DTS tops 1 million transactions

Use of the Pentagon’s electronic travel authorization and payment processing system surged with 110,000 new travel authorizations last month.

The Defense Travel System (DTS) has processed more than 1 million travel authorizations to date, including 110,000 last month.

The Army Recruiting Command was the top user of DTS in January, with 4,595 transactions, followed by Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, with 4,164, and Redstone Arsenal, Ala., with 3,707. DTS is now available to more than 810,000 uniformed and civilian employees at more than half of the Defense Department’s 11,000 sites, according to a Feb. 15 statement issued by Northrop Grumman.

“Northrop Grumman continues to implement an aggressive deployment and training schedule so the Defense Department and its personnel can realize the full scope of DTS benefits as quickly as possible,” said Rich Fabbre, DTS program manager at Northrop Grumman’s Mission Systems business unit. The company is the systems integrator for DTS.

DTS is a secure, Web-based system that automates authorizations, reservations, voucher processing, payment and archiving for DOD travel transactions. The Defense Finance and Accounting Service estimates the system can save $35 million in processing costs in fiscal 2006.

Government projections show that DTS will generate $178 million in productivity savings and reduce other costs by $56 million per year when fully deployed in 2007, according to the Northrop Grumman statement.