Federal Travel Regulation; Reorganizing and Streamlining the Federal Travel Regulation To Improve Operational Efficiency

<RULE> GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION <CFR>41 CFR Chapters 300 Through 304</CFR> <DEPDOC>[FTR Case 2025-05; Docket No. GSA-FTR-2025-0003; Sequence No. 1]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3090-AL06</RIN> <SUBJECT>Federal Travel Regulation; Reorganizing and Streamlining the Federal Travel Regulation To Improve Operational Efficiency</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Government-Wide Policy (OGP), General Services Administration (GSA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> To implement the President's Deregulatory Initiatives, and to better reflect modern travel operations while still accounting for statutory requirements, GSA is issuing this final rule amending the entire Federal Travel Regulation (FTR). These updates streamline text and remove duplicative regulations to drive more efficient and effective Federal travel and relocation, while saving money for American taxpayers. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Effective date:</E> December 8, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Alexander Kurien, Deputy Associate Administrator, at 202-495-9628 or <E T="03">travelpolicy@gsa.gov,</E> for clarification of content. For information pertaining to status or publication schedules, contact the Regulatory Secretariat Division at 202-501-4755 or <E T="03">GSARegSec@gsa.gov.</E> Please cite FTR Case 2025-05. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> On April 16, 2025, GSA published two notices in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> at 90 FR 15948 and 90 FR 15946, respectively, regarding its intention to rescind FTR Case 2022-03,”Alternative Fuel Vehicle Usage During Relocations” published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> at 89 FR 20857 on March 26, 2024, and FTR Case 2022-05, “Updating the FTR with Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Language” published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> at 89 FR 12250 on February 16, 2024. Accordingly, GSA is reverting the language in the FTR that was changed pursuant to FTR Case 2022-03 to the language that applied immediately prior to such changes; such predecessor language was agnostic as to the type of privately-owned vehicle owned or leased by a relocating employee. Regarding FTR Case 2022-05, GSA is removing most pronouns in the FTR instead of reverting to sex-specific pronouns such as he, she, his, or her as originally intended. The decision to remove most pronouns is adopted for clarity as there are multiple nouns that a pronoun could refer to with the reversion of the FTR to title and narrative format as further discussed below. A detailed discussion of other changes follows. Pursuant to 5 United States Code (U.S.C) 5707 and 5738, GSA has the authority to promulgate travel and relocation regulations, respectively, which GSA does through the FTR. The FTR has undergone many changes since its inception, including major revisions in 1989 and 1998. This revision marks another major update in several ways. First, the question and answer (Q&A) format from the 1998 revision is reverted to title and narrative format. The updated format reduces redundancies that developed as a result of the Q&A format's creation of separate agency and employee sections. GSA is also eliminating several parts of the FTR not explicitly articulated within authorizing statutes, thereby reducing the cost and complexity of the travel and relocation process. Specific major changes are detailed under the discussion section of this preamble. Broadly, this rewrite reduces chapter 300 to solely the glossary of terms, and either eliminates other sections or integrates them into relevant sections of subsequent chapters. While chapters 301 and 302 still focus on temporary duty travel and relocation, respectively, their overall length is reduced by more than half. Chapters 303 and 304, addressing the death of an employee and payment by non-Federal sources, respectively, are also both shortened by deleting material that is either redundant or not statutorily required. GSA, through its responsibility to maintain the FTR on behalf of the entire Executive branch of the Federal Government, strives to ensure that travel and relocation undertaken in the public interest is as cost effective and efficient as possible. These FTR revisions, coupled with improvements in technology that help in the execution of these regulations, advances this goal. