Security Watch | Matt Hines » Just a rant about DTS that has nothing to do with security whatsoever

November 16, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Just a rant about DTS that has nothing to do with security whatsoever

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I've dealt with a lot of software and hardware in my day. And I'd like to say I know good from bad, at least in general. A year or so back I had the (mis)fortune to take the training class for DTS, the Defense Travel System, which is supposed to save the government money while allowing DoD travelers to make, in some cases, last minute travel reservations and arrangements.

I won't get into what I think is a colossal waste of time when it comes to the payment and reimbursement process for government travel, but hey, I'm just an occasional government civilian employee. Of course, after taking the training and thinking about how poorly designed the web-based system was overall, I still can't pin down if it was the whole reimbursement process or DTS in general that just didn't do it for me.

Jon Udell, having a more sophisticated programming background might have more elegant words, but I thought the whole DTS process sucked. Of course, I come from, what is to me, the more logical world of private industry. You make travel plans. You make them ahead of time and you try to save money. Or you get a nasty gram from the company CFO.

Anyway, it seems that the whole DTS is under review with less that twenty percent of those government employees who are supposed to be using the Defense Travel System actually doing so.

I guess I just feel a slight bit vindicated when I made comments about how poorly the process seemed in comparison to others travel search sites like Expedia and Orbitz. Especially since, in my experience, many government employees fly at the last minute and incur exorbitant prices (where we, as taxpayers, foot the extra bill).

And for a cost of half a billion dollars for DTS I would have expected much more...

Posted by Victor R. Garza on November 16, 2006 04:39 PM

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