First-Class Travel Teams Earn Awards
even federal entities have won the 1998 Travel Managers of the Year award for achievements in a wide range of programs affecting travel. Their ideas and methods will touch most of the government's 3.3 million civilian and military workers in one way or another.
Now in its second year, the Travel Managers of the Year award program, sponsored by Government Executive, aims to encourage innovation and celebrate excellence in government travel.
"We don't necessarily need to see huge savings, but evidence of cultural change in the way the government does travel," says travel awards judge Jack Kelly of the Office of Management and Budget.
The distinguished panel of judges looked at several criteria when evaluating nominees, including:
- Application of reengineering principles (including process simplification, integration and innovation)
- Verifiable savings
- Improved customer satisfaction
- Partnership with the private sector
- Agencywide application
- Use of paperless and electronic commerce
- Excellence in buying or administering travel
- Replicability.
The winners will be honored at a Nov. 18 award ceremony in Washington.
Look! Up in the Air!
It appears the Defense Department's new travel system can do everything except leap tall buildings in a single bound--and knowing the team over at the Defense Travel System Project Management Office, it won't be long until it can do that, too.
The much-anticipated system has become a reality for more than 50,000 temporary-duty travelers in 27 pilot sites and 200,000-plus travelers in the 11 states that make up Defense Travel Region 6. Expansion to DoD employees worldwide--civilian, military, and reserve--will take place over the next three years. A revamp of relocation practices based on DTS is in the works, and it's possible the rest of the federal government will sign on as well.
Launched in December 1995, the system takes seriously the principles of reengineering. It incorporates industry best practices, partnerships with the private sector and other government agencies and streamlined rules and procedures. It has reduced costs and processing time, improved customer satisfaction and forced a change in the department's "rule-bound, compliance-oriented culture," says Cmdr. Bill Schworer, deputy program manager at the DTS project office.
The result is a seamless, paperless system that meets mission needs. "[It's] better, faster, easier and fairer for travelers and authorizing officials alike," says Schworer.
"The Defense Travel System is the biggest thing going in government travel," says Kelly, a policy analyst at OMB, "both in the number of travelers affected and the scope of the system they've developed."
The judges also lauded the accomplishments of several Defense installations that contributed to the success of the overall program: The Army Corps of Engineers' Waterways Experiment System in Vicksburg, Miss.; The Air Force's 11th Wing/Financial Management, based at the Pentagon; The National Imagery and Mapping Agency in Bethesda, Md.; and The Combined Arms Center in Fort Leavenworth, Kan.; and the U.S. Navy Personnel Support Activity in Norfolk, Va.; winners of 1997 Travel Managers of the Year Awards.
Contact: Cmdr. Bill Schworer, (703) 607-1498, ext. 19, or schworerw@osd.pentagon.mil
Get a Move On
Temporary duty travel is well on its way to being thoroughly reengineered, so more and more federal entities are turning their attention to the nightmare that is relocation. And with more than 800,000 civilian employees and service members relocated each year, it's an area ripe for streamlining and savings. Three such programs--at the U.S. Army, Customs Service and the Veterans Affairs Department--earned the judges' attention this year.
All three winners examined their procedures for employee relocation, integrating what had been fragmented, redundant and expensive. The resulting programs promise better customer service, extensive savings and a simpler moving process. And all three sites accomplished this in large part by contracting out their relocation services to a private company--Cendant Mobility.
In each case, the contractor provides a single contact person for each relocating employee. The move coordinators provide a huge number of services, including counseling relocating employees; making move arrangements; tracking shipments; and helping employees with vouchers and other paperwork.
The Army's pilot at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Ga., conducted under the direction of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, removed from soldiers the burden of managing and integrating their moves and cut costs while expanding services.
New services include home searches for buyers and renters, mortgage assistance, marketing for home sellers, property management and more.
At the start of the effort, Defense Secretary William Cohen noted that "despite the fact that DoD moves more household effects than any U.S. corporation, the system we have created to do the moving has given our personnel some of the worst service in the nation." Under the new contract, customer satisfaction ratings have increased from 23 percent to 99 percent.
The Army plans to expand the concept to other DoD test sites. Eventually, it could be put in place throughout DoD and perhaps civilian agencies as well.
