I Do Not Like My Experiences With DTS
CDR Salamander points out that Ace is on the case where the horrible Defense Travel System is concerned. Check the satisfied customers in the comments!
I would like to see something much simpler for DoD travel. I’d love to see that blasted credit card thing go away, and make travel systems acknowledge that we’re not in the sixties anymore. We could just give people a lump of money and let them figure it out themselves, or put the rule sets in plugins for any number of web-based travel agencies, or make the system become a travel ATM (“need to go to Cleveland for a week? Your boss says it’s required? Okay, come back if you get stuck paying more than X, and here’s the Cleveland air-room-car packages from these eight travel systems!”). Standardization isn’t the goal. Mission accomplishment, careful use of the taxpayer’s money, and transparent accountability is–in that order, too.
This problem is a lot like the French Minitel computer system. Minitel was good for what it was a long time ago, but it locked the country into a teletext terminal system for everybody just as the Internet became useful. Minitel cost a lot of money to implement and standardize, and the standard prevented the French from taking advantage of rapid improvements to connectivity. When you’re stuck with a Minitel, the answer is not to build another Minitel from scratch using the best of the last decade’s innovations.
In order to really save and become efficient, we have to become more accepting of a particular kind of risk. Unfortunately, that risk is completely unacceptable to the people who control the purse, which got us this program. Congress will spend a thousand dollars keeping ten from being stolen or wasted, and it is almost impossible to kill a program of record. So for that reason, even if Sen. Coleman is criticizing DTS for home state pork reasons, he’s still benefiting the country. I’d prefer we think bigger than just going back to a travel agent contract again–but this is a start.
6 Responses to “I Do Not Like My Experiences With DTS”
Trackback URL for I Do Not Like My Experiences With DTS: http://gmapalumni.org/chapomatic/wp-trackback.php?p=2552
July 17th, 2007 at 10:45 am
I listed my main complaints with DTS over at Phibian’s place. Besides fixing the credit card issue ( which I would fix by having the government pay Bank of America directly for airfare, hotel and rental car. All the traveler would get in would be per diem-paid in an advance 100%). The other thing I would do would be to eliminate the City Pair program and close the CTO’s. Have the system tell you what your expense targets are-stay within them, fly whatever airline you want and not make it a sin to bankroll miles on a particular carrier or alliance. If you need more-then file to the TAD authority for a waiver.
However, in keeping with the theme of “We can’t trust our Sailors to do anything right, which seems to pervade todays Navy”, we are stuck with this system that is hard to use, and does not take changes well at all.
July 17th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Wow. And I thought the simple act of filling out a travel voucher and waiting for Accounting and Finance to pay me (in cash) was a right royal pain, back in the day (I retired in ’85). It certainly appears things have gotten incredibly worse. My sympathies.
That said…the last company I worked for was a small IT start-up (approx 300 folks at max strength) with no travel system at all and minimal “guidelines.” If you had to travel, and a LOT of us did, you made your own arrangements through Expedia or Orbitz, used your own credit card, and were subject to the whims of one of three VPs who approved reimbursement of expenses. The “use your own credit card” bit was particularly tough on our younger folks who often did not have enough “head room” on their personal cards to support a week’s stay in NYC, for example. That really sucked…
July 18th, 2007 at 3:12 am
What needs to be done is to do like the big silly-vilian corporations do. Set up a user-friendly travel website – there are plenty of examples, with all the rules and partnerships with transportation companies built in. There are plenty of smart people out there who can do that.Give the service member a corporate AMEX card, with the Navy instruction that it is only to be used for travel. Punish the stupid that don’t follow the instruction. Then, when the service member has to go on travel, he/she just logs onto the website and makes all his/her arrangements. How hard can it be to set this up? Plenty of companies already do this, with their own policies built in (like warnings if you try to book a 1st class flight, or it’s over a certain amount, or try to reserve a hot sports car instead of a mis-size sedan, etc., etc.) like my company.
July 18th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
What Sonarman said. At my company, which is one of those “big silly-vilian corporations”, we use AMEX and our corporate card. You make your own travel arrangements and AMEX is paid directly once you file your Travel and Expense Report. Run all on the Internet.
The corporate guidelines are somewhat loose, but you are expected to use some common sense.
Yeah, I just don’t understand the Navy…
July 18th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Here’s what they did–they started with what sonarman said, but made it as bad as humanly possible. First OSD forced the government travel cards, which only sort of work–and if there is any problem you’re now in UCMJ trouble, you can’t pay them directly but the card goes on your credit rating, you can’t get money at the right time, they didn’t make the thing sailor-resistant and people did stupid things, the company decided to let all our personal information be stolen, et cetera. (I’ve had guys stranded at the TAD location, E-1 to E-3 types, with no cash and a card that doesn’t work–and I’ve had a boss who couldn’t get reimbursed for almost a year. Me, I avoided it like the plague and still had to deal with the company when I got reimbursed for a trip–by means of a payment to a credit card that didn’t exist instead of to me!)
Then they hired a shipbuilding contractor to write from scratch a travel program that makes SABRE look intuitive, which costs more than the travel agent could have done never mind the real world–and you have to talk to the travel agent anyway because they cancel the ticket without telling you if the computer thinks that day that your trip was not properly authorized. Never mind the downtimes, the bugs, the training required, the effort required at all levels to get a trip arranged in the magic system…and then we still half the time have to go to SATO anyway to get tickets.
My point is this. The idea is not what is important. It’s the execution. DTS is a terrible execution of a possibly useful idea, and it wastes inordinate amounts of time and money and frustrates the users of the system to no end. And no matter how horrible it is, we can’t kill it because one can never kill a program.
July 19th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
The issue is not whether a few people bought dinner at Hooters on the Bank of America card-or bought strippers or hookers. Its that they did not pay the bill on time. If the government would focus on that alone instead of worrying about what people buy with the card, everyone would be a lot better off. What does Bank of America or the Federal Government care so long as the card is paid on time? That’s what Charles Grassely never could figure out.
Except he might have had to reveal the dirty little secret-Bank of America gets a kickback when the card is used-as does Uncle Sam. Neither side will tell that part.