Dealing with defense travel is a one-way ticket to frustration for lawmakers

The Pentagon’s handling of the failed transition to a new defense travel system has resulted in “bipartisan frustration,” lawmakers said Wednesday during a House oversight and accountability hearing.

“Many of us are frustrated by the lack of accountability, the lack of transparency concerning what happened here. It's a bipartisan frustration. And, in fact, I think this failure to adopt a new travel system stems from a lack of management accountability within DOD,” Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., the chair of the oversight subcommittee on cybersecurity and IT, said Wednesday. “The lines of authority seem blurred when it comes to DOD business operations.” 

The Pentagon in May abandoned a migration to a new system, called MyTravel, to book and expense travel, after mandating its use. Why? Too few users—among other things. But that justification for scrapping a $374 million contract and sticking with the oft-derided Defense Travel System wasn’t enough for lawmakers. 

“I want to know how that happened. So they knew this program was coming, and yet seemingly didn't do anything to prepare,” Mace continued.

For decades, DOD has used the Defense Travel System to book flights and rental cars, and log travel expenses for reimbursement. But it’s been heavily criticized for its inefficiency, as well as for logging nearly $1 billion in improper payments from 2016 to 2018. 

The oversight panel asked the Pentagon’s undersecretary for defense for personnel and readiness to testify, but the DOD sent Jeffrey Register, director for the Defense Human Resources Activity, in his place. That switch didn’t go over well with lawmakers on either side of the aisle. 

In the first round of questions, Register punted questions on what authority was used to mandate the MyTravel system and whether the order came from the deputy defense secretary. 

“In October of 2022, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, Gilbert Cisneros, who is not here, issued a memorandum mandating—mandating—the use of MyTravel as ‘the single official travel system. And instructing all DOD organizations that are not currently integrated with MyTravel to ‘develop an interface with that system.’ Seven months later, that instruction was rescinded. Mr. Register, why?” asked the subcommittee’s ranking member, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va.  

Register’s answer: It was “fiscally irresponsible” to continue with the contract when the financial IT systems used by the service branches and defense agencies couldn’t interface with MyTravel. When pressed, he added the MyTravel platform was “not ready for all forms of travel,” and the subscription-based contract wasn’t a good fit for DOD’s needs.  

“We were trying to build as much travel volume as possible since it was a subscription contract, a number of trips on the contract. But as we found out, at least through this last fiscal year, the agencies and activities preferred to travel within DTS, both from a usability standpoint and because DTS better supported audit readiness requirements,” Register testified. “We just need to prioritize our financial integration and really dig into whether certain commercial offerings, subscription offerings, for example, at a firm fixed price are in the best interest of the government.” 

But this isn’t the first time the Pentagon has mandated an IT system switch that the military services chose not to adopt, testified Elizabeth Field, director for defense capabilities and management with the Government Accountability Office. 

“So we have seen, on more than one occasion, and this is just the latest, incidents in which the department at the OSD level wants to reform a business operation enterprise-wide and the services do not agree and the reform efforts fail,” Field said. 

The services do the bulk of travel in the department, she said, which means implementation hinges on their cooperation. 

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., called Cisneros' absence “unacceptable,” especially when it comes to answering questions on waste, fraud, and abuse. Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., declined to ask questions at all, suspecting he wouldn’t get the answers he needed—and he hinted that Congress may escalate its request for Cisneros to appear.

“This is how we get to subpoenas. You know, you invite. They don't show up. You invite again. They don't show up. And then all of a sudden there is an effort within a committee to subpoena someone. It's not because we want to do it. This is the only way we can talk to people,” Mfume said.