were given some other capabilities.
REP. SNYDER: The sampling that was done, Ms. Mitchell, was that of people who had completed travel? What was the universe from which your sample was selected for the Quick Compass survey?
MS. MITCHELL: Travelers, yes.
REP. SNYDER: Travelers.
MS. MITCHELL: Well, when I say travelers I mean the universe of people, so there may have been administrators, there may have been travelers -- everyone using the system.
REP. SNYDER: Everyone who used the DTS system.
MS. MITCHELL: Correct.
REP. SNYDER: So if somebody has started with the DTS system and got ticked off and said, well, the guy right down the hall is using this -- probably didn't use the words legacy system -- but I'm going to go use the one that the guy down the hall used because he said that one worked better, that would not show up in your Quick Compass survey, would it?
MS. MITCHELL: It would not.
REP. SNYDER: Yeah. The numbers -- oh, see, I got back to that legacy thing after all, didn't I? (Laughter.)
But the numbers are real numbers, though, aren't they? I mean, this is in Mr. Khan's statement, that in 2008 the Army processed 1.5 million vouchers; 1.1 million of those were done by DTS but 400,000 were not. I mean, the numbers are significant, and that may be another -- and of that, you've already acknowledged that we don't know, of those 400,000, how many people would have had no choice but to go through a legacy system versus how many attempted the DTS and they got dissatisfied and went in a different direction.
I mean, could that be a factor, too, in why your results are a bit different from Dr. Moore's, or am I over-reading your sampling?
Dr. Moore, do you have any thought?
MR. MOORE: No, I think that the fundamental difference between us is I guess there's the differences we talked in terms of the ability to get assistance, but there's also whenever you mix the other categories of users. The 42 percent is just for travelers, it's not for the other three administrative functions. Those had higher success rates, so if you put them all together you're going to come up with a blended rate that's going to be higher than 42.
REP. SNYDER: That's a factor, right.
I wanted to ask: The 24-hour help line -- what do you call that line?
MS. MITCHELL: It's the Travel Assistance Center.
REP. SNYDER: The Travel Assistance Center. How is that going?
MS. MITCHELL: That has been very well received. I would let you know that the Air Force -- one of the Air Force principals commented that it's the best thing that we've done.
REP. SNYDER: Who administers that?
MS. MITCHELL: The Defense Travel Management Office has oversight of it, and it is managed for us by SPAWAR, an element of the Navy, and its contractor staff, largely.
REP. SNYDER: Is there a call center somewhere that takes in all the calls?
MS. MITCHELL: Yes, sir; the call center is located in Chesapeake.
REP. SNYDER: And how do you test the quality of the answers that they give?
MS. MITCHELL: Every call is recorded. They have a special system in place that does that. We also are down there frequently, listening in. I've listened in to some of the conversations myself; I have been very favorably impressed.
We also do a survey that we just implemented this past fall. It's not particularly scientific; it's giving folks the opportunity to comment. And again, the results have been very good. The reception has been very favorable to the Travel Assistance Center.
REP. SNYDER: I see my clock's up.
Mr. Wittman?
REP. WITTMAN: Thank you.
I wanted to follow up on some more of the chairman's questioning, and I will go back into some of the legacy systems questions.
Can you tell us -- you talked about not being able to get your arms around where the legacy systems are still in use. Is there a way that we can get that information? Is it fragmented through different branches?
How would we go about getting the information back to try to get the full scope of where the legacy systems are being used, how they're being used, so we can look at maybe trying to find a way to get our arms around phasing everybody into the DTS systems, or looking at whatever attributes are there in the legacy systems that we maybe ought to be putting in the DTS so we sort of push people towards the DTS systems?
MS. MITCHELL: The legacy systems, we do know for the most part who is using them.
REP. WITTMAN: Okay.
MS. MITCHELL: And for example, I can tell you that there's a system called WinIATS -- that's a computation module -- and it does process TDY and PCS travel, and that's used by the Army, for example, as well as one of the other services and some agencies. But it also has additional modules that do other sorts of financial functions that I'm not particularly familiar with.
As I noted earlier, we have gone to the services and asked them to validate the list. We will certainly go back again and ask again and see if we can sit down with them and really get to a fine level of detail on specifically what each system costs and where it's used.
