In sections 2d and 3a of the Certified Government Travel Professional Training Course, I must admit I try not to rental cars whenever possible when I travel on official business. When I am on a site visit and we are researching meeting locations, then it is unavoidable. Generally I would call the Rental Car Company directly to obtain their government rates. I realize I could have reserved through our Omega Travel System but, for some reason, I was not comfortable with the system. I was always concerned about the liability issue. In reading this section I really shouldn’t have worried. Everything seemed to be covered in this regard. The Electronic Travel Systems section details the Federal Government system. Since the U.S. Postal Service is quasi-government, our system is called “eTravel” and is our online application to create work travel expense reports. Then we electronically submit our reports through our approval process and it also tracks our reimbursement status. The system is convenient to use, automatically calculating mileage and per diem rates. We sure have come a long way from the old paper Travel Voucher system. I don’t have direct information regarding the types of reports our system generates but I would assume it would be similar to those of the ETS Reporting section. I don’t have any personal experience of using the Federal Electronic Travel System but have talked with former Postal employees who are now with other Federal Government agencies and they preferred our system. It may just take time to become accustomed to a new system.
Joyce Wahoski, USPS Stamp Development