My first reaction to the readings in these sections is that there seems to be a lot of rules and regulations that a government traveler must be aware of and follow to accomplish a trip. But then, when one remembers that DoD accounts for roughly 60% of the total Federal travel market, it becomes clear that the rules are necessary for good accountability.
The DoD is responsible for end-to-end systems integration and currently this is through the contract with Northrop Grumman. It was designed specifically for DoD. It incorporates Title 5 and Title 31 of the US Code and includes US Code Title 37 for military personnel. The Joint Travel Regulation Vol. II is the governing regulation for DoD civil service personnel. Even by studying a functional diagram of the defense travel system (DTS), one doesn’t have a clear and easy understanding of the many departments and various functions included in this.
It appears that the DTS has a set of common business processes but it also has a shared automated framework that is applied across DoD. This complete system includes user authentication via travel authorization, travel procurement, voucher computation, posting official financial records, electronic archiving, and electronic payments. DoD’s huge presence in the travel services market also provides cost and performance leverage not available to smaller organizations.
As one would think, security is very stringent for user identification and authentication and DoD has developed a Department-wide Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) that is required to access the DTS and to digitally sign DTS documents.