Government agencies slash travel budgets

By Tom Temin
FederalNewsRadio

Business travel has taken a shellacking during the economic downturn. Travel is an easy budget item for government agencies and companies to cut when money's tight. And if a company is laying people off, or agency is trying to look frugal to a profligate Congress, managers worry about how it looks to be sending people off to retreats and conferences.

In people who don't travel for business, business travel arouses suspicion that it's all junketeering, fancy hotels and meals on somebody else's dime. I'm a one-time 2-million-mile business traveler. Trust me when I tell you that for the vast majority of road warriors, travel is anything but luxurious.

A recent Wall Street Journal story described unnamed overseers at federal departments pooh-poohing places like Las Vegas or Orlando, Fla. for federal travel, more because of how it looks than based on any objective analysis. The Social Security Administration got in hot water in July when it came to light that several hundred SSA managers had attended a training session on Web applications at the Arizona Biltmore.

This is all stupid. It so happens that some of the biggest bargains in lodging and other costs are available in Las Vegas. SSA paid an average of $83 a night at the Biltmore. Its average total cost per person for the three-day training was only around $1,000. (I checked online as a retail traveler and the best rate I could get in the summer there was about $179 a night.) If you've ever been to a conference at one of the bulky hotels on International Drive in Orlando, you know what a commercial tourist trap the place is, with every second-rate chain restaurant you can think of.

When you figure in government air fares, government travel rates come in as low as anybody's including high school sports teams or elderly church groups. Certainly it's cheaper than Congressional junkets—which really are junkets for the most part.

Setting aside cost, a flimsy basis on which to criticize government travel, the objectors must believe that while on travel, federal workers waste time frolicking in crystal blue swimming pools on Nevada sundecks, sipping mai-tais.

In my experience with government conferences - and I've been going to them for 20 years - nothing could be further from the truth. Mostly they start at 7 a.m. and work until 5 or 6. If golf or tennis occurs, it's on the Sunday before, when you'd have to arrive anyhow, and at each person's own expense. Maybe a fed will win a nice golf shirt donated by a vendor. Big deal.

Off-site gatherings work best for education, training, or idea exchange, often a combination. Such functions are enhanced by people in direct contact from one another. Teleconferencing, online training and so-called webinars have their place, but they fail as adequate substitutes for direct contact between people with some professional affiliation in common. Travel at government rates is an inexpensive and efficient way to make a smarter and more-knowledgeable workforce.