The Homeland Security Department is close to finishing a departmentwide travel policy, and now requires each DHS agency to appoint a single senior official in charge of travel, undersecretary for management Elaine Duke said at a congressional hearing Thursday.

DHS spent roughly $110 million on travel between fiscal 2005 and 2007 — and a recent report from the department's inspector general found that much of the travel spending was plagued by poor internal controls.

Individual DHS agencies didn't use the same definitions for travel — which means they might approve trips inconsistent with department policy — and many of them didn't have officials in charge of travel spending.

"The accountability is better now because we have one single person, but it still needs to be better," Duke said at a hearing of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on management, investigations and oversight. "We are moving toward a standardized definition [of travel] for our financial reporting."

Duke told legislators the department is close to implementing many recommendations from the IG's report. Oversight of travel spending will improve as DHS moves toward a consolidated financial management system, she said. The department has already completed two internal reviews of travel policies, Duke said.

Carl Mann, the department's assistant IG for inspections, said inconsistent travel policies could have led to unjustified travel spending.

"DHS does not have a departmentwide definition of what constitutes a conference," Mann said. "That can affect how it is funded, [and] who can attend."

About $60 million of the department's travel spending was direct travel costs; the rest paid the salaries of employees on travel. The IG's report said many of the trips paid for by the department didn't provide enough supporting documentation to prove they were necessary.

"The data received from the department was unreliable and unverifiable," said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the full committee, "and contained little assurance that [DHS] components properly tracked or accounted for all costs."