Aviation Rulemaking: Further Reform Is Needed to Address	 
Long-standing Problems (09-JUL-01, GAO-01-821). 		 
								 
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) develops regulations to
enhance aviation safety and security and to promote the efficient
use of airspace. FAA's rulemaking is a complicated process	 
intended to ensure that all aspects of any regulatory change are 
fully analyzed before the change goes into effect. Over the past 
40 years, numerous reports have documented problems in FAA's	 
rulemaking efforts that have delayed the formulation and	 
finalization of it rules. This report reviews FAA's rulemaking	 
process. GAO reviewed 76 significant rules and found that FAA's  
rulemaking process varied widely. These rules constituted the	 
majority of FAA's workload of significant rules from fiscal year 
1995 through fiscal year 2000. GAO found that FAA had initiated  
about 60 percent of the rulemaking projects by Congress and about
a third of the rulemaking projects recommended by the National	 
Transportation Safety Board within 6 months. However, for	 
one-fourth of the mandates and one-third of the recommendations, 
at least five years passed before FAA initiated the process. Once
the rule was formally initiated, FAA took a median time of two	 
and a half years to proceed from formal initiation of the	 
rulemaking process through publication of the final rule. In	 
1998, FAA implemented reforms to improve the rulemaking process  
and shorten the time frames for finalizing rules. These reforms  
included establishing a steering committee and a rulemaking	 
management council to improve management involvement in setting  
priorities and resolving policy issues. GAO found that after the 
reforms were implemented, the median time for reviewing and	 
finalizing a rule increased. This suggests that the productivity 
of FAA's rulemaking process for significant rules decreased after
FAA's reforms.							 
-------------------------Indexing Terms------------------------- 
REPORTNUM:   GAO-01-821 					        
    ACCNO:   A01381						        
  TITLE:     Aviation Rulemaking: Further Reform Is Needed to Address 
             Long-standing Problems                                           
     DATE:   07/09/2001 
  SUBJECT:   Airline regulation 				 
	     Commercial aviation				 
	     Agency proceedings 				 
	     Air transportation operations			 
	     Transportation safety				 
	     FAA Core Compensation Plan 			 
	     FAA Flight Operational Quality Assurance		 
	     Program						 
								 
	     FAA Integrated Rulemaking Management		 
	     Information Systems				 
								 
	     National Performance Review			 
	     Federal Agency Major Rules 			 

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GAO-01-821
     
A

Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Aviation, Committee on
Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives

July 2001 AVIATION RULEMAKING Further Reform Is Needed to Address Long-
standing Problems

GAO- 01- 821

Letter 5 Executive Summary 6 Chapter 1 22 Introduction

Federal Rulemaking Process Involves Common Steps and Documents 24 Prior
Studies of Federal Rulemaking Have Found Similar and

Persistent Problems 32 Objectives, Scope, and Methodology 35

Chapter 2 39

FAA Took Varying FAA Initiated Most Rulemaking in Response to Mandates and
Safety Recommendations Within 2 Years 39

Times to Complete Time FAA Took to Complete Steps in the Rulemaking Process

Steps of the Varied 43

Rulemaking Process, Time FAA Took to Finalize Rules After the Comment Period
Was Comparable to That of Four Other Agencies 45

Meeting Legislative FAA Met Legislative Requirements in Half or Less of Its
Rulemaking

Requirements in Efforts 46

One- Half or Less of Cases

Chapter 3 50

FAA?s Reforms FAA?s 1998 Efforts to Improve Rulemaking Addressed Long-
standing

Problems 50 Addressed

Other Federal Agencies Have Undertaken Reforms to Address Similar Long-
standing

Problems 54 Rulemaking Problems Despite Reforms, FAA?s Rulemaking Times Did
Not Improve 56 but Did Not Reduce Rulemaking Times

Chapter 4 63

Incomplete Problems Related to Management Involvement Continued to Slow the
Process 63

Implementation of Problems in Process Administration Continued to Impair
FAA's Reforms

Rulemaking 73 Impaired Efforts to

Human Capital Management Initiatives for Rulemaking Activities Were
Overlooked 77 Address Long- standing

Conclusions 79 Rulemaking Problems

Recommendations 80 Agency Comments 82

Appendixes Appendix I: Status of 76 Significant Rules in FAA?s Workload FY
1995 - FY 2000 84 Appendix II: Survey of Federal Aviation Administration
Rulemaking

Participants 88 Appendix III: Status of FAA?s Rules Subject to 1996
Reauthorization

Act Requirement that Rules be Finalized Within 16 Months 96 Appendix IV:
Status of Federal Aviation Administration?s Rules With

Legislative Mandates (as of March 31, 2001) 98 Appendix V: Comments From the
Department of Transportation 99 Appendix VI: GAO Contacts and Staff
Acknowledgments 103

Tables Table 1: Key Roles and Responsibilities of Participants in FAA?s
Rulemaking Process 31

Table 2: Membership and Duties of FAA?s Rulemaking Management Groups 51
Table 3: FAA?s System for Prioritizing Rulemaking Projects 52

Figures Figure 1: Time Elapsed Between 20 Congressional Mandates and 12 NTSB
Safety Recommendations and FAA?s Initiation of the Rulemaking Process 9

Figure 2: Median Time FAA Took to Process Significant Proposed and Final
Rules for Periods Before and Since FAA?s Reforms 11 Figure 3: Percentage of
FAA?s Significant Proposed and Final Rules

Published Before and Since FAA?s Reforms That Met Time Frames Suggested in
FAA?s Reform Guidance 12

Figure 4: Case Study of FAA?s Rulemaking to Establish Flight Duty and Rest
Requirements for Flight Crew Members 23 Figure 5: FAA?s Rulemaking Process
for Significant Rules 25 Figure 6: Number of FAA?s Rulemaking Entries Listed
in the Unified Agenda, Fiscal Year 1995 Through Fiscal Year 2000 28

Figure 7: Studies and Reports on FAA?s Rulemaking That Identified Common
Problems 33 Figure 8: Time Elapsed Between 20 Congressional Mandates and

12 NTSB Safety Recommendations and FAA?s Initiation of the Rulemaking
Process 40 Figure 9: Case Study of FAA?s Rulemaking to Require Child
Restraints on Aircraft 42 Figure 10: Case Study of FAA?s Rulemaking to
Revise Digital Flight Data Recorder Regulations for Boeing 737 Airplanes 43
Figure 11: Percent of Significant Rules Finalized Within Certain Time

Periods After the Close of the Public Comment Period by FAA and Other
Selected Regulatory Agencies, Fiscal Years 1995- 2000 46 Figure 12: Case
Study of FAA?s Rulemaking to Prohibit Transportation

of Oxygen Generators as Cargo in Aircraft 47 Figure 13: Case Study of FAA?s
Rulemaking to Revise Procedures for

Aircraft Registry 49 Figure 14: Median Time FAA Took to Process Significant
Proposed and

Final Rules for Periods Before and Since FAA?s Reforms 57 Figure 15: Median
Time OST Took to Approve FAA?s Significant

Proposed and Final Rules for Periods Before and Since FAA?s Reforms 58
Figure 16: Median Time FAA?s Unpublished Significant Proposed and

Final Rules Had Been in Process as of September 30, 1997, and September 30,
2000 60 Figure 17: FAA?s Time Frames for Steps After Initiation of the

Rulemaking Process 61 Figure 18: Percentage of FAA?s Significant Proposed
and Final Rules

Published Before and Since FAA?s Reforms That Met Time Frames Suggested in
FAA?s Reform Guidance 62 Figure 19: Case Study of FAA's Rulemaking to Revise
Airport Security

Rules 65 Figure 20: Case Study of FAA's Rulemaking to Revise Commuter
Operations and General Certification and Operations

Requirements 67 Figure 21: Case Study of FAA's Rulemaking to Govern Air
Carriers' Flight Operational Quality Assurance (FOQA) Programs 69

Figure 22: Case Study of FAA's Rulemaking to Revise Aircraft Repair Station
Regulations 71 Figure 23: Case Study of FAA's Rulemaking to Require
Emergency

Medical Equipment on Aircraft 72

Abbreviations

APHIS Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service APA Administrative
Procedure Act DOT Department of Transportation EPA Environmental Protection
Agency FAA Federal Aviation Administration FHA Federal Highway
Administration FMCSA Federal Motor Carriers Safety Adminstration FDA Food
and Drug Administration GAO General Accounting Office NHTSA National Highway
Transportation Safety Administration NPRM Notice of Proposed Rulemaking NTSB
National Transportation Safety Board NRC Nuclear Regulatory Commission OIG
Office of the Inspector General OMB Office of Management and Budget OST
Office of the Secretary of Transportation

Lett er

July 9, 2001 The Honorable John L. Mica Chairman, Subcommittee on Aviation
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure House of Representatives

The Honorable John J. Duncan Jr. House of Representatives

In response to your request to conduct a review of the Federal Aviation
Administration?s (FAA) rulemaking process in order to identify ways to
improve its efficiency, we established three research questions:

 What are the time frames for FAA?s rulemaking, including the time FAA took
to initiate the rulemaking process in response to statutory requirements and
safety recommendations and, once begun, to develop and publish significant
rules?  What were the effects of FAA?s 1998 reforms on its process and on
its time frames for completing rulemaking?

 How effective were FAA?s reform efforts in addressing the factors that
affect the pace of the rulemaking process? This report contains
recommendations to the Secretary of Transportation on steps that FAA can
take to improve the timeliness of its rulemaking through better management
of the process and its participants.

As we agreed with your offices, unless you publicy announce the contents of
this report earlier, we plan no further distribution of it until 30 days
from the date of this letter. We will then send copies to the Secretary of
Transportation and the Administrator of FAA. We will also make copies
available to others who request them.

If you or your staff have any questions about this report or would like to
discuss it further, I can be reached at (202) 512- 2834. Key contributors to
this report are acknowledged in appendix VI.

Gerald L. Dillingham, Director, Physical Infrastructure

Executive Summary Purpose The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) develops
regulations to

enhance aviation safety and security and to promote the efficient use of
airspace. In doing so, it must balance opposing pressures. On the one hand,
the process of developing regulations, or rulemaking, is complex and time
consuming. Because rules can have a significant impact on individuals,
industries, the economy, and/ or the environment, proposed rules must be
carefully considered before being finalized. Often, difficult policy issues
must be resolved. On the other hand, threats to public safety and the rapid

pace of technological development in the aviation industry demand timely
action. Over the past 40 years, numerous reports have documented problems in
FAA?s rulemaking efforts that have delayed the formulation and finalization
of its rules.

