GSA awards IBM 15-year contract for next-gen federal travel platform

FedNewsNetwork notes GSA has awarded IBM a fifteen-year contract to develop and manage ETSNext, the next-generation federal travel and expense system. ETSNext will replace ETS2, consolidating travel services like booking, vouchering, and compliance auditing into a single shared platform, designed to streamline the experience for federal employees while maintaining regulatory compliance. Agencies will transition to ETSNext starting this fiscal year, with full migration required by June 2027.

Tim Burke, executive director of GSA’s travel office, highlighted ETSNext as the first shared service for civilian agencies, centralizing over 30 data models into one and enhancing category management. Once fully operational, ETSNext will support over 124 agencies, more than one million travelers, and over 2.6 million transactions annually.

The platform promises faster reimbursements and cost savings, building on ETS’s success in reducing reimbursement times to three days and saving $21 million annually.