RESTON, Va., Feb. 15, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- The Defense Travel System (DTS), designed and developed by Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC), has successfully processed more than one million authorizations, including more than 110,000 last month for its growing U.S. Department of Defense user base.
Based on the number of transactions conducted in January, the top contributors to the increase are the organizations associated to the following:
-- U.S. Army Recruiting Command -- 4,595 -- U.S. Air Force Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio -- 4,164 -- U.S. Army Garrison-Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Ala. -- 3,706 -- U.S. Naval Base, San Diego -- 2,661 -- U.S. Army Aberdeen Test Center, Md. -- 2,331
DTS is now available to more than 810,000 uniformed and civilian employees at more than half of the Defense Department's 11,000 sites.
"Northrop Grumman continues to implement an aggressive deployment and training schedule so the Defense Department and its personnel can realize the full scope of DTS benefits as quickly as possible," said Rich Fabbre, DTS program manager at Northrop Grumman's Mission Systems sector. "From installations in the United States to Europe to Korea, we are now conducting training classes every hour of every day somewhere in the world."
The Defense Finance and Accounting Service estimates that DTS can save $35 million in processing costs in fiscal year 2006 alone. DTS was developed at the urging of Congress in a move to address broad travel issues beyond the capability of traditional, less sophisticated systems. The government projects that the system will generate $178 million in productivity savings and reduce other costs by $56 million per year when fully deployed in 2007.
DTS is a Web-based, secure, end-to-end system that automates authorizations, reservations, voucher processing, payment and archiving for Defense Department travel transactions. It replaces manual travel administration with automated solutions, reducing travel costs, preventing waste and abuse, simplifying travel management and improving customer service.
In an online poll conducted last week, Federal Times asked readers to rate the DTS and eTravel travel systems. Positive responses led 2 to 1, with 31 percent of those responding categorizing the systems as "great" and 30 percent selecting "pretty good." Nine percent of the respondents had not used either system.
Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, based in Reston, Va., is a global integrator of complex, mission-enabling systems and services for defense, intelligence and civil government markets. The sector's technology leadership and expertise spans areas such as strategic systems, including ICBMs; missile defense; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; command and control; and technical services and training.