Friday, November 17, 2006

Your Tax Dollars at Work

It's time to kill the Defense Travel Service, once and for all. We've written about the DTS mess in the past, and despite the investment of almost $500 million, the system shows no sign of improvement. The fact that it's barely used by Pentagon staffers speaks volumes about its inefficiency. Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman has been waging a vigorous fight to get rid of the system, an effort which deserves bipartisan support.

Hat tip: Chief Buddy.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Baddog...I've heard similar horror stories from other dissatisfied DTS users. As I recall, the justification for switching to this system was to save about $30 million a year in travel agent fees. Half-a-billion dollars later, we have a system that still doesn't work, and when you factor in lost worktime/productivity, the "cost" is even higher.

Perfection--or the pursuit of a perfect, fee-free system is the enemy of good enough. Heck, I remember the days before government credit cards, when you received an advance from base finance before you left, and used your gov't orders to rent a car. Decidedly low-tech, but guess what, it worked, and it didn't cost $500 million.