In light of the critical role of regulations in aviation safety and the
longstanding nature of problems associated with FAA?s rulemaking process,
the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Aviation, House Committee on
Transportation and Infrastructure asked GAO to conduct a review of FAA?s

rulemaking process to identify ways to improve its efficiency. To meet this
objective, GAO established three research questions in concert with the
Chairman?s office:

 What are the time frames for FAA?s rulemaking, including the time FAA took
to initiate the rulemaking process in response to statutory requirements and
safety recommendations and, once begun, to develop and publish significant
rules?  What were the effects of FAA?s 1998 reforms on its process and on
its time frames for completing rulemaking?

 How effective were FAA?s reform efforts in addressing the factors that
affect the pace of the rulemaking process? Background FAA?s rulemaking, like
that of other federal agencies, is a complicated

process intended to ensure that all aspects of any regulatory change are
fully analyzed before the change goes into effect. A need for rulemaking can
be identified internally, by one of FAA?s offices, or externally, by an
outside source such as the Congress or the National Transportation Safety
Board (NTSB), which issues mandates or recommendations, respectively,
calling for rulemaking. When the Congress mandates rulemaking, FAA is
required to initiate the process. When NTSB issues a recommendation, FAA

studies the situation and decides whether to initiate the rulemaking
process. Once FAA formally initiates rulemaking, each rule must be

developed and published twice- first as a proposed rule and then as a final
rule. In the proposed rule phase, the agency develops a proposed rule and
publishes it in the Federal Register for public comment. During the comment
period that follows, interested parties may submit written comments. When
the comment period closes, FAA develops the final rule.

Its procedures for finalizing the rule include examining the comments,
making changes it deems appropriate, and publishing the final rule in the

Federal Register for incorporation into the Code of Federal Regulations.
Federal agencies? ?notice and comment? process is governed primarily by the
Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, but it must also follow additional
statutory requirements as well as executive orders issued by the president.

FAA?s responsibilities include developing rules that cover a wide range of
aviation activities, including many aspects of commercial and general
aviation. The critical nature of FAA?s rules in setting standards for public
safety has led the Congress to be particularly concerned with FAA?s
efficiency in developing rules. Most recently, in response to concerns about
the pace of FAA?s rulemaking, the Congress enacted legislation in 1996 that
established, among other things, a 16- month time frame for the finalization
of FAA?s rules after the close of the public comment period.

Numerous studies of FAA?s rulemaking procedures have identified common
factors that delay the promulgation of rules. In this report, GAO groups
these factors into three main areas of concern- management involvement,
administration of the rulemaking process (process administration), and human
capital. Earlier studies suggest that problems related to management
involvement occurred because of changing priorities within

and across departments, late or otherwise inappropriate timing of management
decisionmaking, and an unwillingness to delegate authority. Difficulties in
administrating the rulemaking process occurred because employees did not
possess a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities and
because information management systems were not as useful as they could have
been. Finally, human capital problems arose because FAA lacked a formal
system for selecting and training its rulemaking staff and did not link
incentives to performance. The agency

undertook a major reform effort in 1998 to address these problems and
respond to the time frames the Congress had established in 1996.

To measure the overall impact of the 1998 reforms, GAO discussed the reforms
with FAA staff and management and created a database of 76 significant
rules. These rules constituted the majority of FAA?s workload of significant
rules from fiscal year 1995 through fiscal year 2000. In

developing the database, to determine the dates that rulemaking projects
were initiated, GAO used the dates recorded in FAA?s information system. For
the dates of publication of proposed and final rules, GAO used the dates of
publication in the Federal Register. Using the database, GAO performed
statistical analyses of the time frames for the rulemaking process in the 3
years before and after the reform was implemented in

1998. GAO discussed rulemaking reform with officials from other federal
regulatory agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other operating

administrations within the Department of Transportation (DOT), as well as
with FAA rulemaking officials and other stakeholders in FAA?s rulemaking
process, including representatives of NTSB, the Office of the Secretary of
Transportation (OST), and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). To
obtain more detailed information and employees? opinions on the effects of
the reform on FAA?s rulemaking process, GAO developed case studies on
specific rules and surveyed 134 FAA employees who had served as rulemaking
team members on significant rules. GAO supplemented its survey results with
semistructured interviews of rulemaking team members involved in four
rulemaking projects. Results in Brief The time frames for key steps in FAA?s
rulemaking process varied widely for the 76 significant rules we reviewed.
These rules constituted the

majority of FAA?s workload of significant rules from fiscal year 1995
through fiscal year 2000. FAA initiated about 60 percent of rulemaking
projects mandated by the Congress and about a third of rulemaking projects
recommended by NTSB within 6 months of the mandate or recommendation.
However, for one- fourth of the mandates and one- third of the
recommendations, at least 5 years passed before FAA initiated the

process, as shown in figure 1.

Figure 1: Time Elapsed Between 20 Congressional Mandates and 12 NTSB Safety
Recommendations and FAA?s Initiation of the Rulemaking Process Note: The
time until initiation was measured from the date the legislation containing
a mandate was enacted or the date a safety recommendation was issued to the
initiation date identified in FAA?s rulemaking information system. No rules
in response to congressional mandates were initiated from 24 months up to 60
months after the mandate. Because of rounding, totals may not add up to 100
percent.

Source: GAO?s analysis of FAA data. Once the rule was formally initiated,
FAA took a median time of about 2 ï¿½ years to proceed from formal initiation
of the rulemaking process through publication of the final rule, a process
it completed for 29 significant rules from fiscal year 1995 through fiscal
year 2000. While FAA completed this process within 2 ï¿½ years for half of its
significant rules, the agency took 10 years or more to move from formal
initiation of the rulemaking process through publication of the final rule
for 6 of the 29 rules. FAA?s median pace for finalizing a rule after the
close of the public comment period- about 15 months- was comparable to that
of four other federal regulatory agencies we selected, ranging from about 1ï¿½
months to more than 6 years. Nonetheless, since the Congress enacted
legislation in October 1996 that

established a 16- month time frame for the finalization of significant rules
after the close of the public comment period, FAA had missed the deadline
for more than half of its rulemaking projects. The reforms FAA implemented
in 1998 included establishing a rulemaking steering committee and a
rulemaking management council to improve management involvement in setting
priorities and resolving policy issues. FAA also created a rulemaking manual
to provide consistent guidance for rulemaking staff and establish suggested
time frames for steps in the process, implemented a new automated system to
track and manage rulemaking documents, and established two new teams to
monitor, evaluate, and improve the administration of the rulemaking process.

Human capital management reforms- such as continuing training, skills
assessment, performance measurement, and the development of a rewards
system- were considered but not implemented. The median times FAA took to
proceed from initiation of rulemaking through the release of the proposed
rule for public comment (the proposed rule phase) and to finalize the rule
after the close of the public comment period (the final rule phase),

both increased in the 3- year period after FAA implemented its 1998 reforms,
even though FAA published fewer rules during the latter period, as shown in
figure 2. These comparisons suggest that the productivity of FAA?s
rulemaking process for significant rules decreased after FAA?s reform.

Figure 2: Median Time FAA Took to Process Significant Proposed and Final
Rules for Periods Before and Since FAA?s Reforms

Note: These processing times do not include the public comment period. One
final rule that was completed in fiscal year 1998 was included in fiscal
1997 in this chart because it was completed prior to FAA?s reforms in
January 1998. The median may not equal the arithmetic average (mean).
Because the mean gives greater influence to extreme values in assessing
processing time for rulemaking, we elected to present median values.

Source: GAO?s analysis of FAA and Federal Register data.

As part of its rulemaking reforms, FAA established its own time frames for
the process: 450 days to proceed from initiation of rulemaking through the
release of the proposed rule for public comment (the proposed rule phase)
and 310 days to finalize the rule after the close of the public comment
period (the final rule phase). Although these time frames were established
as part of FAA?s reforms and were therefore not an applicable standard for
rulemaking efforts prior to the reforms, nevertheless, we found that FAA met
these time frames less often after the reforms than before them. For
example, it met its time frame for proceeding from the initiation of the
rulemaking process to the release of the proposed rule for public comment in
47 percent of projects in the 3- year period prior to the 1998 reforms but

in only 19 percent of projects in the 3- year period following the 1998
reforms, as shown in figure 3. Figure 3: Percentage of FAA?s Significant
Proposed and Final Rules Published

Before and Since FAA?s Reforms That Met Time Frames Suggested in FAA?s
Reform Guidance

Note: The time frames suggested in FAA?s guidance are 450 days (about 15
months) for developing proposed rules and 310 days (about 10 months and 10
days) for final rules. Source: GAO?s analysis of FAA data.

FAA?s limited implementation of the reforms did not solve long- standing
problems, as indicated both by the lack of improvement in the time required
to complete the rulemaking process and by the agency?s inability to
consistently meet the time frames imposed by statute or its own guidance.
Many of the problems that have slowed rulemaking at the agency remain.
External pressures- such as highly- publicized accidents, recommendations by
NTSB, and congressional mandates- as well as internal pressures, such as
changes in management?s emphasis continue to add to and shift the agency?s
priorities. For some rules, difficult policy issues have continued to remain
unresolved late in the process.

Management has retained several layers of internal review. Process
administration remains an area of concern. Rulemaking participants are not
clear about job responsibilities, the updated information system contained
consistent data on only the highest priority rules, and vital parts of the
continuous improvement program have not yet materialized. Finally, FAA has
not implemented recommended human capital management

initiatives, rulemaking participants undergo limited training, and their
performance is not tied to a consistent evaluation or rewards system. This
report contains recommendations designed to improve the efficiency of FAA?s
rulemaking through, among other things, more timely and effective
participation of management in decisionmaking and prioritization; more
effective use of information management systems to monitor and improve

the process; and implementation of human capital strategies to measure,
evaluate, and provide performance incentives for process participants. FAA
and departmental officials concurred with a number of the recommendations.
They said that a few of the report?s recommendations will require further
consideration and that a specific response to each of the report?s
recommendations will be provided in the Department?s

response to the final report. Principal Findings Steps of the Rulemaking

Of the 76 significant rulemaking actions GAO reviewed, about 42 percent
Process Were Completed in were initiated in response to a congressional
mandate or recommendation Varying Times That Often by NTSB. While
congressional mandates may require that FAA take

Missed Legislative rulemaking action, NTSB?s recommendations do not.
However, FAA is

required to formally respond to the recommendation to specify what action
Requirements

is being taken and why. FAA initiated well over half of its rulemaking
actions in response to mandates from the Congress and safety recommendations
from NTSB within 2 years of the mandate or recommendation. However, FAA
sometimes took many years to initiate the

rulemaking process. In some cases, these delays may have occurred because
FAA took additional time to study complex issues raised or because there
were differences of opinion between FAA and NTSB. For

example, because FAA did not agree with an NTSB recommendation to require
the use of child safety seats aboard aircraft, 7 years passed between NTSB?s
recommendation and FAA?s initiation of the rulemaking process. During that
time, FAA studied the issue, concluded that if child restraints

were required on aircraft, passenger diversion to other transportation modes
could cause a net increase in fatalities, and made a policy decision not to
begin rulemaking to require child safety seats. Recommendations by the White
House Commission on Aviation Safety eventually led FAA to revise its policy
position and initiate rulemaking.