After studying best practices of private companies, the Customs Service sought to consolidate its relocation administration in the Washington office. Finance Office staff worked with the contractor to cut costs, get more accurate and timely reports and ensure consistent application of travel policy and regulations.
VA's program, called HomeExpress, also is based on the principles of reinvention. In addition to adopting approaches similar to the Army's and Customs' programs, VA communicates with Cendant Mobility via the Internet. Put in place in early 1996, the program will save $2.1 million on about 2,000 transfers each year when implemented agencywide.
Army contact: Lisa Roberts, (703) 614-4138 or roberla@hqda.army.mil
Customs contact: Richard Trent, (202) 927-1331
VA contact:Bonnie Britten, (202) 273-5380 or britten@mail.va.gov
Paperless Trail
Folks at General Services Administration's Heartland Finance Center in Kansas City, Mo., as in many federal offices, found processing travel vouchers to be a time-consuming, laborious and redundant task that often resulted in lost vouchers, errors and widely divergent interpretations of travel rules.
"It was not uncommon for substantiating documentation or the voucher itself to be lost at some point along the way, and it was virtually impossible to pinpoint a voucher's progress or estimate when payment would be made," says center director Thomas Caporizzo.
To solve this problem, Information Systems Management director Ray Stolhand and his team developed the Travel and Miscellaneous Reimbursement system. The paperless, automated system streamlines and consolidates the tasks involved in getting reimbursements, including data entry, approval and payment tracking. It's now being used throughout GSA (processing approximately 48,000 vouchers a year) and will save an estimated $600,000 at the Heartland Center in 1998. The team plans to market the system to other agencies as well.
Travelers can get into the system from anywhere they have Internet access. "As a traveler, I know that would make a big difference to me," said travel awards judge Col. Al Fleumer of Fort Leavenworth.
Contact: Tom Caporizzo, (816) 926-7625 or tom.caporizzo@gsa.gov
Pick a Card, Any Card
Flexibility, automation, partnership, choice--those are some of the buzzwords that describe the new line of travel cards available through the GSA SmartPay program. The new contract is designed to simplify transactions and save on administrative costs while offering agencies a wider range of tools to get travel business done.
With the master contract approach, agencies can choose from among five contractors and get such services and products as smart cards; stored value cards; electronic purchasing; alternate payment tools; automated purchasing, reconciliation, billing and reporting; and other technologies as they emerge.
The new contract also will allow the government to capture additional financial data, streamline processes and improve accountability. An estimated $4 billion in travel expenditures currently go through the cards each year.
The old contract (which expires in November) locked both the vendor and federal agencies into systems and technologies that existed when the award was made a decade ago.
The judges lauded GSA's Federal Supply Service for the creative methods it used to acquire the new contracts, citing a reduced procurement cycle time, an open process (enabled by extensive use of the Web), oral presentations and partnerships with all those having a stake in the outcome.
"The GSA SmartPay program and its procurement process introduce innovation in contracting and new technical capabilities for the government," said travel awards judge Karen Alderman, executive director of the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program.
Contact: Nancy Goode, (703) 305-7119 or nancy.goode@gsa.gov
Cool Tool
Entrepreneurial thinking and innovation in a small but important travel niche won the Defense Logistics Agency's Defense Supply Center in Richmond, Va., re-cognition from the panel of judges.
Folks at this facility developed software, called OffSite, that aids in conference planning. Given a list of participants' cities of origin, the software tells event planners the least expensive conference location (based on city-pair fares and per diem rates) in the 261 cities in the continental United States that have government-contracted airfares. Tests on the software have yielded 25 percent to 40 percent savings on training events and conferences.
The supply center is planning to make OffSite available to all federal agencies via the Internet.
Contact: Randy Zimmerman, (804) 279-5179 or rzimmerman@dscr.dla.mil
You May Be a Winner
Next year's competition will highlight yet more streamlining, cost savings, morale improvement and customer satisfaction in the travel arena. Judges will be looking for agencies and installations that take the tools the Defense travel System and GSA's SmartPay program provide and apply them in innovative ways.
If you think you know a Travel Manager of the Year, contact Karen Leder at 202-739-8452 or kleder@govexec.com for an application.
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