Online Booking

In another policy directive flowing from the Bush administration's e-government initiative, the General Services Administration is requiring agencies to increase their use of online travel booking services. A March Federal Register bulletin instructed each agency to adopt an online booking engine. Those that do not have online booking systems are encouraged to use FedTrip (http://www.fedtrip.gov), developed by the Transportation Department.

Online booking services such as FedTrip enable employees to make their own travel arrangements rather than rely on travel agents, saving agencies millions of dollars in fees. At one point, a fact sheet on the FAA's Web site said booking through FedTrip costs half as much as using travel agents. And an April 7 memo from FAA Deputy Chief Financial Officer A. Thomas Park said a FedTrip reservation "combined with an e-ticket will total $11. . . . By contrast, a phone reservation coupled with a paper ticket will cost $55 . . . a fourfold cost differential per ticket."

Skeptics urge caution in projecting cost savings associated with e-government initiatives such as FedTrip.

Jim Tozzi, on the board of advisers of the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness, an independent watchdog group established in 1996, points out that "the savings are in going from paper systems to online technology. As long as the level of service stays the same, you can save money. If you add services [and] information, the costs will increase." In other words, just because a computer system can compile handy data and make it easy to offer new services, that doesn't necessarily mean an agency should do so.

Agencies have until December to develop their plans for reaching what the directive calls "a high level of online booking."