For significant rules published during the 6- year period from fiscal year
1995 through fiscal year 2000, FAA took a median time of about 2 ï¿½ years 1
to proceed from formally initiating the rulemaking process to publishing

the final rule in the Federal Register. This time period ranged from less
than 1 year to almost 15 years. FAA took a median time of about 20 months to
proceed from initiating the process to releasing the proposed rule for
public comment. It took a median time of about 15 months to finalize the
rule after the close of the public comment period, which was comparable to
the time other federal agencies took to complete this final step.

The time taken for one step of the rulemaking process that occurs in FAA?s
development of both proposed and final rules- departmental review and
approval- has been of particular concern to the Congress. In the Federal
Aviation Reauthorization Act of 1996, the Congress addressed its concern by
establishing a time frame for this step. The act requires the Secretary of
the Department of Transportation to review proposed and final significant
rules and either approve them or return them to FAA with comments within 45
days of receiving them. GAO was unable to measure the extent to which the
Department met this 45- day requirement because, while FAA?s

information system tracked the date of the Office of the Secretary of
Transportation?s (OST) approval of some rules, it did not track the date of
OST?s response when the Department returned significant rules to FAA

with comments. Using the dates that were tracked, GAO found that overall,
for both proposed and final rules, the median time required for OST?s
approval since the 1996 act (including review, comment, and FAA?s response,
if any)- was 4.1 months (124 days). Measuring proposed and final rules
separately, GAO found that the median time for OST?s approval of proposed
rules was 4.7 months (140 days), while the median time OST took to approve
final rules was 2. 3 months (69 days).

The time FAA took to finalize its rules after the close of the public
comment period was similar to that of other federal agencies. GAO examined
the 1 The median processing time is the statistical point for which half of
the processing times are greater and half of the processing times are lower.

time taken for this part of the rulemaking process for four regulatory
agencies- Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS), the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Drug Administration
(FDA), and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration
(NHTSA)- in addition to FAA. Except for APHIS, which finalized all of its
significant rules within 2 years of the close of the public comment period,

agencies generally finalized between three- quarters and two- thirds of
their significant rules within 24 months of the close of the public comment
period.

FAA met the legislative requirement passed in 1996 to publish final rules
within 16 months of the close of the public comment period for less than
half of its significant rules. Specifically, FAA met the legislative time
frame for 7 of the 18 significant rules subject to the requirement. FAA was
even less successful in meeting legislative requirements to issue specific
rules within specially mandated periods of time. Of the 76 rulemaking
actions GAO reviewed, 7 were initiated in response to congressional mandates
with specific time frames, and FAA met the required time frames for 2 of
them.

FAA?s Reforms Addressed The two new groups that FAA established to improve
management Long- standing Rulemaking

involvement in the rulemaking process consisted of members from all FAA
Problems but Did Not

offices involved with current rulemaking efforts, as well as representatives
Reduce Rulemaking Times

from OST?s General Counsel. The steering committee was established to
provide a formal mechanism for senior- level managers at the
associateadministrator level to meet periodically to determine the priority
of rulemaking projects. The rulemaking management council was established to
assemble director- level managers to manage the day- to- day process of
developing rules. FAA?s new rulemaking manual provides rulemaking policy
guidance. It suggests milestones for completing steps in the

rulemaking process and establishes guidelines for the steering committee to
follow in setting priorities.

To better administer the rulemaking process, FAA documented in its manual
the roles and responsibilities for each member of the rulemaking team. This
included clarifying the scope of two reviews, legal and economic, that have
historically caused delays. The new computerized system, the Integrated
Rulemaking Management Information System, was designed to collect data on
the time required to complete multiple internal processing steps and to
track the status of rules. It was thought that this information would form a
basis for measuring the process and the

performance of its participants. Furthermore, the two new teams FAA created,
the continuous improvement team and the quality team, were to evaluate the
process and make recommendations for improving it, providing essential
feedback for rulemaking management.

These reforms were not matched by extensive changes in human capital
management. According to the Director of FAA?s Office of Rulemaking, the
staff resources needed to develop and implement recommended human capital
initiatives were not available because rulemaking staff and management were
fully occupied with the day- to- day management of the rulemaking process.
As a result, FAA relied on existing training and reward systems. Whereas
FAA?s reform plan envisioned orientation training in the new rulemaking
process and ongoing training in other areas, rulemaking staff received only
the orientation training along with an introduction to the new system
software. Other instruction- on functional skill development, conflict
resolution, and project management, among other things- was not offered.
Furthermore, although FAA?s reforms included recommendations to establish
performance measures for carrying out rulemaking duties and

to develop a rewards system for performance in rulemaking- key elements of
human capital management- the agency has not implemented these
recommendations. FAA?s reforms did not reduce the median time it took to
complete the rulemaking process. For the 3- year period following the
reforms (fiscal years 1998 to 2000), FAA?s median time to proceed from
initiating the

rulemaking process to publishing the final rule increased by about 8 months
compared to its median time to complete this step in the 3- year period
prior to the reform (fiscal years 1995 to 1997). The median time FAA

took to proceed from initiating the process to releasing the proposed rule
for public comment increased by more than 3 months after the reforms, from
16.5 months in the 3- year period prior to reform (fiscal years 1995 to
1997) to 20.4 months in the 3- year period following the reforms (fiscal
years 1998 to 2000). The median time FAA took to finalize the rule after the
close of the public comment period increased from 14 months to 16. 3 months
during the same time period. FAA?s reforms did not reduce the time needed
for departmental review and approval of the agency?s significant rules.
Overall, for both proposed and final rules, the median time OST took to

approve the rule (including review, comment, and FAA?s response, if any)
increased from about 125 days before FAA?s reforms to about 130 days after
the reforms. FAA officials said that the process might have taken longer
without OST?s review, noting, for example, that approval of FAA?s

significant proposed and final rules by OMB might have required more time if
OST had not identified issues that FAA might have missed.

The number of significant rules FAA published declined after the reforms
took effect. FAA developed and published 18 significant final rules in the
3- year period prior to the reforms, and it published 11 in the 3- year
period after the reforms. Although it published fewer rules in the 3- year
period

after the reforms than in the 3- year period before the reforms, more than
half of the time, FAA did not meet the time frames for completing steps in
the rulemaking process that it established in its 1998 reforms. For example,
FAA?s guidance suggests 450 days for the proposed rule phase of the process
and 310 days for final rule phase. In the 3- year period following its
reforms, FAA met its suggested time frame for proposed rules in about 19
percent of the cases and missed it in about 81 percent of the cases. FAA

met its suggested time frame for final rules in about 36 percent of the
cases and missed it in about 64 percent of the cases. Limited Implementation
of FAA?s reforms have not successfully addressed many of the problems that
Reforms Has Not Solved

have hindered the timeliness of rulemaking at the agency. Our survey of
Long- standing Problems FAA?s rulemaking staff showed that less than 20
percent agreed that FAA has made the changes necessary to improve the
rulemaking process. As a result of external and internal pressures, there
continued to be too many top priority rules (from 35 in February 1998 to 49
in March 2001). Shifts in management priorities, also driven by external and
internal pressures,

pulled staff from projects already under way. Furthermore, on some rules,
management continued to have difficulty resolving complex policy issues
early in the process, resulting in delays and additional work. Process
administration remained an area of concern because rulemaking team members?
confusion over roles and responsibilities in the process continued to add to
delays. In addition, the new automated information system was used to track
only FAA?s ?A? list of priority projects, including 24 significant rules,
and was therefore missing complete and accurate data for many of FAA?s other
significant rulemaking projects. The document management feature had not
been fully implemented in all offices participating in the rulemaking
process. Moreover, the continuous

improvement team and the quality team had not documented any quality review
tasks, such as completing project evaluations or making recommendations to
improve the rulemaking process.

Finally, about half of the FAA employees who participated as members of the
rulemaking teams and responded to GAO?s survey indicated that they had not
received enough training to do their jobs. Most participants, furthermore,
said they are not evaluated or rewarded according to the quality and
timeliness of the rules they produce. Regarding the problems GAO identified,
FAA rulemaking officials said they planned to upgrade their information
system to (1) track the status of rules transmitted to OST to better measure
the time taken to obtain OST approval and (2) incorporate the ability to
document lessons learned to improve their continuous improvement efforts.
They also said they were updating their rulemaking manual.

Recommendations for In order for FAA to improve the efficiency of its
rulemaking process and

Executive Action reap the maximum benefits from its rulemaking reform
efforts, GAO

recommends that the Secretary of Transportation direct the FAA Administrator
to expedite the rulemaking process by fully implementing the 1998 reforms to
address long- standing problems in this process in the areas of management
involvement, process administration, and

management of human capital. These reforms include, among other things,
instituting more timely and effective participation of management in
decisionmaking and prioritization, making more effective use of information
management to monitor and improve the process, and implementing human
capital strategies to measure, evaluate, and provide performance incentives
for process participants.

Agency Comments GAO provided a draft of this report to the Office of the
Secretary of the Department of Transportation and FAA for their review and
comment. In discussions after their review of the draft, departmental and
FAA officials stated that the report was a comprehensive treatment of the
agency?s rulemaking process. These officials indicated that they agreed with
a number of the draft report?s recommendations. They said that a few of the
report?s recommendations will require further consideration and that a
specific response to each of the report?s recommendations will be provided

in the Department?s response to the final report. FAA provided GAO with
technical clarifications, which GAO included in this report where
appropriate. The Department also provided written comments on this report,
which did not specifically address GAO?s

recommendations or the overall conclusions of this report, but included four
main points about the results of this review. (The full text of the
Department?s written comments and GAO?s detailed response to those comments
are provided in app. V.)

First, commenting officials said that the rulemaking process is necessarily
complex and that straightforward arithmetical comparisons across projects
cannot adequately disclose the nature and extent of challenges and timing
behind each rulemaking effort. GAO agrees that rulemaking can be a complex
and time- consuming process; this understanding is reflected throughout this
report. GAO also agrees that quantitative measures cannot fully capture the
qualitative nature of the challenges FAA may face in its rulemaking efforts.
Yet, because such measures are necessary to evaluate the process and
identify potential improvements, GAO continues to believe that the time FAA
took to complete steps in the process is a valuable

performance measure of FAA?s reforms to the rulemaking process. Second,
commenting officials said they were gratified to see that FAA?s rulemaking
process is sound and getting better, citing GAO?s findings that FAA?s
rulemaking process is comparable to other agencies in the federal government
and that the median age of FAA?s significant final rulemaking projects
decreased between 1997 and 2000. In fact, the draft report provided to the
Department for comment included a finding that the

median time FAA?s unpublished significant final rules had remained in the
process (see fig. 16) had decreased by about 7 months, as the Department
noted. However, in finalizing the calculations, GAO found that this measure
showed an increase of approximately 5 months. Moreover, GAO believes it is
important that this report?s findings are kept in the appropriate context.
For example, GAO?s analysis found that for one step in the process,
publishing final rules after considering public comments, FAA?s timeliness
was comparable to that of four other agencies examined. This report notes,

however, that because agencies vary in how they initiate and document their
rulemaking processes, it was not within the scope of this effort to attempt
to collect and compare information on the time other agencies took to
initiate the rulemaking process or to develop proposed rules up until their
release for public comment. In addition, GAO?s analysis of times to complete
the entire process and steps within the process showed, at best, little or
no improvement. Finally, the Department noted that GAO?s

analysis included rulemaking projects that predated FAA?s reforms. As noted
in this report, GAO used 3- year periods before and after FAA?s reforms as a
basis for its analysis of the impact of the reforms on processing times.

