Washington, D.C. – Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland (WA-10), questioned General Randall Reed, Commander of U.S. Transportation Command, about the challenges surrounding the Global Household Goods Contract (GHC).
Strickland’s remarks are transcribed below, and can be viewed here:
Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I represent Joint Base Lewis McChord, which is home to approximately 40,000 total active-duty servicemembers, their families, and the 62nd and 446th airlift wings who fly C-17s, but I’m going to shift gears a bit and really talk about quality of life for those who are serving. I’m very well aware of the toll that frequent moving can take on our soldiers and families. And I continue to receive constituent messages and conversations about the Global Household Goods Contract, GHC, including stories from servicemembers about the stress, the financial impact and failed moves that this contract changes brought them. As summer approaches, many thousands of servicemembers and their families will be moving under a program that is not quite proven capable of meeting capacity needs. So General Reed, we talked a bit about home safe and global household goods contract. Can you talk specifically about the process that TRANSCOM is using to ensure transparency, fiscal responsibility and accountability in HomeSafe Alliance’s performance under the contract. Then my second question, sir, has TRANSCOM completed an early performance assessment under HomeSafe Alliance’s contract, and if so, what did you learn?
General Randall Reed: Yes, thank you, under the GHC contract, what we’ve done so far is we continue to maintain the tender of service which we currently have as we make the transition to GHC. Under tender of service, what we do there in collaboration with the services as we work amongst nearly 800 different entities in order to try to meet the needs of a move for servicemembers and their families. Under GHC we are actually providing structure to the moving market where it actually intersects with the Department of Defense, so it’s not that we’re actually trying to change the market. We’re changing how we have the structure on the portion of the market where we exist. For the GHC portion, we deal with a single entity that has developed an IT system that connects with ours that actually allows us now to see things in a way that we could not see things before. Under the current program that we are transitioning away from, most of that is done by small companies, which is fine, but it’s a very manual process. Sometimes it’s done with paper, trying to go back and correct things is incredibly hard and because there are so many players in the field there, if a problem arises, sometimes it’s hard for us to see and correct. With this transition, we’ve actually put structure in place where now all of that is visible – both to the Department, to the movers and also to the servicemembers themselves. As such, because of this new construct, we actually have levers that we can use to actually address performance shortfalls. Not exactly something that we had before. And so while there are performance issues and while things in spots aren’t as solid as we would like them, at least now we can see them, and at least now we can hold the conversation, at least now we can document it, and at least now we have incentives to get the performance that we’re seeking. We continue to monitor this all the time and where we find things that need to be addressed. We actually encounter the vendor and we actually work it real time. The other thing that we do is we continuously update Congress each quarter and so the push for transparency for us is incredibly strong. And in addition, we invite the press and we chat with them as well. And so, we leave no stone unturned because this is not about a program and it’s not about the vendor, it’s about the servicemembers and the families.
Strickland: Absolutely, and there’s probably, there are many things that are stressful and moving is one of them. One thing too, servicemembers, they’ve reported significant out of pocket expenses related to delayed moves and last-minute changes. Can you very quickly talk about what the plan is and the commitment to fully reimburse them?
Reed: Under the GHC program when this happens, we can file a claim and that claim is for an inconvenience claim and so then it’s up to HomeSafe to actually work that claim. As we continue to look at the performance and as they continue to respond to the shortfalls that we had seen before, we have actually seen within the last few weeks the number of those claims declining, and they’ve resolved those claims to 100%. And so, while there is still work to go, we are actually getting the improvements that we’re seeking.
Strickland: Great, thank you very much. I yield back, Mr. Chair.
###