Plans for a next-generation governmentwide travel and expense management platform are coming into focus, following a recent contract award central to its day-to-day operations.

The General Services Administration awarded a 15-year contract to IBM to provide technology-managed services for ETSNext, the next generation of the agency’s E-Gov Travel Service (ETS).

Under this contract, IBM will cover planning, authorizing, booking and vouchering for travel expenses for ETSNext. IBM will also provide audit and reporting services, to ensure travel expenses comply with regulations. GSA expects the next-generation platform will allow enable federal employees to easily plan and book travel reservations online and be reimbursed in an automated manner.

GSA said in a press release Wednesday that its Travel and Expense Shared Service and IBM will start working with agencies this fiscal year to transition from the current platform, ETS2, to ETSNext.

All agencies must migrate to ETSNext by June 2027.

Tim Burke, GSA’s executive director for the Office of Travel, Employee Relocation and Transportation, said the launch of ETSNext is the first time GSA will provide travel and expense functions as a shared service to civilian federal agencies, “making it easier to provide a modern, compliant, and secure experience for federal employees traveling on official business.”

“ETSNext will further category management objectives by consolidating more than 30 data models used across the ETS2 systems into one centralized model,” Burke said in a statement.

GSA posted its request for proposals for ETSNext in October 2023. In the solicitation, GSA first outlined its plans to consolidate the number of vendors providing travel and expense software from two to one governmentwide shared service.

Once the transition to ETSNext is complete, GSA expects it will serve over 124 civilian agencies, more than one million federal travelers and over 2.6 million transactions a year.

All 24 agencies under the Chief Financial Officers Act, except for the Department of Defense, are required to use ETS. Since its launch over 20 years ago, ETS has lowered reimbursement time to three days and delivered an average annual savings of $21 million.

GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan said ETSNext incorporates human-centered design principles and user feedback, and “will provide a more efficient, easy-to-use shared service that will meet the government’s needs into the future.”

“When federal employees travel on government business, we want to make sure we’re being good stewards of taxpayer dollars while ensuring a good customer experience for these dedicated public servants,” Carnahan said in a statement.

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