Third, commenting officials emphasized their need for flexibility in setting
priorities, noting that the varied forces that affect FAA?s rulemaking
schedule necessitate periodic reevaluation and adjustment of rulemaking
priorities. GAO agrees with the Department that rulemaking priorities must
be flexible. However, real improvement in the rulemaking process can be

achieved only through strategic management of the agency?s resources within
established priorities. To effectively accomplish FAA?s mission as a
regulatory agency, FAA rulemakers must make difficult decisions regarding
how best to focus the agency?s efforts and resources and resist pressures to
expand its list of highest priority rules beyond the number it has the
resources to aggressively pursue.

Finally, commenting officials said that the majority of FAA rules that have
been reviewed by OST were completed timely and that the review added value
to the process by ensuring the rulemaking package was complete. They said
OMB officials have repeatedly emphasized the value of OST review in
shortening its own reviews of FAA rulemakings. They also said that the
report?s analysis of the median time for OST review is skewed by a few rules
that required extensive efforts to resolve satisfactorily. Regarding the
value of departmental review, GAO was unable to compare process times for
rules reviewed and approved by the Department to rules that

were not because there were no significant rules that had not been reviewed
by the Department. Similarly, OMB officials said they lacked a basis for
evaluating the impact or value of OST?s review in the absence of significant
rules that had not gone through OST?s review process. Regarding GAO?s use of
median times in the analysis, while the mean, or average, may give greater
weight to extreme values, the median, or middle

observation, identifies the statistical point for which half of the data
points measured are greater and half are less. Thus, the median analysis is
not skewed by the magnitude of individual observations.

Chapt er 1

Introduction The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is responsible for
developing, administering, enforcing, and revising an effective, enforceable
set of aviation safety regulations that enhance aviation safety and security
and promote the efficient use of airspace. Generally, a regulation is an
agency statement that is designed to implement, interpret, or prescribe law
or policy or to describe procedural requirements. The process by which FAA
and other federal agencies develop regulations is called rulemaking.

FAA?s rulemaking activities encompass all of the agency?s areas of
responsibility, including air traffic control, aviation security, and
commercial space transportation. FAA must address both long- standing and
emerging issues in its rulemaking efforts. For example, questions about the
safety of aging aircraft and the adequacy of flight duty rest

requirements for airline pilots have been debated for decades. In contrast,
the issues of fire safety standards for cargo compartments and the transport
of oxygen generators emerged after the Valujet crash outside of Miami in May
1996.

Rulemaking can be a complex and time- consuming process, and the Congress
expressed its concerns about the speed of FAA?s rulemaking in 1996, when it
enacted legislation that established time frames for steps in the process.
While some rules may need to be developed quickly to address safety issues
or guide the use of new technologies, rules must be carefully considered
before being finalized because they can have a significant impact on
individuals, industries, the economy, and the environment. Figure 4 provides
a case study of FAA?s efforts to address a complex, longstanding aviation
safety issue by creating a rule to regulate flight duty and rest
requirements for flight crew members.

Figure 4: Case Study of FAA?s Rulemaking to Establish Flight Duty and Rest
Requirements for Flight Crew Members

Source: GAO?s analysis of FAA information.

Federal Rulemaking Rulemaking involves three stages of agency activity.
First, an agency Process Involves identifies a need for rulemaking. Second,
it initiates the rulemaking

process, develops a proposed rule, and publishes it for public comment.
Common Steps and

After a public comment period, the agency finalizes the rule by considering
Documents

the comments received and drafting and publishing the final rule. Figure 5
provides an overview of the process as it applies to FAA.

Figure 5: FAA?s Rulemaking Process for Significant Rules Source: Based on
FAA?s Rulemaking Manual, Dec. 1998.

A rulemaking issue may be identified internally or externally. For example,
FAA staff may find that changes in aviation technology or operations or the
emergence of a safety problem warrant rulemaking. Alternatively, the public
or the aviation industry may petition the agency to develop a new rule or
provide an exemption from existing rules. At the beginning of fiscal

year 2001, FAA was responding to 57 petitions for rulemaking and 415
petitions for exemptions while reviewing 84 recommendations by its advisory
committee- the Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee (ARAC). In addition,
the Congress, the President, or the Secretary of the Department of
Transportation (DOT) may direct FAA to develop a rule, or the National
Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) may issue a safety recommendation. After
a rulemaking issue is identified, an agency must consider the issue in light
of its resources and other rulemaking issues that may be equally compelling.
Some rulemaking issues may require study and

analysis before an agency?s management can decide whether to initiate the
rulemaking process and devote resources to developing a proposed rule. Once
an agency has decided to initiate rulemaking, the basic process for
developing and issuing regulations is spelled out in section 553 of the
Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (APA). 1 Most federal agencies,
including FAA, use notice and comment rulemaking. 2 Once rulemaking is
initiated, agencies generally must develop and publish a proposed rule or

?notice of proposed rulemaking? in the Federal Register. 3 A public comment
period follows, during which interested persons have the opportunity to
provide ?written data, views, or arguments.? After the comment period ends,
the agency finalizes the rule by reviewing the comments, revising the rule
as necessary, and publishing the final rule in the Federal Register at least
30 days before it becomes effective. 4 Most rules are later incorporated
into the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). 1 5 U. S. C. sect.553.

2 In some cases, agencies use abbreviated procedures to expedite the
rulemaking process by issuing the rules without first obtaining public
comment. The APA allows agencies to issue final rules without issuing
proposed rules for comment in certain cases, such as when the agency
determines for ?good cause? that notice and comment procedures are
?impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.? For
example, agencies may bypass the comment process and issue a rule in the
case of an emergency. We reported on agencies? use of the APA?s ?good cause?
exception in our report Federal Rulemaking:

Agencies Often Published Final Actions Without Proposed Rules (GAO/ GGD- 98-
126, Aug. 31, 1998). 3 The Federal Register is the official daily
publication for federal agencies? notices, rules, and proposed rules, as
well as presidential documents such as executive orders.

For the remainder of this report, we will use the term ?rulemaking? to refer
to the notice and comment process by which FAA?s rules are developed and
codified in the CFR. Rules vary in importance, complexity, and impact. Under
Executive Order 12866, federal agencies and the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB) categorize proposed and final rules in terms of their potential
impact on the economy and the industry affected. Executive Order 12866 5
defines a

regulatory action as ?significant? if it  has an annual impact on the
economy of $100 million or more;

 adversely affects the economy in a material way (in terms of productivity,
competition, jobs, environment, public health or safety, or state, local, or
tribal governments or communities);  creates a serious inconsistency or
interferes with another agency?s

action;

 materially changes the budgetary impact of entitlements, grants, user
fees, or loan programs or the rights and obligations of recipients thereof;
or  raises novel legal or policy issues arising out of legal mandates, the
President?s priorities, or the principles set forth in the order. Since
1996, significant rulemaking entries have constituted about half of all of
FAA?s rulemaking entries in the Unified Agenda, a semiannual report of
federal regulatory activities. 6 Figure 6 shows the total number of FAA?s

rulemaking entries and the number of significant rulemaking entries listed
in the October Unified Agendas from 1995 through 2000.

4 If the rule is considered ?major? under the Small Business Regulatory
Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996, then it cannot become effective until 60
days after a copy is received by the Congress or it is published in the
Federal Register, whichever is later. 5 Executive Order 12866, Regulatory
Planning and Review (Sept. 30, 1993).

6 Executive Order 12866 requires regulatory agencies to prepare an agenda of
all regulatory actions under development or review. The Unified Agenda of
Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions is published in the Federal
Register twice each year by the Regulatory Information Service Center and
provides uniform reporting of data on regulatory activities under
development throughout the federal government.

Figure 6: Number of FAA?s Rulemaking Entries Listed in the Unified Agenda,
Fiscal Year 1995 Through Fiscal Year 2000

Note: According to the Unified Agenda, the list includes rulemaking
activities under development, under review, or recently completed. However,
FAA rulemaking officials said that the number of entries in the agenda for
FAA is not a precise measurement of the agency?s rulemaking workload because
FAA?s submission includes rulemaking actions that are not actively being
worked on. While FAA maintains statistics on the number of significant and
nonsignificant rules published annually, it does not maintain historical
records of the number of significant or nonsignificant rules under
development for any particular year.

Source: GAO?s analysis of data in the annual Unified Agenda.

Significant rules often take longer to issue than nonsignificant rules. They
may require extensive regulatory analyses of the potential economic, social,
and environmental impacts of one or more alternatives. 7 These analyses may
take months to complete and are needed to ensure that the 7 DOT requires
that regulatory analyses include, among other things, a statement of the
problem and issues that make the regulation significant, a description and
analysis of the economic and other consequences of the alternatives, and an
explanation of the reasons for choosing one alternative over the others.

projected economic impact has been correctly quantified and that the costs
the rule will impose on the affected industry and individuals are justified.
Significant rules typically require more levels of review than
nonsignificant rules. Executive Order 12866 requires that OMB review
agencies? proposed and final significant rules before they are published in
the Federal Register.

Moreover, clearances for proposed and final rules may be required at the
departmental level for those agencies that are part of a cabinet- level
department.

To reduce this burden, the Federal Aviation Reauthorization Act of 1996
grants rulemaking authority directly to the Administrator, except that the
Administrator may not issue a proposed or final rule without obtaining the

Secretary?s approval if that rule is significant as defined by statute. The
Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the 21 st Century
narrowed the scope of rules that would be considered to be significant,
setting the threshold for economic significance to $250,000,000 and
eliminating inconsistency and interference with other agencies? actions and
material changes to budgetary impact of entitlements, grants, user fees, or
loan programs and recipients? rights and obligations as criteria.

