Travel Process Reengineering

DOD Faces Challenges in Using Industry Practices to Reduce Costs Gao ID: AIMD/NSIAD-95-90 March 2, 1995

With processing costs accounting for at least 30 percent of the $3.5 billion that the Pentagon spent on travel in fiscal year 1993, adopting private industry's "best practices" for travel management could save millions of dollars. The Defense Department (DOD) needs to streamline its complex processing system, which involves 700 voucher-processing centers, multiple travel agencies, and more than 1,300 regulations. "Best practices" in the private sector include empowering employees to make travel decisions, reducing the number of travel agents to as few as one, consolidating multiple travel-processing centers into a single facility, and simplifying travel policies to less than 20 pages. GAO summarized this report in testimony before Congress; see: Business Process Reengineering: DOD Has a Significant Opportunity to Reduce Travel Costs by Using Industry Practices, by Jack L. Brock, Director of Information Resources Management for National Security and International Affairs, before the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management and the District of Columbia, Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. GAO/T-AIMD-95-101, Mar. 28, 1995 (18 pages).

GAO found that: (1) DOD travel management processes are wasteful and burdensome and involve multiple travel agents and voucher processing centers; (2) in fiscal year 1993, 30 percent of DOD temporary duty travel costs were spent on processing; (3) DOD average processing costs are well above the 10-percent average reported by private companies and the 6-percent rate that the travel industry considers efficient; (4) leading travel industry companies have been able to dramatically improve service and reduce processing costs by reengineering their travel management and adopting best practices that empower their employees to make travel decisions, reduce the number of travel agents, consolidate multiple travel processing centers, and simplify travel policies; (5) DOD could significantly reduce its costs and streamline its travel management by following the private-sector example; (6) in July 1994, a DOD task force recommended that DOD apply private-sector best practices as part of its effort to reengineer its travel management; and (7) DOD will need sustained commitment and oversight by top management to implement the task force's recommendation and change its travel processes.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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