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Discussion of the Final Rule—Significant Changes</HD> Significant changes are noted by chapter: Chapter 300 now solely consists of the glossary of terms, with other sections either being deleted or moved into more appropriate chapters. The introductory parts of chapter 300 that define the FTR and who it applies to are greatly simplified and have been moved into chapter 301. Part 300-70, subpart A, which details agency reporting requirements, has been partially moved to chapter 302, as statutory requirements for annual reporting exist for both agency travel and relocation. Part 300-70, subpart B, which required agencies to annually submit their first and business class travel use, has been eliminated. GSA included premium class travel reporting in the FTR upon the recommendation of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) per its report titled “Premium Class Travel: Internal Control Weaknesses Governmentwide Led to Improper and Abusive Use of Premium Class Travel” (GAO-07-1268). Premium class travel, specifically first and business class travel, is less than 0.2 percent of Federal airline transportation spending. Accordingly, any instances of regulatory abuse with respect to this topic appear to be rare and can be managed at the agency level, instead of through an additional reporting mechanism. While the removal of this reporting requirement reduces administrative burden, it does not diminish the general rule that premium class travel may be authorized only if one of the relevant regulatory exceptions is met. GSA may consider reinserting this annual reporting requirement in a future FTR amendment if needed. Finally, part 300-80, Relocation Expenses Test Programs, has been moved to chapter 302, which covers relocation. In chapter 301, the terms “agency” and “employee” are unchanged, but as they are definitional, they have been moved to chapter 300, Glossary of Terms. Further, GSA eliminated the presumptions as to the most advantageous method of transportation by order of precedence at § 301-10.5, as an order of precedence is not statutorily required; the new regulation relies on agency discretion to select the method most advantageous to the government. GSA updated FTR part 301-11 to allow flexibility on the requirement to have advance approval to claim the full meals and incidental expenses (M&IE) when meals are furnished or included in a registration fee and the employee is unable to consume the furnished meal(s) because of medical requirements or religious beliefs. Advance approval is now only required if the employee had advance knowledge of the meals that would be provided. For example, if the meal is provided at a conference, but no specifics on the meal composition ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> meals with common allergens such as nuts) are provided in advance, then no advance approval is required for employees to claim the full M&IE. Laundry reimbursement is not claimed very often, and is a small amount spent in terms of overall Federal travel (less than $100,000/year). Employees needed to be on travel for at least four consecutive nights in order to be reimbursed for laundry expenses. The FTR will no longer list laundry as its own distinct category of reimbursement, which led some agencies to think they had to pay the expense, even though the regulation itself said agencies “may” pay it, not must. For travel within the continental United States, agencies can still determine whether laundry is an appropriate miscellaneous expense in their overall miscellaneous expenses policy. Part 301-30 is amended to insert the word “employee” before “emergency travel” to avoid confusion with travelers thinking they are entitled to different or extra travel expenses for responding to others' emergencies when in fact, the Part addresses expenses for employees that experience a personal emergency while on travel. A change made throughout the FTR, including in part 301-30, Employee Emergency Travel, and part 301-31, Threatened Law Enforcement/Investigative Employees, narrows where permitted by statute, the reimbursement of expenses to “immediate family” as defined in chapter 300. Without this distinction an employee might assume they are entitled to reimbursement for any number of family members, despite the glossary of terms directing the reader to “immediate family” for the definition of “family”. Part 301-74, Conference Planning, has been removed as it is guidance, and not regulatory text required to be prescribed by statute. Further, GSA believes that agencies are better equipped to give updated advice and support on this topic to their employees, especially because much of part 301-74 addressed conference planning generally and not conference planning involving travel. Finally, the former appendix C to chapter 301 containing a list of standard data elements for Government travel was removed. This information is not considered regulatory and is found at <E T="03">https://ussm.gsa.gov/fibf-travel/#standard_data_elements.</E> Subchapter B, Relocation Allowances, part 302-3, Relocation Allowance by Specific Type, was updated to clarify mandatory and discretionary items, specifically on extended storage and property management. GSA also clarified when allowances may be reimbursed for a temporary change of station. In part 302-3, subpart C, Types of Transfers, GSA clarified the regulations su ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 568k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━