eTravel Service
3.0 TECHNOLOGY REFRESHMENT
3.0.a Northrop Grumman's GovTrip eTravel Ser-
vice provides the environment and architecture
that will allow the Government to embrace future
developments in eCommerce and travel industry
service while effectively supporting the business
needs of the Federal agencies.
3.1 HISTORY OF INNOVATION
3.1.a Northrop Grumman and its teammates have a
history of innovation in travel services and will
continue to use a variety of techniques to ensure
that our service and system remain at the state of
the industry:
• Northrop Grumman introduced the first end-to-
end, integrated Government travel system and
the first travel system to feature PKI-based
digital signatures.
• Our teammates Rosenbluth International and
TRX are recognized travel industry leaders.
Rosenbluth has put new technology to use to
improve customer service and increase adop-
tion rates. TRX provides advanced booking en-
gine technology and services that have fueled
the trend toward more self-service transactions.
In their roles as major subcontractors to North-
rop Grumman, they will contribute their exper-
tise, services, and technology to our overall of-
fering, thus ensuring that we remain current
with the state of the industry.
• Northrop Grumman’s Outreach organization
and its GovTrip Liaison Manager will establish
user groups, conduct surveys to obtain sugges-
tions for improvements, and act as the user
community’s advocates in defining future pri-
orities and features of GovTrip.
• Northrop Grumman will continue to conduct
testing of all major releases of eTS to enhance
the usability characteristics of eTS. Usability
testing significantly increases the likelihood
that a given release will meet the needs of the
user community and that it will be well re-
ceived.
3.2 MANAGING FOR TRAVEL SERVICE
ENHANCEMENTS
3.2.a GovTrip will provide the consolidated travel
data to allow the Government to fully leverage its
travel buying power. Throughout the life of the
program, Northrop Grumman will work closely
with GSA to identify new opportunities within the
travel marketplace and to modify GovTrip, when
NGMS/A020363PR Vol. 2 - 16
appropriate, to allow the Government to fully ex-
ploit those opportunities. Northrop Grumman’s
offering includes the following:
• Northrop Grumman has included in its offering
10,000 development hours to add functionality
to meet GSA’s new objective requirements.
• The emergence of alternate data sources allows
suppliers to avoid GDS fees and, potentially,
lower their Government rates. We are commit-
ted to working with all suppliers who can pro-
vide a better value to Government travelers.
We have added Hotels.com, a major supplier of
discounted room rates, as an associate team
member. With GSA's concurrence, we will in-
corporate this and other data sources into Gov-
Trip to offer Government travelers additional
choices and lower prices.
• Another important trend that should result in
lower Government costs is direct connections
to suppliers. Northrop Grumman has estab-
lished an industry advisory council to expedite
the development of these interfaces with major
Government travel suppliers. We have begun
discussions with Intercontinental Hotels, whose
brands include Holiday Inns. Ms. Judy Silcox,
from Intercontinental, will co-chair this sup-
plier group. We will invite major suppliers to
an industry forum after contract award.
3.2.A BENEFITS OF NORTHROP GRUMMAN
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PIPELINE
3.2.a.1 The GovTrip offering has already benefited
from Northrop Grumman’s research and develop-
ment pipeline. Prior to the release of the eTravel
service solicitation Northrop Grumman conducted
an eTravel initiative that identified best of breed
technologies and services for inclusion in the
GovTrip offering.
3.2.a.2 Northrop Grumman has mastered the proc-
ess to share best technology and business practices
within the company. Other projects and R&D ef-
forts that may be of interest during the life of the
eTS contract include:
• I2P2, an initiative to uniquely identify cus-
tomers and associate privileges such as an air-
line ticket with those customers. This project
combines PKI certificates with two dimen-
sional barcodes and has possible applications
in transportation and airport security.
“Use or disclosure of data contained on this sheet is subject to the
restriction on the title page of this proposal or quotation.” (APR 1984)

• Development and ongoing enhancement of
e-Government solutions for the Security and
Exchange Commission’s Electronic Data
Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval System
(EDGAR).
• Management and Operation of the largest se-
cure wide-area communications network in the
civil Government, the Treasury Communica-
tions System (TCS).
• Security and Biometrics, including continued
enhancement of the National Automated Fin-
gerprint Identification System (NAFIS).
• EAI, continued enhancement of data exchange
and application interface development tools
and procedures.
3.3 DEMONSTRATED ABILITY TO ENHANCE
FUNCTIONALITY, USABILITY, SCALABILITY,
AND PERFORMANCE
3.3.a Northrop Grumman began development of
its web-based travel system over 4 years ago.
NGMS/A020363PR Vol. 2 - 16a
eTravel Service
Since then we have made numerous and substan-
tial improvements both to the functionality of the
system and to its infrastructure. As depicted in
Figure 3-1, the system has undergone a number of
major and minor releases. Release 3 is currently in
production. Release 3.1 was prepared for the De-
fense Travel System (DTS). We created Release
3.2 for the GSA eTravel contract. It meets all
mandatory requirements and many of the objec-
tives of the eTS SOO. Table 3-1 provides further
information on the improvements that we have
made to the system over time.
3.3.b The information in the table demonstrates
Northrop Grumman’s interest in maintaining a
“World Class,” highly functional, easy-to-use sys-
tem as well as our ongoing commitment to intro-
ducing technological and travel industry-related
improvements. In addition to these improvements,
Northrop Grumman’s proposal allows for continu-
ing
“Use or disclosure of data contained on this sheet is subject to the
restriction on the title page of this proposal or quotation.” (APR 1984)

