Monday, August 27, 2018

DTS: How Long Does it Take to Get Rid of a Bad Military Program?

It looks like a bit over a dozen years. It was clear as early as 2006 that DTS was FOD, but ... well ... I guess DOD works on its own timeline;
The Defense Department has selected a new vendor to overhaul and replace the aging and widely-reviled IT system military personnel use to book airline flights and make other travel arrangements, the Pentagon said Thursday.

DoD issued a $9.3 million other transaction agreement (OTA) to SAP Concur to build a prototype that will eventually take the place of the current Defense Travel System (DTS), which processes nearly $9 billion in travel spending each year.

Concur is a subsidiary of the global software giant that focuses primarily on delivering travel and expense management as a service, a model that lines up with what Pentagon officials had previously said they wanted: a commercial “travel-as-a-service” offering to replace the government-owned systems that currently make up DTS.
Should we be optimistic?

Once can hope.


1 comment:

InterestedParty said...

DTS is like many online systems...once you use it a few times, it gets easier to use. But there are a number of features the system should have, including providing a map when you're trying to book your hotel and actually cancelling your orders when you click on the "cancel trip" button. Most complaints I hear about travel are really complaints about the JTR and inconsistent interpretation of the JTR.

But if you want to talk about taking a step back in usability...I suggest a post on Defense Collaboration Services (DCS). We had a perfectly functional system in Defense Collaboration Online (DCO). that gave you decent conferencing and online chat features, and then completely screwed it up by going internal for DCS.