Nevertheless, agencies that report to the Office of the Secretary of
Transportation (OST), including FAA, have also been required by the
Secretary to submit for review all rules deemed significant under the
executive order as well as rules that OST has indicated are to be considered
to be ?significant? under supplemental guidelines. 8 These additional
criteria increase the number of rules for which agencies within DOT are
expected

to complete regulatory analyses. For example, FAA published a significant
rule in April 2000 that limited the number of commercial air tours permitted
in the Grand Canyon. 9 While the rule was not considered a significant
regulatory action under Executive Order 12866, and would not have been
significant under the statute, it was considered significant under the
Department?s supplemental guidelines because the rulemaking had a 8 Policies
and Procedures for Simplification, Analysis, and Review of Regulations (DOT
Order 2100. 5, May 22, 1980). Under the Department?s guidance, the
Secretary, the Deputy Secretary, or the director of the program office
involved may determine that a proposed or

final rule is significant if it concerns a matter on which there is (1)
substantial public interest or controversy; (2) has a major impact on other
parts of the Department or another federal agency; (3) has a substantial
effect on state and local governments; (4) has a substantial impact on a
major transportation safety problem; (5) initiates a substantial regulatory
program or change in policy; (6) is substantially different from
international requirements or standards; or (7) otherwise involves important
Department policy.

potentially substantial economic impact on Native American tribes.
Specifically, the rule was expected to have a significantly adverse impact
on the Hualapai Tribe?s economic development and self- sufficiency, since

the trive relied on income from air tour operations and tourist dollars
brought to the reservation by the air tours. The additional analyses and
reviews required for significant rules are incorporated into the basic
process that all federal agencies use for rulemaking: developing a proposed
rule, releasing the proposed rule for public comment, and developing a final
rule.

Various offices within FAA conduct the required analyses and reviews of
rulemaking documents, as shown in table 1. In the early stages of
rulemaking, each rule is the responsibility of a program office with
technical expertise in a specific area. This office develops the initial

rulemaking documents, as indicated in table 1. Depending on the content of
the rule, the program office may be a staff office, like the Office of Chief
Counsel, that also has the additional responsibility of reviewing all
significant rules. Alternatively, it may be an office with responsibility
for a technical area, such as the Office of Civil Aviation Security Policy
and Planning. Each of these offices has managers who can become involved in
the rulemaking process by reviewing the work of its representatives on a
rulemaking team. Generally, FAA?s rulemaking teams consist of
representatives from the program office, the Office of Rulemaking, the
Office of Aviation Policy and Plans, and the Office of the Chief Counsel. In
addition to significant and nonsignificant rulemaking, the staff in these
offices also work on other projects, including airworthiness directives,
airspace actions, and responses to petitions and exemptions.

9 Commercial Air Tour Limitation in the Grand Canyon National Park Special
Flight Rules Area: Final Rule, April 4, 2000, Federal Register, Vol. 65 No.
65 p. 17708.

Table 1: Key Roles and Responsibilities of Participants in FAA?s Rulemaking
Process FAA rulemaking participants Responsibilities

Administrator The Administrator sets FAA?s overall policy and direction and
resolves any rulemaking disputes. The Administrator?s office reviews and
approves all proposed and final rules. Office of Rulemaking The Office of
Rulemaking is responsible for the administrative and nontechnical aspects of
rulemaking project activities, including maintaining the agency?s automated
system for tracking rulemaking projects, drafting rulemaking documents, and
tracking the priority of rulemaking activities. Office of Chief Counsel The
Office of Chief Counsel provides legal support for all FAA activities. The
Chief

Counsel is responsible for determining the legal adequacy of FAA?s actions
related to rules and regulations and acting as a liaison between FAA and the
General Counsel in the DOT. Office of Aviation Policy and

The Office of Aviation Policy and Plans provides detailed estimates of the
economic Plans consequences of existing and proposed regulations. This
includes performing regulatory reviews of existing and proposed regulations
to determine their impact on small businesses, and developing most of the
critical values (e. g., injuries, property damage) to be used for economic
analyses. Program offices A program office is the technical office that
proposes a rulemaking. There are many offices at FAA that can become active
in rulemaking when a rule within their area of technical expertise is
considered. A program office evaluates the adequacy of existing regulations
that fall within its jurisdiction and develops initial rulemaking documents.
The

director of a program office reviews and approves the initial proposal and
submits it for approval by rulemaking management. A program office
representative is the rulemaking team member who develops the technical
content of rules within his or her office?s

jurisdiction. Examples of program offices at FAA whose technical expertise
is frequently required to complete rulemaking include the Office of Flight
Standards and the Office of Aircraft Certification. Aviation Rulemaking
Advisory ARAC is a formal advisory committee consisting of representatives
from the aviation Committee (ARAC) community. Established by the FAA
Administrator in 1991, ARAC provides industry information, advice, and
recommendations to be considered during FAA?s rulemaking activities. ARAC
affords FAA additional opportunities to obtain first- hand information and
insight from those parties that are most affected by existing and proposed
regulations. Source: FAA?s Rulemaking Manual, Dec. 30, 1998.

Prior Studies of The ultimate goal of the federal rulemaking process is to
develop and issue

Federal Rulemaking a quality rule in a timely and efficient manner. Time is
of particular importance when safety is at stake or when the pace of
technological Have Found Similar

development exceeds the pace of rulemaking. Many of the problems and
Persistent

federal agencies face in developing and publishing rules are long- standing
Problems

and similar across agencies, and they have been cited in studies and
discussions of the process since at least the 1970s. For example, a Senate
study in July 1977 cited deficiencies in decisionmaking, planning, and
priority- setting by top management as causes of delay in federal
rulemaking. 10 In July 2000, DOT?s Office of the Inspector General (OIG)

reviewed the Department?s rulemaking process and found that the Department
had taken as long as 12 years to issue significant rules. 11 The OIG
attributed the lack of timeliness of the Department?s rulemaking partly to a
lack of timely decisionmaking and prioritization. Studies specifically
targeting the efficiency of FAA?s rulemaking process

over almost 40 years have also identified similar problems. Figure 7
provides a list of key studies on FAA?s rulemaking process. 10 Delay in the
Regulatory Process, Committee on Governmental Affairs, United States Senate,
July 1977. 11 The Department of Transportation?s Rulemaking Process (MH-
2000- 109 July 20, 2000).

Figure 7: Studies and Reports on FAA?s Rulemaking That Identified Common
Problems

Source: Generated by GAO.

The central findings of the most recent study of FAA?s rulemaking process,
published in 1997, echoed the findings of past studies. 12 For this report,
we grouped the problems identified by the 1997 study into three areas:
management involvement, administration of the rulemaking process, and human
capital.

12 Federal Aviation Administration Business Process Reengineering Technical
Report, Electronic Data Systems (May 16, 1997).

Problems With Management In terms of management involvement, FAA?s 1997
study of its rulemaking

Involvement, Process process found that problems related to shifting
priorities, the timing of

Administration, and Human management involvement, and the willingness of
management to delegate

Capital Impaired FAA?s authority all caused delays. Inconsistent and
changing priorities among

FAA offices caused false starts, delays in the process, and wasted
Rulemaking resources. Inadequate or ill- timed involvement by FAA?s senior
management hindered the agency?s ability to make timely decisions. As a
result, rule drafters frequently worked without adequate direction or buy-
in from policymakers, causing extensive queuing, delays, and rework. The
reluctance of FAA?s rulemaking management to delegate authority caused
problems in internal coordination and accountability and created extensive
layers of review that delayed the rulemaking process. Rulemaking projects
were also often delayed because no one was held accountable for keeping
projects on schedule. The lack of coordination resulted in ?finger-
pointing? as to why problems remained unsolved. FAA?s 1997 study identified
similar concerns with the timeliness of rulemaking efforts by FAA?s industry

advisory committee. For example, the committee had too many projects, some
of which were duplicative or overlapping. A lack of coordination and
accountability between FAA and the committee also impaired the effectiveness
of the advisory committee.

In terms of process administration, FAA?s 1997 study found that confusion
concerning the roles and responsibilities of rulemaking participants at FAA
created difficulties in determining who had responsibility for what actions,
led to breakdowns in coordination and communication, and resulted in
inadequate supervision. Multiple information systems also hampered
coordination and led to inaccurate tracking records and databases, as well
as to information that was hard to access (e. g., archives of decisions
made).

Without reliable records, FAA often could not pinpoint where problems and
backlogs occurred. Moreover, even when it did identify weaknesses, it lacked
systems with which to evaluate and improve the process.

In terms of human capital management, the 1997 study found that FAA had not
established systems for selecting and training personnel involved in
rulemaking. Rulemaking teams at FAA typically did not observe project

schedules, which they regarded as unrealistically optimistic. Measures of
timeliness were not consistently used to measure and evaluate the
performance of rulemaking participants. FAA?s rulemaking process lacked a
system for consistently tying incentives and rewards to specific measures of
performance.

Concerns About the Responding to concerns about the efficiency of FAA?s
rulemaking process

Efficiency of FAA?s and in particular the time required for departmental
review by OST, the Rulemaking Prompted Congress enacted legislation in 1996
designed to speed FAA?s efforts to Congressional Action and

develop and publish final rules. The Federal Aviation Reauthorization Act of
1996 amended section 106 of title 49 U. S. C. to establish a 16- month time
the Latest FAA Review

limit for FAA?s finalization of rules after the close of the public comment
period and a 45- day requirement for OST?s review of FAA?s significant
proposed and final rules (see ch. 2). (The act also established a 24- month
time limit for finalization of rules after publication of an advanced notice
of proposed rulemaking, a request for information that FAA may issue in
developing a proposed rule. Because this notice is not always issued, we

did not use it as a measure in our analysis.) In response, FAA reviewed its
rulemaking process, established its own suggested time frames for completing
steps in the process (see ch. 3), and identified potential improvements to
its process in the general areas of management involvement, process
administration, and human capital management. 13 These improvements are
discussed in chapter 3.

Objectives, Scope, and The Chairman of the Subcommittee on Aviation, House
Committee on

Methodology Transportation and Infrastructure, asked us to review FAA?s
rulemaking process to determine whether FAA could improve the efficiency of
its

rulemaking process. Specifically, we addressed three main questions in our
review:

 What are the time frames for FAA?s rulemaking, including the time FAA took
to initiate the rulemaking process in response to statutory requirements and
safety recommendations and, once begun, to develop and publish significant
rules?  What were the effects of FAA?s 1998 reforms on its process and on
its time frames for completing rulemaking?

 How effective were FAA?s reform efforts in addressing the factors that
affect the pace of the rulemaking process? To determine the time frames for
FAA?s rulemaking, we created a database of proposed and final rules that
constituted the agency?s significant 13 Federal Aviation Administration
Business Process Reengineering Technical Report (May 1997).

rulemaking workload from fiscal year 1995 through fiscal year 2000. We
focused our analysis on 76 significant rulemaking actions identified by FAA
in the semiannual editions of the Unified Agenda or identified in our search
of the Federal Register. This consisted of rulemaking actions that had
either been published for public comment or were initiated but had not yet
been published for public comment. 14 The initiation dates and dates of
published actions for the 76 rules are provided in appendix I. These rules
constituted most (about 83 percent) of FAA?s significant rule workload and
were more likely to be complex and/ or the subject of controversy and
potential delay. Our database contained data obtained from FAA?s Integrated
Rulemaking Management Information System and from our review of proposed and
final rules published in the Federal Register. 15 In creating our database,
to determine the dates that rulemaking projects

were initiated, we used the dates recorded in FAA?s information system. For
the dates of the publication of proposed and final rules, we used the dates
of publication in the Federal Register. To determine the extent to which
FAA?s rulemaking met statutory time frames, we compiled information

from our database of rulemaking actions and applied standards established by
the Congress in 1996.

