Tim Burke
Weeks away from issuing a solicitation for the next generation of its E-Gov Travel System, the U.S. General Services Administration last week detailed its expectations and garnered tips on transition strategies from some of more than 100 people, including 40 travel company representatives, who attended a pre-solicitation meeting in Washington, D.C. Speaking to Management.travelMonday, GSA Federal Acquisition Services Office of Travel and Transportation Services director Tim Burke explained how President Barack Obama's calls for transparency and an open government, use of cloud computing and best use of taxpayer dollars would be reflected in the travel solicitation process. So too would be the needs of dozens of federal agency travel manager customers, expertise of consultants and results of the benchmarks and analyses conducted in recent months as GSA prepared for the solicitation that consulting firm FedSources valued at $1.3 billion over the decade. In addition to online booking, authorization and vouchering technologies, the federal government expects contractors to provide customer service and fulfillment, mid-office technologies, policy compliance to extensive regulations, expense reimbursement, reporting and more, just as contracts set to expire in 2013 with three vendors currently require. Specifications are detailed in an 88-page draft solicitation. An excerpt of Burke's comments follows.
What are GSA's primary objectives in the new ETS2 bid process?
There are three primary goals or pillars of this initiative. One is online adoption. Back in 2003, we had very minimal online travel reservations--less than 3 percent--and very minimal online travel authorizations and vouchers occurring. Today, online is significantly higher, 70 percent on reservations, 100 percent on the authorization and vouchers. Online optimization is critical so we can improve the traveler's experience and the efficiency around the infrastructure with technology as it advances. It could be things such as leveraging the proper global distribution system platform, potentially a single optimization process for mid-office quality control, standard passenger name record formats or standardized profiles. The commercial world has been using such efficiencies for quite a long time; the government is just now ready to do that. The second pillar is total enterprise services solution management. That really is based on the premise that we went from the offline world to the online world, but there are still customer service issues. Customer satisfaction and vendor performance around all of those fall under the single services contracts. We want to take a refreshed look at how the total enterprise should be managed since these are 10-year contracts. Third is overall infrastructure and operating environment. Clearly, this administration has advanced the cause not only of social media and technology, but the ability to move cloud computing into our day-to-day infrastructure. The shared model for travel is a good candidate for cloud computing, so we want to make sure that in this contract we advance that technology platform because it will interface with both the short-term and long-term plans the government has for interoperability.
In terms of interoperability, do you mean more seamless integration with existing accounting and human resource systems or something else?
You hit two of the primarily data sources and business processes that operate in any organization. We've had some success with interfaces to those functions already with ETS1. But I would underpin it with something even more usable. While those functions and pipes are connected today at many of our federal agencies, some have developed very complex ERPs [enterprise resource planning systems] that have the interfacing capability between not only human resource planning, but capital and accounting. One of the objectives is to add much more transparency into the spend and much more data accessibility; to have the data transparent to the taxpayer and the world, not just to be accountable, but also to inspire and stir innovation. If the data is available, it's amazing how quickly--from crowd sourcing and other activities--we can look to how we can do things better.
Would those desires for interoperability, integration and transparency necessitate a more limited number of vendors than the three currently contracted to provide ETS1?
We anticipate further consolidation of the vendor services. The basic premise is that the model is more attractive--from what we've heard from industry and high-level business case analysis work we've done--if there are fewer vendors because we have a finite and limited number of transactions. This is an administration that is very concerned, as previous administrations were and should have been, about the cost to taxpayers. In a consolidated acquisition and operation, we get the advantage of efficiencies and standardization. Cost reduction is more likely and the ability to focus on customer needs and service is enhanced. Early indications are that the industry is interested if it's consolidated, and the government then just has to assess it from a risk perspective. Currently, we have three vendors and risks have been managed well. We anticipate that there is a possibility of further consolidation to less than three.
What's the timeline for the solicitation and migration to ETS2?
Once the RFPs are released in late January to mid-February and bids are in the house as final submissions, we anticipate 90 days post to go through a couple of phases that will include live testing of those vendors likely to be chosen. The technical, pricing evaluation teams will move forward. We haven't finalized the acquisition plan yet, but I suspect there might be a best and final. We believe that in fiscal year 2010, we will complete the acquisition process--from developing and finalizing requirements to getting customer buyoff on those to ensuring industry interest and making sure they understand what is being asked by the government so it's a healthy and competitive bid process. We assume that as a result of that award at the end of 2010 we will begin migrating immediately thereafter to a couple of pilot users and then early ETS2 [agency] users. It should take us 18 to 36 months to complete 100 percent of deployment after that. We asked the industry to help us identify the right schedule, conducive to as comfortable a transition [to ETS2] as possible. I will also tell you that this administration, which we have met with on a couple of occasions, has made it 100 percent clear that 100 percent of the civilian side of the agencies will be deployed once we deploy ETS2.
Despite the progress of ETS, some civilian government travel is still booked offline or through other systems. How much more travel can be moved online as part of ETS2?
With the few agencies that have not 100 percent deployed [ETS1], we think they represent between 500,000 to 700,000 more vouchers or transactions than the 2.5 million we anticipate for the next contract, give or take the government travel budget. The budget could be up or down 10 percent to 15 percent, and 10 percent is a big impact--it's a quarter-million transactions in our space. The current bid identifies 2.5 million transactions. We believe that is very, very deliverable, and all not currently deployed would be an upside.