Figure 3-1. Evolution of Northrop Grumman Travel System. Our web-based, modular, rule-based system is easily configur-
able to different requirements and changing needs.
technology refresh of the COTS software and
hardware that are deployed in the system (e.g.,
Oracle, Sun Solaris, HP Openview, Cisco, Veritas
cluster management, BMC, DBSign). All of the
system’s COTS software licenses are current, and
each component is deployed in its latest release.
The hardware components are likewise up to date.
As for the future, our price proposal incorporates
technology refresh and maintenance (upgrades and
minor changes). These are based on estimated
adoption rates and transaction volumes. We will
upgrade COTS software and upgrade system ca-
pacity to meet transaction demand as it grows. In
addition, the schedule for upgrades is aligned with
component upgrades/agreements. As part of its
commercial best practices, Northrop Grumman
conducts industry analyses and trade-off studies to
ensure that a best-value solution is provided. Ma-
jor changes directed by GSA would require an
analysis of the requirements and impact analysis.
3.3.b.1 The GovTrip program will have dedicated
development personnel on staff. Further, Northrop
Grumman has maintenance contracts with its tech-
nology solution providers. Ten thousand hours of
change engineering have been included in the
Base Period effort to accommodate software modi-
NGMS/A020363PR
eTravel Service
fications/enhancements directed by the GSA.
Rough Order of Magnitude (ROMs) will be pro-
vided as part of our Configuration Management
processes for major changes. These estimates of
the effort associated with a particular modifica-
tion/enhancement will help the agencies and the
GSA PMO prioritize the requested modifications
and enhancements.
3.3.c Northrop Grumman possesses a superior ca-
pability for following and analyzing technology
trends through technology insertion. It is in our
interest to maintain a current technology base in
order to increase maintainability of the system and
thus reduce life cycle operations and maintenance
costs.
3.3.d Northrop Grumman routinely collects,
evaluates, and reports system performance and
capacity metrics. These data are used by our man-
agement and engineering team to ensure that the
system is performing at or above its agreed-upon
performance levels and to plan for technology in-
sertion to maintain those levels.
3.3.e Our Team is committed to the future of eTS
and to ensuring that our service and system remain
at the state of the travel industry.
Vol. 2 - 17 “Use or disclosure of data contained on this sheet is subject to the
restriction on the title page of this proposal or quotation.” (APR 1984)

Table 3-1. Service Improvements. Releases 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2 demonstrate Northrop Grumman’s ability to ensure that the func-
tionality, usability, scalability and performance of the GovTrip Travel Service lead the industry.
Timeframe/Release Improvement
Release 3.0 • Migration from Data General security gateway to
a Sun platform
• Migration of the payment module (which provides
the EDI interface) from separate NT servers to the
same Sun platform as the core application
Release 3.0 • Migration to a three-tier web architecture
• Launch of web portal
Release 3.1/3.2 • Redesign of user interface (UI)
• Streamlining of data input screens
• Improvement of information flow
• Centrally Billed Accounts (CBA) reconciliation
• VPAT – 508 Compliance
• Travel Administrator Tool (Java-based)
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eTravel Service
Comments
• Reduced number of platforms in production, thus improving
the maintainability of the system
• Significantly improved scalability, modularity, and perform-
ance of the system
• Laid foundation for all future improvements
• Delivered an enterprise web application to improve security
posture and to better protect data
• Server configurations based on Sun’s Sunfire line including
Sun 4800s, 880s, and 480s
• Complete overhaul of UI to leverage modern web applica-
tion design and to improve usability
• Significant improvements in ease of use and functionality for
users
• Significant improvement in acceptability of the system
“Use or disclosure of data contained on this sheet is subject to the
restriction on the title page of this proposal or quotation.” (APR 1984)
 eTravel Service

Table 3-1. Service Improvements (concluded). Releases 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2 demonstrate Northrop Grumman’s ability to ensure
that the functionality, usability, scalability and performance of the GovTrip Travel Service lead the industry.
Timeframe/Release Improvement Comments
Release 3.1/3.2 • Migration to an SSL security module • Eliminated proprietary security component
• Eliminated compatibility issues with a number of desktop
applications that use TCP/IP
• Introduced use of standard browser plug-in APIs on the
client side
Release 3.1/3.2 • Migration to alternate booking engine (TRX) • Introduces industry standard booking engine
• Provides enhanced search capabilities, improved perform-
ance
• Implements XML-based/OTA-compatible technology
Release 3.2 (IOC) • Enterprise Application Integration and Data Ex- • Delivers powerful data exchange and integration capabilities
change Platform for interoperating with external systems
• Receipt Imaging/Fax service • Standard input and output data specifications based on
• XML Interfaces for Financial System Interfaces XML schemas and industry standards
Release 3.2 (FOC) • Business Data Warehouse • Delivers data-rich business data warehouse and powerful
business intelligence capabilities for managing Federal
travel

NGMS/A020363PR Vol. 2 - 18 “Use or disclosure of data contained on this sheet is subject to the
restriction on the title page of this proposal or quotation.” (APR 1984)