When GSA awarded travel government contracts to only #3 ETS vendors almost ten years ago, the travel community was shaken by the government’s move to take away opportunities of small to medium size travel agencies to take a piece of the pie. The GSA vision for a firm fixed price, multiple awards and Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) was the ultimate confirmation that government will streamline the broken process of government travel starting from financial initiation of travel authorization. Having the understanding that federal agency and the DoD travel process functions totally different, Defense Travel System responds to the needs of DoD travel and accounting requirements unlike federal agency. Both federal agency and DoD have encountered challenges aspects of the system interfacing with the specific requirements. GSA posted a notice to the Federal Register confirming it would award in April contracts for the second-generation e-Gov Travel Service, GSA travel and expense management systems. GSA laid out the timeline for the transition to ETS2 from the first version of ETS, starting on March 30, 2012 – the deadline for all agencies to execute a memorandum of understanding for full deployment of ETS2 – and ending in November 2015, when ETS1 is sunset. The Federal Travel Regulation requires “all” agencies to use “an ETs”, a requirement that extends to ETS2. There are exceptions, notably the DoD, which uses the separate DTS, though GSA says that DoD may chose to participate in ETS2. GSA said each agency’s MOU will identify its plan for transition, including such milestone dates as awarding and executing task orders, configuring ETS2 and integrating systems, initial implementation and full deployment. According to GSA, the end-to-end ETS2 travel management system will focus on the administrations principles of strategic sourcing, data driven transparency, standardization, consolidation, sustainability and cost reduction. It will be governed by a 15-year master contract consisting of a three-year base period and three four-year options. Pre-existing 10 year ETS master contracts expire November 11, 2013. GSA noted that contract extensions are available in the event transition to ETS2 is not complete. A year later, the extension base period ends and agencies will face significantly higher transaction fees as transaction volume decrease. In November 2015, the ETS will be no longer available. Government sources suggested that the annual ETS2 contract revenues could end up closer to $75 million rather than $100 million initially expected due to pending cuts in federal travel.
Source: ETS2 information is from this month’s Business Travel News.
By: Joy Borja