MoD trailblazes travel-booking service

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has signed up Capgemini to deliver an electronic travel-booking service.

The department has already achieved 10 per cent yearly savings on travel spend from using the service and is on track to stretch that to 20 per cent, according to MoD defence travel modernisation team leader group captain Andy Towler.

Once the service is up and running, it will be offered to other government departments as a shared service in the hope of reducing administration costs across central government as a whole.

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Towler told silicon.com the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will be the next department to sign up to the service and said other departments are also interested in taking it up.

He said: "We are expecting other departments to be interested because they know that the MoD is a large spender on travel. For the individual, they will get a greater degree of choice. We are building policy into the system so there will be less chance of people booking journeys by mistake. Departmentally, it allows us to wield our travel spend much more effectively with suppliers."

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Under the deal, which was awarded by the government procurement organisation OGCbuying.solutions, Capgemini will design and operate the service for five years and will initially provide 300,000 MoD staff in the civil service and armed forces with a quick and secure method of booking travel, using a method familiar to many people when they book their own holidays.

The service will also give the MoD better visibility of its travel costs and help it to manage travel budgets effectively.