Defense Travel System
The Defense Travel System used to service the Department of Defense by managing all the temporary duty travel necessities. Travelers who used this system could generate travel vouchers, get approval for traveling, make reservations or get travel orders. The Defense Travel System operated through a web portal that was available for access and usage 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The costs for the travel services were smaller in the system, plus, users had the advantage of timely payment of all travel claims. There were complex training facilities available as part of the Defense Travel system and they were usually organized under the close supervision of a qualified instructor. The website on which the operations ran, had the full management support of the Defense Travel Management Office that represented the core of commercial travel as designed by the Department of Defense. Among the tasks handled by this office we could mention allowance and entitlement program management, functional control for the Defense Travel System, training services and customer assistance. Criticisms had often been formulated in relation with the official website of the Defense Travel System particularly referring to the new version released

in the fall of 2008. The interface was complex as one can easily expect, but most critics claimed that it also functioned more slowly as compared with the older version. Plus, for government employees trained to operate the systems, things seemed to be just as confusing because of the same unfriendly interface. Among the main reproaches made to the present-day form of the Defense Travel System we can begin by mentioning the lack of real time results availability. Then, the search times were annoyingly long and when typing of the search words, one had to use the complete and correct spelling. Moreover, mismatches commonly occurred between the yielded flight results and the selected time for instance. These being said, just imagine how difficult it must have been to rely on the service under the circumstances. At present, the website of the Defense Travel System is out of service, as of August 2009. All the operations are conducted manually, and all employees have to work according to this system. There is no public notification about the time when a fix will occur, but no doubt, experts are working to put the system back on track and get users access to the Defense Travel System online in much better conditions.