To determine the effects of FAA?s 1998 reforms on the agency?s rulemaking
process, we reviewed the 1997 report on FAA?s rulemaking process and
discussed the 1998 reforms with FAA staff and management from the working
team that participated in the study. We discussed rulemaking reforms with
rulemaking officials from several other federal regulatory agencies the
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the 14 The status of the
76 rules at the close of fiscal year 2000 was as follows: 29 had been
published as final rules, 22 had been published as proposed rules and were
still in the rulemaking process, 5 had been published as proposed rules but
subsequently withdrawn and the rulemaking effort terminated, 9 had been
terminated before being published as proposed rules, and 11 had been
initiated but not yet published as proposed rules. 15 Because we were unable
to independently verify all data in FAA?s information system related to
FAA?s internal processing steps, to the extent possible, we based our
findings regarding the time required to complete the process on milestone
data we were able to

verify through rulemaking events published in the Federal Register. However,
FAA?s information system was the only source for data on the agency?s
internal milestones, such as the initiation date and the time required for
OST approval. To reduce the potential of

inaccuracies in the data impacting the results of our analysis, we used 3-
year periods before and after FAA?s reform as a basis for our analysis
rather than an annual assessment, and we discussed our findings and
conclusions with rulemaking officials who generally agreed that the time
required to complete the process had not significantly changed as a result
of the 1998 reforms.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Highway Administration
(FHWA), the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), the Food
and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Highway Transportation Safety
Administration (NHTSA), and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to
identify what steps they had taken to improve their rulemaking processes and
to discuss their efforts to improve

rulemaking. We selected these agencies because they had developed
significant rules that were potentially technically complex and have an
impact on public safety (e. g., regulation of nuclear power, environmental
concerns, and food safety). We also compared FAA?s time frames for
responding to public comment and finalizing significant rules with that of
other federal regulatory agencies by collecting data from the Federal
Register on the time spent processing significant rules by APHIS, EPA,

FDA, and NHTSA. 16 To determine the extent to which FAA?s rulemaking met
FAA?s suggested time frames for steps in the process before and after the
reforms, we compiled information from our database of rulemaking actions and
applied it to the time frames suggested in FAA?s rulemaking guidance. We
also reviewed the number of significant rules FAA published before and after
implementing its reforms as a measure of improvement in the rulemaking
process.

To determine the effectiveness of FAA?s reform efforts in addressing the
factors that affect the pace of the rulemaking process management
involvement, process administration, and human capital management we
considered case studies of specific rules, as well as the views of
rulemaking officials and other stakeholders in the rulemaking process,
including representatives of NTSB, OST, and OMB . We also surveyed 134 FAA
employees who had served as rulemaking team members on significant rules
listed in FAA?s Unified Agendas since the beginning of fiscal year 1994.

We chose these employees for our survey because these staff had recent
experience and were likely to be familiar with changes in the reformed
process. We mailed a survey to rulemaking staff to obtain their views on the
status of the rulemaking process and the impact of rulemaking reforms. We
received 109 responses (a response rate of about 81 percent). A copy of the

survey instrument that summarizes the responses we received is provided in
appendix II. We supplemented our survey results with semistructured 16 We
did not include FHWA, FMCSA in our analysis of time frames because FMCSA was
created from a division within FHWA in 2000 and thus did not have a
comparable data set for analysis. We did not include NRC because, unlike the
other agencies, as an independent agency it was not subject to OMB review.
As a result, its rulemaking time frames did not lend themselves to a direct
comparison.

interviews of rulemaking team members involved in four rulemaking projects.
For our semistructured interviews, we asked a series of questions designed
to elicit staff members? views on the results of the reform efforts and
suggestions for improving the process. We conducted our work from April 2000
through March 2001 in accordance

with generally accepted government auditing standards.

FAA Took Varying Times to Complete Steps of the Rulemaking Process, Meeting
Legislative

Chapt er 2

Requirements in One- Half or Less of Cases The time FAA took to formally
initiate rulemaking in response to a congressional mandate or a
recommendation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) varied
widely. Between fiscal year 1995 and fiscal year 2000, FAA initiated most
rulemaking efforts in response to mandates and safety recommendations within
2 years, but some were initiated many years later. Once FAA formally
initiates rulemaking, the time it takes to complete the process depends on
many

factors, including the complexity of the issue. FAA finalized and published
in the Federal Register 29 significant rules over the 6- year period from
fiscal year 1995 through fiscal year 2000. It took a median of about 2 ï¿½
years 1 to proceed from formal initiation through publication of the final
rule, ranging from less than 1 year to almost 15 years. Twenty percent of
these final rules took 10 years or more to complete. During this same time

period, departmental review, one step in the process for both proposed and
final rules, took a median time of about 4 months. FAA?s median pace for
finalizing a rule after the close of the public comment period about 15

months was comparable to that of four other federal agencies. However, FAA
met the 16- month statutory requirement for finalizing a rule after the
close of the public comment period in less than half of the cases since the
legislation was passed and other mandated time limits in only 2 of 7 cases.

FAA Initiated Most FAA initiated most rulemaking actions in response to
safety recommendations from the NTSB and mandates from the Congress within
Rulemaking in 2 years. 2 Of the 76 significant rulemaking actions we
reviewed, 32 Response to Mandates

rulemaking actions (or about 42 percent) were the subject of a and Safety

congressional mandate or recommendation by the NTSB. While Recommendations

congressional mandates may require that FAA take rulemaking actions, NTSB?s
recommendations do not. However, FAA is required to respond

Within 2 Years formally to the recommendation and specify what action is or
is not being

taken and why. As shown in figure 8, FAA formally initiated about 60 percent
of mandated rulemaking actions and about one- third of NTSB?s
recommendations within 6 months.

1 The median processing time is the statistical point for which half of the
processing times are greater and half of the processing times are lower. 2
Our analysis included only those significant rulemaking actions that were
part of the agency?s rulemaking workload during the 6- year period from
fiscal year 1995 through fiscal year 2000 and that FAA had initiated in
response to recommendations or mandates; FAA did not identify any other
recommendations or mandates for which they had not initiated rulemaking
action.

Figure 8: Time Elapsed Between 20 Congressional Mandates and 12 NTSB Safety
Recommendations and FAA?s Initiation of the Rulemaking Process Note: The
time until initiation was measured from the date the legislation containing
a mandate was enacted or a safety recommendation was issued to the
initiation date identified by FAA. Because of rounding, totals may not add
up to 100 percent. Source: GAO?s analysis of FAA data. However, FAA
sometimes took many years to respond to a mandate or recommendation. For
example, figure 8 also shows that in one- fourth of the

mandated cases and one- third of the recommendations we examined, FAA took
more than 5 years to initiate rulemaking. Figure 9 provides a case study of
a rulemaking issue with safety implications aviation child safety seats- in
which more than 7 years passed between NTSB?s

recommendation and FAA?s initiation of the rulemaking process. In this case,
the delay occurred because of policy- related disagreements between FAA and
NTSB. After receiving NTSB?s recommendation to require child safety seats on
aircraft, FAA studied the issue. It issued a related technical order and
rule but decided not to pursue rulemaking to require child safety seats on
aircraft. In part, its decision was based on a study it presented to the
Congress that concluded that if child safety seats were required on

aircraft, passenger diversion to other transportation modes could cause a

net increase in fatalities. FAA eventually changed its policy position and
initiated rulemaking after the White House Commission on Aviation Safety
recommended that FAA make child- restraint systems mandatory on

aircraft.

Figure 9: Case Study of FAA?s Rulemaking to Require Child Restraints on
Aircraft

Source: GAO?s analysis of FAA information.

In contrast to the lengthy period of time that sometimes occurs between
NTSB?s recommendations and FAA?s initiation of rulemaking, FAA responded
within 1 month to an NTSB recommendation in 1999 to require flight data
recorders on Boeing 737 aircraft. Figure 10 provides a case study of this
rulemaking effort.

Figure 10: Case Study of FAA?s Rulemaking to Revise Digital Flight Data
Recorder Regulations for Boeing 737 Airplanes Source: GAO?s analysis of FAA
information.

Time FAA Took to For significant rules published during the 6- year period
from fiscal year Complete Steps in the

1995 through fiscal year 2000, FAA took a median time of about 2 ï¿½ years to
proceed from the formal initiation of the rulemaking process to the
Rulemaking Process

publication of the final rule in the Federal Register. This time period
ranged Varied from less than 1 year to almost 15 years. Six of the 29 final
rules (or 20 percent) took 10 years or more to complete. FAA took a median
time of

about 20 months to proceed from initiating the process to proposing the rule
for public comment. It took a median time of about 15 months to finalize the
rule after the close of the public comment period.

The time taken for one step of the rulemaking process that occurs in FAA?s
development of both proposed and final rules departmental review and
approval- has been of particular concern to the Congress. In the Federal
Aviation Reauthorization Act of 1996, the Congress addressed its concern by
establishing a time frame for this step. The act requires the Secretary of
DOT to review proposed and final significant rules and respond to FAA,
either by approving them or by returning them to FAA with comments, within
45 days after receiving them.

While FAA?s information system tracked the date of OST?s approval of some
significant rules, it did not track the date of OST?s response to FAA?s
transmittals of significant rules when it sent them back to FAA with
comments rather than approving them. We were therefore unable to measure the
extent to which the Department had met the 45- day

requirement set forth in the 1996 act. FAA rulemaking officials said that
they did manually track this information for individual rules and planned to
incorporate this capability into the next upgrade of the information system.
FAA?s information system did contain the dates that some rules were
submitted by FAA to OST and the dates of OST?s final approval. We used these
dates to measure the time it took for OST to approve FAA?s significant
proposed and final rules from fiscal year 1997, when the legislation went

into effect, through fiscal year 2000. Overall, for both proposed and final
rules, the median time OST took to approve the rules (including review,
comment, and FAA?s response, if any) was 4.1 months (124 days). Measuring
proposed and final rules separately, we found that the median time OST took
to approve proposed rules was 4.7 months (140 days), while the median time
OST took to approve final rules was 2.3 months (69 days). In chapter 4, we
discuss the views of departmental and FAA staff on issues that impact the
time required for departmental approval.

