New Travel Requirements

Conference Attendance Approval Request (CAAR) Form
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On February 2, 2006 Ray Orbach, Director of the DOE Office of Science, issued new requirements relating to DOE-funded travel. He modified these requirements on March 16, 2006. The new requirements are in addition to those of DOE Order 110.3, Conference Management that are already in effect. The additional requirements provide for: (1) significantly more documented justification when even one person attends a "conference," and (2) additional procedures when total lab travel would exceed a dollar threshold ($10K). In the latter case, DOE Office of Science (SC-1) approval becomes required to attend a "conference." For the documentation a new form, the Conference Attendance Approval Request (CAAR) is available.

NOTE: The reason "conference" is in quotes above is that the definition in the DOE Order goes beyond what one might normally think of as a conference. That definition is: "For purposes of this Order, a conference is defined as a meeting, seminar, retreat, symposium, or similar event that involves official travel." There are exclusions from the Order, and each Division/Section has a trained conference regulator who makes a determination regarding whether an exclusion applies or not once the upper portion of the travel request voucher is filled out and approved by the Division/Section Head or other authorized travel approval person.

For "conferences" that require DOE Office of Science approval there is a requirement that the request be submitted by the Fermi Site Office 90 days prior to the conference, and FSO will require 10 days processing time to decide on the sufficiency of the documentation before submittal to the DOE Office of Science. Obviously, there is an issue as to knowing when the total lab cost will exceed the threshold, particularly when people from different organizations are attending a given conference. A web site set up to capture information from conference regulators will be available soon. Given the requirement of 100 days advance notice to DOE, it is important that people make plans early and submit those plans for approval promptly. In order to check all Divisions/Sections for additional travelers wishing to attend a given conference an additional 10 days notice is typically necessary. This means that requests should be provided to the Directorate 110 days prior to departure. There is the risk of people not being authorized to attend a conference, even if they are speakers, if the threshold is exceeded and the advance notice requirement is not met.

At this time the approval requirements for the purchase of tickets are not changing, but this may change as well once we have more experience operating under the new requirements.

As of now, users’ travel is exempt from the new rules. For those users traveling on "University Service Accounts" this may only be temporary. They will be notified promptly if there is a change.