REP. WITTMAN: I think that would be valuable, to try to figure out exactly how the systems are used, why they're still in place, is there a lack of function with DTS that these systems are trying to replace, or is it just a personal preference?
If we can maybe drill down and figure out those reasons, we might be able to actually start to get rid of those legacy systems. But the only way we're going to do that is to figure out where they are, how they're being used and why they're being used. So that would be, I think, a great piece of information for us to obtain.
I wanted to talk a little bit about premium travel and if DOD is able to identify when premium travel is used and when it's paid for by DOD versus when it may be paid for by the traveler. In other words, if they have some points that they can use to upgrade -- when that's used, and under what conditions does the department authorize and pay for premium travel, and how do you all audit and track when premium travel is used and how it's authorized to make sure that it's not being abused?
MS. MITCHELL: First of all, we do not have visibility as to when the department pays or when someone else -- well, we know when the department pays, but we don't have visibility as to who specifically upgrades using frequent flyer miles, for example.
We do have a process in place. We receive information from the commercial travel offices to monitor who is flying premium travel, both first and business class, and we receive reports that enable us to do that. We are looking for more automated ways to do that.
One of the big challenges that we have is the fact that there is no standardization of codes used by the airlines that indicate a premium travel seat, so that makes things very complex. And to add to that, the airlines over time change their codes, so we're looking at sort of almost what you could think of as a carousel of codes to try to nail that down.
We also have some tools in place for the services to note when they have approved premium travel. We take the feedback that we get from the commercial travel offices, those reports, and we share them with the services and do a cross-check in that way to ensure that what the department has paid for has in fact been approved.
And you asked under what circumstances we permit premium travel -- there's two, really, that are the largest ones. One is medical -- someone perhaps has a bad back and cannot make a 14-hour trip sitting in coach. We all know it's hard enough for those of us who don't have bad backs.
And secondly, it would fall under the category of mission. There is a critical meeting that is going to occur, there is no coach seat available, and the person has to fly in order to get to that meeting. Those would be two primary examples.
REP. WITTMAN: Okay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
REP. SNYDER: Mr. Wittman, I'm going to have one final question and then close, unless you have any further questions.
REP. WITTMAN: That'll be fine. I'm done, Mr. Chairman.
REP. SNYDER: I wanted to ask one very specific question, and I think you may have answered this, Mr. Fisher, and I didn't -- I've forgotten the number.
Currently, how many types of travel are there, total?
MR. FISHER: There's 73 total trip types for the department.
REP. SNYDER: For the department. And how many currently is DTS handling?
MR. FISHER: DTS today does 27.
REP. SNYDER: Twenty-seven.
MR. FISHER: And those were prioritized based on the volume.
REP. SNYDER: And how many -- I think what you said was you're probably not going to -- in fact, you said you're not going to get to all 73 because the numbers would be too small. Do you have a sense for sure of how many more you know for sure you're going to do?
MR. FISHER: Sir, we have in plans to implement this year; we have a summary lease that's going to add 34 new ones. So that'll bring us up to 61 TDY. By the end of 2009, we'll have five more, which are predominantly permanent duty travel for the military, related to PDT, which will bring us up to 66 of the 73.
So by the end of calendar 2009, based on our implementation plans, we'll be at 66. There's a couple more that we're looking at -- there's deployment travel and elements of deployment travel that are incredibly complex with lots of business rules. Those will not be done by 2009; it'll be a more 2010 time frame. And then you've got the cats and dogs that may not be cost-efficient.
REP. SNYDER: Yeah, I got you.
Well, I appreciate your all time today. I anticipate that we will revisit this topic formally a year from now. My guess is we'll want to do something here in the next month or two or whenever we get more information about this legacy system. It just seems like we have this $1 billion-plus hole that we don't know anything about.
And so we'll be in touch with all of you, maybe particularly you, Mr. Khan, in terms of if you're able to sort out who these legacy systems are, who manages them, how they're paid for and what the total amount of money.
And the bottom line is we talked before about the mandate which went out to joint chiefs and all the secretaries and everyone in authority saying you have to use the DTS system, and the reason they said that is because it's $35 a pop per voucher when they don't, and we still don't have a handle on how many are not, so maybe that can help in some way.
Thank you all for being here today.
Thank you, Mr. Wittman.
We are adjourned. (Sounds gavel.)
END.
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