In a more recent effort to reduce delays related to OST?s review, on April
5, 2000, the Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the 21st
Century amended title 106 of 49 U. S. C. by raising the dollar threshold

required for secretarial approval and eliminating several criteria that
triggered departmental review of significant rules. 3 The Congress included
this language to, among other things, streamline FAA?s rulemaking process 3
The act raised the dollar threshold from $100 million to $250 million and
eliminated consideration of the impact of a regulation on other agencies?
actions, as well as consideration of the budgetary impact of entitlements,
grants, user fees, or loan programs or the rights and obligations of
recipients as considerations requiring secretarial review.

by reducing the number of significant rules that had to be submitted for
departmental review and approval. Because the legislation preempts DOT?s
Order 2100.5 (which defines what rules FAA and other DOT modal
administrations are to submit to OST for review, as discussed in ch. 1), FAA
is required to submit to OST only those significant rules that meet the
criteria defined in the act. At the time of our review, FAA and OST had not

yet implemented the provisions of the act. As a result, the number of FAA?s
significant rules that met the criteria for OST review had not been reduced.

Time FAA Took to Although we did not compare the time frame of FAA?s entire
rulemaking Finalize Rules After the

process to that of other agencies, we did find that the time FAA took to
finalize rules after the close of the public comment period was comparable
Comment Period Was to that of four other federal agencies. 4 We selected
four regulatory Comparable to That of agencies- APHIS, EPA, FDA, and NHTSA
and compared the time they

took to finalize rules from fiscal year 1995 through fiscal year 2000. 5 The
Four Other Agencies

results are presented in figure 11. The figure shows that, except for APHIS,
which finalized all of its significant rules within 2 years of the close of
the public comment period, agencies generally finalized between two- thirds
and three- fourths of their significant rules within 24 months of the close
of

the public comment period. 4 Because agencies vary in how they initiate and
document their rulemaking processes, it was not within the scope of this
effort to attempt to collect and standardize information on the time elapsed
at other agencies in initiating the rulemaking process and developing
proposed rules up until their release for public comment. 5 We selected
these agencies because they had developed significant rules that were
potentially technically complex and have an impact on public safety (e. g.,
regulation of nuclear power, environmental concerns, and food safety).

Figure 11: Percent of Significant Rules Finalized Within Certain Time
Periods After the Close of the Public Comment Period by FAA and Other
Selected Regulatory Agencies, Fiscal Years 1995- 2000

Note: This analysis excludes interim final rules; rule count provided for
each category/ agency. Source: GAO?s analysis of data from the Regulatory
Information Service Center and the Federal Register.

FAA Met Legislative The Federal Aviation Reauthorization Act of 1996
established a 16- month Requirements in Half time frame for FAA?s
finalization of rules after the close of the public

comment period. From October 1996 through March 2001, FAA met this or Less
of Its deadline in 7 of 18 cases 6 by either publishing a final rule in the
Federal

Rulemaking Efforts

Register or taking other final action within 16 months of the close of the
public comment period. Figure 12 provides a case study of FAA?s rulemaking
to prohibit the transportation of discharged or unfilled oxygen generators
in aircraft. This effort exceeded the congressional time frame by about 11
months. (See app. III for a complete list of rules subject to the act?s time
frames.)

6 Since the passage of the act in October 1996, FAA published 25 proposed
rules for comment. As of March 31, 2001, 10 of these proposed rules had been
published as final rules. FAA met the 16- month legislative requirement for
7 of the 10 published rules but had missed the deadlines for the 8 other
rules that had not yet been finalized. The comment period had closed for the
remaining 7 rules, but 16 months had not yet elapsed as of March 31, 2001.

Figure 12: Case Study of FAA?s Rulemaking to Prohibit Transportation of
Oxygen Generators as Cargo in Aircraft

Source: GAO?s analysis of FAA information.

The Congress has also mandated time frames for steps in FAA?s rulemaking on
specific issues. The agency did not meet many of these legislated time
frames. Specifically, of the 20 congressionally mandated rules that were
part of FAA?s workload between fiscal year 1995 and fiscal year 2000, 7
included a time frame for agency action. FAA met the time frame in only 2

cases, both of which called for initiating the rulemaking process by a
certain date. 7 Appendix IV provides additional information regarding the
current status of the seven rules with congressionally mandated time frames.
Figure 13 provides a case study of FAA?s proposed rule to revise procedures
for aircraft registry to assist drug enforcement efforts that exceeded a
specific legislative mandate by more than 10 years.

7 FAA published a notice of proposed rulemaking within 1 month of one other
mandated rulemaking project.

Figure 13: Case Study of FAA?s Rulemaking to Revise Procedures for Aircraft
Registry

Source: GAO?s analysis of FAA information.

FAA?s Reforms Addressed Long- standing Rulemaking Problems but Did Not
Reduce

Chapt er 3

Rulemaking Times To respond to congressional concerns about the timeliness
of its rulemaking process and address long- standing problems (see ch. 1),
FAA began implementing reform initiatives in January 1998 to improve the
process in two of the three central areas we have identified: management
involvement and process administration. FAA considered but did not implement
most initiatives to improve human capital management. Other agencies have
also implemented reforms to address similar types of problems. FAA?s median
times to proceed from initiation of rulemaking

through the release of the proposed rule for public comment and to finalize
the rule after the close of the public comment period did not improve after
FAA implemented its 1998 reforms. Despite FAA?s reforms, the time taken for
departmental review and approval of FAA?s significant rules was not reduced.
In addition, fewer rules were published while proposed and final rules
remained in the rulemaking process for longer periods of time.

FAA?s 1998 Efforts to FAA began implementing reform initiatives in January
1998 to improve its Improve Rulemaking

rulemaking process in two of the three central areas we have identified:
management involvement and process administration. FAA considered but
Addressed Longstanding did not implement most initiatives to improve human
capital management.

Problems FAA Took Steps to Improve

FAA developed initiatives aimed at improving management?s ability to
Management Involvement in coordinate and set priorities, resolve policy
questions, and streamline the

Process review process. To improve the coordination of leadership throughout
the

process, FAA established a rulemaking steering committee and a rulemaking
management council. Rather than existing within any one FAA office, the
committee and council are made up of members of all offices with current
rulemaking responsibilities (see ch. 1, table 1). The steering

committee is primarily responsible for determining FAA?s rulemaking
priorities; the rulemaking management council manages the rulemaking
process. As the Administrator said in establishing the two groups in
February 1998:

?With the direct involvement of senior- level management in the rulemaking
process, I anticipate a dynamic rulemaking program that more directly meets
the safety and technology challenges of a rapidly evolving aviation
industry.? 1

In particular, to address long- standing concerns about delays that occurred
during departmental review and approval of its significant rules (see ch.
2), FAA included a representative from OST on its rulemaking steering
committee and management council, hoping that improved coordination

would reduce the time taken for OST?s review. Table 2 shows the members and
duties of FAA?s steering committee and management council. Table 2:
Membership and Duties of FAA?s Rulemaking Management Groups

Title Membership Duties

Steering committee FAA assistant and associate administrators with 
Determine priorities current rulemaking responsibilities Chief counsel

 Resolve disputes that cannot be settled at the A representative from OST
management council level Management council Director- level managers at FAA
headquarters with  Ensure that rulemaking projects align with agency
current rulemaking responsibilities

priorities A representative from OST  Allocate resources for projects 
Monitor the quality of the process

 Resolve policy issues and rulemaking process problems  Delegate
appropriate level of authority to

rulemaking teams Source: FAA?s Rulemaking Manual.

To formalize the new process and provide consistent and comprehensive
guidance to rulemaking staff and management, FAA also developed a new
rulemaking manual. Among other things, this manual suggested time frames for
steps in the rulemaking process and established a system for the steering
committee to follow in prioritizing rulemaking projects, as shown in table
3. 1 Memo, Subject: Letter of Appointment, Direction, and Charter of
Rulemaking Management Council, FAA Administrator (Feb. 17, 1998).

Tabl e 3: FAA?s System for Prioritizing Rulemaking Projects Priority
Characteristics of projects

A Have congressional, high- level, or departmental interest Support the
strategic objectives of the agency Are scheduled for issuance within 6
months Have project schedules that the agency is committed to meeting B Have
a moderate priority

Are assigned as agency resources permit Are generally not actively worked
on, according to rulemaking officials

U Have the lowest priority Are not scheduled for completion Usually have
little or no resources to develop them Can be considered inactive

Source: FAA?s Rulemaking Manual and FAA?s Office of Rulemaking.

Finally, to maximize the efficient use of employees? and management?s time,
FAA planned to limit reviews to those that added value and to delegate more
responsibility for rulemaking decisions to rulemaking teams. Prior to the
reforms, both nonsignificant and significant rules went through

multiple layers of internal review. This practice stemmed more from agency
protocol than from necessary oversight. For example, a team member?s
decision could pass through sequential reviews by his or her immediate
managers, office directors, associate administrators, and the Office of the
Administrator. FAA proposed eliminating intermediate manager and director-
level review and approval for both nonsignificant and significant rules so
that rules could pass directly from teams to associate

administrators. In doing so, FAA hoped to use available resources more
efficiently, improve team members? morale, and reduce delays. However, the
agency stopped short of eliminating review and approval of significant rules
by associate administrators, as was recommended in studies of FAA?s
rulemaking in 1988, 1996, and 1997. According to officials from the Office
of Rulemaking, the revised process was designed to enable the management
council to delegate coordination and approval of nonsignificant rules to
managers below the associate administrator level and the reform was intended
to allow teams to act with the full knowledge of their respective associate
administrator?s position on important issues.

FAA Took Steps to To address problems in administering the rulemaking
process, FAA

Administer the Process implemented a series of reforms. These reforms were
primarily designed to More Efficiently clarify the extent and limitations of
each team member?s roles and

responsibilities, to improve the monitoring of rules and the management of
rulemaking documents throughout the process, and to ensure ongoing
evaluation of the process. Given the potential complexity of rulemaking
issues, inconsistent and unclear lines of responsibility between policy,
technical, legal, and economic reviews have historically slowed the

rulemaking process. In its reform, FAA documented in the rulemaking manual
the roles and responsibilities for each member of the rulemaking team.
Specific appendixes in this manual detail the purpose, intent, and
limitations of legal and economic reviews.

FAA also created a new system for monitoring rule status and document
management, the Integrated Rulemaking Management Information System, which
was designed to increase the use of automation in the rulemaking process.
According to FAA?s Office of Rulemaking, its new system consolidated the
functions of the existing rulemaking tracking and document management
systems. The new system was designed to also provide access to a regulatory
guidance library and the DOT?s Docket Management System.

