DOE Management

The Department of Energy (DOE) spends hundreds of millions of dollars on travel each year. About 80 percent of these costs are incurred by the contractors who manage DOE facilities. The agency has been concerned about travel costs for some time and in 1995 launched a five-year, $175 million initiative to cut travel costs by $35 million each year, of which $30 million would come from contractors. This report (1) provides information on the travel costs incurred by DOE contractors and their primary destinations during fiscal years 1996 through 1998, (2) identifies the purpose of this travel, and (3) assesses DOE's success in reducing contractor travel costs and identifies additional steps DOE could take to further reduce them. GAO also examines travel and other costs associated with contractor employees on assignment to Washington, D.C.

GAO noted that: (1) travel costs incurred by DOE contractors were reduced from $261 million in FY 1995 to $223 million in FY 1996; (2) since then, travel costs have increased--to $249 million by FY 1998--even though funding to the contractors during this period had been decreasing; (3) about 96 percent of the contractors' travel was to domestic locations, the most frequent of these being Washington, D.C. and the sites of DOE's major laboratories and test facilities: Albuquerque, New Mexico; Oakland/San Francisco, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Los Alamos, New Mexico; (4) the most frequent foreign destinations were Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Japan; (5) the purpose of most travel was reported as being for business reasons, that is, travel for purposes related to the mission of the facilities; (6) this category included trips to attend meetings or perform research; (7) GAO identified trips that were miscategorized or were of questionable value to DOE; (8) for example, business trips included travel to obtain advanced degrees; (9) the second most frequently cited travel purpose was for attending conferences; (10) according to DOE's Inspector General, the large number of conference attendees is a concern; (11) the Inspector General identified hundreds of DOE contractor staff attending a 1997 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, resulting in travel costs of about $1 million; (12) DOE's success in reducing contractor travel costs has been limited; (13) although contractor travel costs have increased since FY 1996, they have remained below the FY 1995 level--the level that DOE established as a baseline for calculating contractor travel cost savings; (14) only in FY 1996 did DOE attain the expected $30 million savings in contractor travel by achieving a $38 million reduction in that year; (15) contractors did not continue to achieve such savings because DOE did not enforce its cost reduction targets and some contractors did not have an overall strategy or plan to achieve lower travel costs; (16) DOE spends millions of dollars on travel and other costs for contractor employees on temporary or permanent assignment to Washington, D.C.; (17) DOE has reduced the number of contractor employees in Washington and is planning on further reductions; and (18) however, concerns exist over the additional compensation that contractors are providing for employees on long-term temporary assignments to cover the tax liabilities on their living allowances.

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.

Director: Team: Phone: