Six agencies lauded for travel system innovations

Six agencies were recognized Monday for their success in government travel management.

The Postal Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Secret Service, Veterans Affairs Department, Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health were all recipients of the 2003 Travel Managers of the Year award, sponsored by Government Executive magazine. The award program encourages innovation and celebrates excellence in government travel.

"In the good old days … if you wanted to go somewhere, you or your secretary called the airline or called the hotel, you couldn't use a travel agent," said Jack Kelly, keynote speaker at Monday's awards ceremony luncheon. Kelly is a policy analyst at the Office of Management and Budget and has spent more than 20 years crafting travel management policy. "It was a very cumbersome, paper intensive travel system," said Kelly, who described the evolution of the government travel system during the past three decades.

Travel management reform took root in the late 1970s with leadership from OMB, Kelly said. A study identified the regulations and laws restricting agencies from more efficiently and effectively managing government business travel, temporary duty travel and employee relocations. One of the recommendations from the study included switching to a per diem system or allotting a certain dollar amount for hotels, meals and incidental costs in a particular city. The voucher system and current travel card system also evolved as a result of various travel surveys.

"What reform is all about is getting people to change behavior and one of the keys to that is recognizing good behavior so other people can emulate that," Kelly said, congratulating the award recipients on their efforts to overhaul travel management at their agencies.

A new Electronic Travel Voucher System at the Postal Service, which employs more than 700,000 people, streamlined that agency's reimbursement process by automating the process. Now, managers can check the status of expense reports and payments, and the agency saves money by having fewer employees involved in the reimbursement process.

At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Integrated Travel Manager Relocation System helped that agency transition to a paperless system by tying its travel system to its financial management system. Though a small agency with just 11,000 employees, NOAA was handling about 700 relocations each year and needed a way to more quickly handle the reimbursement, voucher and approval process. Now, the information is available on a daily basis and helps with the budgeting process. "This takes a huge manual step out and automates it," said Millie Ingels, implementation manager.

The Logistics Resource Center created by the Secret Service helped that agency save $4.5 million in fiscal 2002, about 20 percent of its travel budget. Rather than assigning agents to a mission based on their home office location, the new system allows decision makers to use staffing levels, skill need and other criteria to determine who and how many agents to assign on a mission.

The VA retooled its Employee Relocation Services Program, retraining relocation counselors and clarifying policies. Now, employees can transfer to new work locations more efficiently.

FDA and NIH collaborated to develop a tool for handling federal travel not paid for by government dollars. NIH also switched to a performance- and fee-based contracting system for its travel system.

For detailed information about the winners, see the June 2003 issue of Government Executive which will be available online June 15.