GSA releases E-Travel draft solicitation

After a two-month delay, the General Services Administration earlier this week released a draft request for proposals for a governmentwide online travel management system.

GSA officials said they had hoped to release the RFP in August, but the statement of work took longer to put together than expected.


Even with the holdup, GSA still plans to roll out an online booking engine, the first iteration of the E-Travel project, by December, according to the draft RFP. E-Travel is one of five Quicksilver initiatives GSA is leading.


Vendors and agencies have until Oct. 21 to provide GSA with comments on the draft RFP. The final solicitation is scheduled to be released in early November. GSA also will hold an industry day after the final RFP is released. GSA wants to have the full travel management system up by December 2003.


GSA wrote in the draft request that the travel management system will be Web accessible; owned, operated and hosted by the vendor; and will use commercial software. The system must provide a single environment for travel authorization, planning, reservations, fulfillment, expense calculation, approval of reimbursements and data archiving.


The system also must automate the workflow and notifications for travel, exchange data with agency financial and other business systems and link travel charge-card activation, authorization and payments, the draft RFP said.


In the short term, GSA is asking vendors to launch the online reservation booking system for airlines, car rental companies and hotel chains by December. The draft RFP said it should be integrated with the Travel Authorization and Voucher System, provide fare comparisons, prioritize preferred vendors and rates and filter out noncompliant choices based on policy requirements.