Northrop Grumman will run Defense travel booking system for another year

The Defense Logistics Agency has extended by one year Northrop Grumman Corp.’s contract to run the Pentagon’s travel booking system.

The contract extension, valued at $28.8 million, will bring Northrop Grumman’s tenure operating the Defense Travel System to 15 years. During that time, DTS -- designed to handle all air, train, hotel and rental car bookings for Defense Department personnel -- has faced congressional skepticism about its ability to outperform commercial travel websites, criticism from the Government Accountability Office and resistance from Defense users.

DLA said in a justification document for the contract extension that DTS handles 70 percent of all Defense temporary duty travel; serves more than 3 million personnel; and processes more than 350,000 travel authorizations and 350,000 requests for travel reimbursement per month. It has the capacity to handle 470,000 travel vouchers monthly if necessary to accommodate growth, the document said.

DTS is tightly coupled with more than 35 Defense financial systems and if there were a break in service “and travel reservations were made outside DTS, this would completely separate the travel reservation process from the approval and accounting functions of DTS,” the document said.

The travel system contract expired Sept. 4. DLA said the Pentagon will recompete the contract in 2013, but it needs Northrop Grumman to continue to operate DTS until a new award is made because it is a mission-critical service.