It is envisaged the deal will exponentially reduce the cost of airline tickets and save more than 10 million labour hours annually spent on the process of booking travel by more than two million active duty, reserve, and civilian personnel.
The Department of Defense spends $9 billion annually on travel, with temporary duty travel comprising approximately 70 percent of all department travel vouchers. The department, through this Other Transaction Authority, will leverage its recently simplified and rewritten Joint Travel Regulations, mandate the use of lower-cost non-refundable airline tickets in markets without pre-negotiated fares, and launch a prototype capability to adopt commercially-available travel processes using information technology solutions.
In addition to reducing overall costs, the new capability will seek to reduce process and workflow complexity, decreasing the time and effort spent by travelers, authorising officials, and administrators planning travel and reimbursing travel expenses. It must also meet the department’s audit readiness requirements, improve customer satisfaction, and align to commercial/industry best practices.
Chief Management Officer John H. Gibson, said: “We have a responsibility to ensure our resources are used in the most efficient and effective manner, and given this specific project has such a wide ranging and deep impact – reforms with results like these are crucial.
“I’m proud of the work we’re executing through the Reform Management Group and initiatives like this from the Information Technology Reform Team.”
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Defense Travel System DoD SAP Concur US Department of Defense