GSA awards $450 million e-travel contract

The General Services Administration on Friday awarded a 10-year, $450 million contract to Northup Grumman and CW Government Travel Inc., to provide Web-based travel management for the government, according to agency officials.

"There was a great deal of interest in the industry," said Tim Burke, GSA's eTravel program manager. "We were very pleased with the amount of competition we had."

One of the Bush administration's e-government projects, eTravel aims to automate and consolidate travel processes for people traveling on official government business. The new systems are expected to simplify all portions of the process, including planning and reimbursement and reconciliation, and reduce paperwork too. GSA expects the new systems to cut annual travel costs by half. In fiscal 2002, federal agencies spent approximately $10 billion on airline tickets, hotels and car rentals.

"E-Travel is an innovative e-government initiative that will advance President Bush's vision to create a more results-oriented and efficient government," said GSA Administrator Stephen Perry. "This initiative addresses the challenge of reengineering the government's travel function. By doing so, it will allow all agencies to benefit from the full buying power of the federal government."

Over the next few months, GSA will test the two vendors' systems and bring a select few agencies on board to test the systems' capabilities before rolling them out in December, according to Burke. The eTravel contract builds in competition between the two vendors, who will pitch their products to the agency officials, which will then select the product that works best for their organization, Burke explained.

"Two vendors competing with each other head-to-head; customer agencies are going to benefit from that," Burke said. "Let's see how creative industry can be to help us get where we need to be."

Agencies are currently crafting plans for moving to the new system, and GSA will work with agency officials to implement their systems. The system is expected to be up and running at all agencies by 2006.

The Defense Department recently launched an upgraded version of its automated travel system, the Defense Travel System.