The Zimbabwe Connection

The Government Accountability Office usually does a good job in exposing flaws in Defense Department information technology systems, but in its report on the Defense Travel System released on Tuesday, the GAO decided to pick some really weird nits.

DTS is supposed to display flights to overseas destinations in accordance with Fly America Act regulations, which requires travel on U.S. carriers when they can do the job.

But the GAO sleuths discovered that in November, nine out of 25 flights DTS displayed for travel from Washington Dulles Airport to Harare, Zimbabwe, did not meet the Fly America Act requirements, and only three out 15 flights to Sana'a, Yemen, that DTS displayed complied with the act.

I guess I should be shocked by this, but I wonder how many Defense folks are flying back and forth from Dulles to Zimbabwe or Yemen, neither of which seem to warrant as much Pentagon attention as Kuwait (handy to Iraq), Afghanistan, Germany or South Korea, all of which have a substantial U.S. military presence.

The U.S. Embassy in Harare has a military attaché (hello, Army LTC Ryan McMullen), but I cannot find a listing for a defense attaché in Yemen. Based on a quick Expedia search (and maybe DTS is better in this regard) if McMullen wanted to adhere to the Fly America Act, he might find it a challenge to comply.

According to Expedia, the closest one can get to Harare on a U.S. carrier from Dulles is a United Airlines flight to London and a change there to South African Airways to Johannesburg. Or he could take a short hop from Dulles on Delta to Atlanta, connecting again to a South African flight. Both these options require a plane change in Johannesburg for a flight to Harare, making the "fly America" part of the trip minimal.

I look forward to the 2010 GAO report that hopefully will expose lack of Defense adherence on Fly America regulations on trips to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen. (I never thought I would be able to work Ouagadougou into this blog, and I am grateful for GAO for providing me with the opportunity.)