United States General Accounting Office
Washington, DC 20548
May 24, 2001
The Honorable Dan Burton
Chairman, Committee on
Government Reform
House of Representatives
Dear Mr. Chairman:
I am writing in response to your March 22, 2001, letter asking for our views on the
merits of allowing federal employees to keep and use the frequent flyer miles
received on official travel as an aid in efforts to recruit and retain employees. You
also asked us to obtain the views of the Foreign Service Officers Association on this
issue.
A few months ago, a task team of GAO staff began looking informally into whether
GAO should seek legislative authority to allow its employees, as well as perhaps
other federal employees, to keep for their personal use frequent flyer miles received
as a result of official travel. The purpose of such authority would be to help GAO and
other agencies better compete with the private sector in recruiting and retaining top-
quality employees. The team reviewed the current federal policy on this issue,
determined how that policy was being implemented, compared the federal policy to
the private sector’s practice, and informally obtained the views of officials from
several federal agencies on the current policy and possible changes to it. While the
current policy covers frequent traveler benefits, including those offered by airlines,
hotels, and car rental vendors, our review was limited to frequent flyer benefits.
However, we recognize that all of these are promotional benefits offered to the
general public at no additional cost to the government.
To carry out our informal inquiry, we reviewed relevant federal legislation and
regulations and previous Comptroller General decisions. We obtained information on
our own units’ application of the federal frequent traveler policy as it applies to
frequent flyer miles and interviewed representatives from several federal
organizations, including the Departments of Defense (DOD), the Interior, and Justice;
the General Services Administration (GSA); the Inter