Finally, FAA developed rulemaking quality standards and established a
continuous improvement team and a quality team to ensure ongoing evaluation
of the rulemaking process, monitor the quality of rulemaking documents, and
provide recommendations on potential improvements to the process. FAA?s
rulemaking quality standards are documented in an

appendix to its rulemaking manual, Rulemaking Quality Standard and Guide.
The guide offers practical tips, provides techniques, and suggests
references and examples for rulemaking writers. FAA?s continuous

improvement team- envisioned as a staff- level team- was established to
review the evaluations from rulemaking teams in order to provide
recommendations to the rulemaking management council on improvements to the
process to be incorporated into the rulemaking manual. Similarly, the role
of the rulemaking quality team- envisioned as a management- level team- was
to continually monitor and improve the quality of rulemaking documents and
provide recommendations to the rulemaking management council on improvements
to the process. These two teams were consolidated in 1999 because FAA
management concluded

that the two functions were difficult to separate and that both functions
would benefit from both staff- and management- level participation.

FAA Considered but Did Not To promote accountability in the rulemaking
process, the working team for Fully Implement

the 1997 study recommended a number of human capital management
Recommendations to strategies to improve the training, evaluation, and
rewarding of rulemaking

Improve Human Capital staff. The team recommended that FAA provide
orientation training on the new rulemaking process to all staff involved in
rulemaking efforts. It also

Management recommended skills assessment and additional ongoing training on

functional skill development, conflict resolution, facilitation and
consensus- based decisionmaking, project management, and team leader
training. To measure efficiency and reward performance more consistently,

the team recommended that FAA establish performance measures in the areas of
rule- processing times, rule quality, and rulemaking productivity, as well
as systems for performance evaluation. It also recommended that FAA develop
a guide to clarify to supervisors the conditions to consider when granting
rewards for good performance in rulemaking and to specify possible rewards.
As discussed in chapter 4, FAA considered but did not take steps to formally
implement these recommendations related to performance evaluation and
rewards. According to the Office of Rulemaking, the staff resources needed
to develop and implement these

initiatives were not available because rulemaking staff and management were
fully occupied with the day- to- day management of the rulemaking process.
As a result, FAA relied on existing training and rewards systems. Other
Federal Agencies

During our investigation, we also discussed rulemaking reform with Have
Undertaken

rulemaking officials from several other federal regulatory agencies whose
rules involved public safety to identify what steps they had taken to
Reforms to Address

improve their rulemaking processes. Although an evaluation of the Similar
Problems

effectiveness of the reforms undertaken by other regulatory agencies was
beyond the scope of this review, the results of our discussions with the
other rulemaking officials showed that the reforms other agencies have
proposed or implemented are in some cases similar to those proposed by FAA,
and they generally address the same types of problems faced by FAA.

For example, officials at several agencies we talked with considered
management involvement a crucial element of an efficient rulemaking process.
They used a variety of ways to improve management involvement, including the
use of senior management councils and rulemaking coordinators. For example,
EPA told us they established a regulatory policy council of senior
management, as well as regulatory coordinators across EPA to manage
priorities and resources. Other approaches cited by

regulatory agencies we contacted included the use of agency ombudsmen

and ?senior champions.? Officials at the FMCSA said a regulatory ombudsman
outside of agency program offices is responsible for moving rules through
the process and tracking rules against established milestones. According to
FMCSA officials, the ombudsman has the authority to resolve disagreements
affecting timely processing; ensure sufficient staffing to meet statutory
and internal deadlines; and represent FMCSA in discussions about individual
rulemakings with other organizations, including OST, OMB, and other federal
agencies. Rulemaking officials at FDA told us they assign a ?senior
champion? from the agency?s program offices to be responsible for scheduling
rulemaking

actions and ensuring that timely actions are taken. FDA officials said that
the senior champion concept improves accountability by establishing a single
point of responsibility. To reduce layers of internal review, other federal
agencies have taken steps to delegate authority by limiting the amount of
sequential review that takes place. For example, FDA officials said they
limit a program office?s concurrence procedures and sign- off requirements
to include only necessary staff. Rulemaking officials of the

APHIS said that, in April 1999, they began limiting all staff organizations?
reviews of regulatory packages to 2 weeks. Finally, senior managers at the
EPA said they provide flexibility to associate and regional administrators
to determine what procedures to follow on a rule- by- rule basis, allowing
managers more autonomy to tailor procedures to fit different needs. To
better administer the rulemaking process, other federal agencies have
developed automated tracking systems to monitor the progress of

regulations under development, established evaluation systems for learning
about delays in the process, and initiated appropriate actions to overcome
internal delays. For example, FDA uses a tracking system to monitor the
progress of all regulatory documents, which helps expedite the

internal clearance process for regulations under development. FDA officials
said that the tracking system has saved FDA time in processing regulations
but had not estimated the amount of time saved.

In the area of human capital management, other federal agencies cited a
number of initiatives for training and performance measurement and
evaluation. For example, to provide regulation writers with the training
necessary to adequately prepare draft regulations, officials from APHIS

encourage rulemaking staff to attend available courses and conferences or
advisory committee meetings on the relevant subjects. The officials also
encourage staff to seek technical support in drafting regulations and said
that agencies could encourage, through incentives, technical staff to
provide technical assistance to regulation writers. In addition, FDA

officials suggested using a mentor program for new staff or existing staff
to encourage them to consult with experienced regulation writers. Other
agencies have established quality standards for their rulemaking to measure
the performance of their rulemaking processes. For example, EPA measures the
quality of regulatory documents and holds senior managers accountable for
ensuring that regulatory actions meet the definition of a

quality action. When program offices at EPA are unable to demonstrate that
they can develop quality actions, fewer rulemaking actions will be assigned
to them. According to EPA regulatory officials, this is an incentive for
senior managers to develop quality rules. At FMCSA, officials said they had
a formal structure of accountability of rulemaking products and dates in
performance agreements that involve the head of the agency down to division
directors. These performance agreements have specific

rulemakings that include dates for which the staff is held accountable. In
addition, FMCSA has a supplemental statement to the performance agreement
for every staff member for rulemaking work products and dates. Despite
Reforms, FAA?s

The median time FAA took to proceed from formal initiation of rulemaking
Rulemaking Times Did through publication of the final rule increased from
about 30 months in the 3- year period prior to the reform (fiscal years 1995
to 1997) to 38 months in Not Improve

the 3- year period following the reform (fiscal years 1998 to 2000). FAA?s
median times for proceeding from initiation through release of the proposed
rule for public comment and for proceeding from the close of the public
comment period through publication of the final rule both increased by more
than 3 months after the reforms. Specifically, the median time FAA took to
proceed from initiation through the release of the proposed rule for public
comment increased from 16.5 months in the 3- year period prior to

the reforms to 20.4 months in the 3- year period following the reforms. The
median time FAA took to finalize the rule after the close of the public
comment period increased from 14 months to 16. 3 months during the same

time periods, as shown in figure 14.

Figure 14: Median Time FAA Took to Process Significant Proposed and Final
Rules for Periods Before and Since FAA?s Reforms

Note: These processing times do not include the public comment period. One
final rule that was completed in fiscal year 1998 was included in fiscal
year 1997 in this chart because it was completed prior to FAA?s reform in
January 1998. The median may not equal the arithmetic average (mean).
Because the mean gives greater influence to extreme values in assessing
processing time for

rulemaking, we elected to present median values. The change in the mean or
average values for the 3- year periods before and after FAA?s reform are as
follows: the average time taken to process proposed rules decreased
slightly, from 35.4 to 35. 3 months, and the average time taken to process
final rules increased from 19.3 to 29.8 months. Source: GAO?s analysis of
FAA and Federal Register data.

Rulemaking Reforms Did The time OST took to review and approve rules did not
improve after FAA

Not Reduce the Time Taken reformed its rulemaking process in 1998. Overall,
for both proposed and for Departmental Review final rules, the median time
OST took to approve rules (including review, and Approval of FAA?s

comment, and FAA?s response, if any) increased from about 125 days before
FAA?s reforms to about 130 days after the reforms, an increase of about 5
Significant Rules days after the reforms. Measuring the proposed and final
rules separately, we found that the median time taken for OST?s approval of
proposed rules

increased by 2 days, while the median time taken for OST?s approval of final
rules decreased by 1 day, as shown in figure 15.

Figure 15: Median Time OST Took to Approve FAA?s Significant Proposed and
Final Rules for Periods Before and Since FAA?s Reforms

Note: Because FAA?s system did not contain comparable data for all proposed
and final rules, the number of proposed and final rules in figure 15 do not
match those provided in figure 14. One final rule that was completed in
fiscal year 1998 was included in fiscal year 1997 in this chart because it
was completed prior to FAA?s reform in January 1998. The median may not
equal the arithmetic average (mean). Because the mean gives greater
influence to extreme values in assessing processing time for rulemaking, we
elected to present median values. The change in the mean or average values
for the 3- year periods before and after FAA?s reform are as follows: the
average processing times for OST?s review and approval of proposed rules
increased from 6.1 to 9.2 months, and the average processing times for final
rules decreased from 5.4 to 3.3 months. Source: GAO?s analysis of FAA and
Federal Register data.

The Number of Significant Since 1998, FAA has published fewer rules. As
shown in figure 14, FAA

Rules Published Declined as finalized 18 significant final rules in the 3-
year period prior to implementing

Proposed and Final Rules its reform. In the 3- year period following the
reform, FAA finalized only 11

Remained in the Process significant final rules. FAA rulemaking officials
attributed the change in productivity of significant rules to the agency?s
efforts to classify more

Longer rulemakings as nonsignificant and, thus, to decrease levels of
evaluation

and review within FAA, as well as to eliminate review by the Department and
OMB. However, the number of nonsignificant rules the agency published from
1995 to 2000 do not reflect this. For example, FAA published almost 50
nonsignificant proposed and final rules each year in 1995 and 1996, as
compared to less than 30 nonsignificant proposed and final rules each year
in 1999 and 2000.

In the years since FAA?s reforms, the median time that initiated significant
rulemaking projects had remained in the process without being released for
public comment (the proposed rule stage) increased by more than 4 years from
the end of fiscal year 1997 to the end of the fiscal year 2000. At

the same time, the median time that FAA?s unpublished significant final
rulemaking projects remained in the process after going through the public
comment period also increased, by about 5 months. This is shown in figure
16.

Figure 16: Median Time FAA?s Unpublished Significant Proposed and Final
Rules Had Been in Process as of September 30, 1997, and September 30, 2000
Note: Ten of the 24 unpublished proposed rules and 10 of the 19 unpublished
final rules included in the 1997 medians remained unpublished at the end of
fiscal year 2000 and thus were also included in the fiscal year 2000
medians. The median may not equal the arithmetic average (mean). Because the
mean gives greater influence to extreme values in assessing processing time
for rulemaking, we elected to present median values. The change in the mean
or average values for the 3- year periods before and after FAA?s reform are
as follows: the average time proposed rules remained unpublished

increased from 3.9 to 7.2 years, and the average time final rules remained
unpublished increased from 6.0 to 6.9 years. Source: GAO?s analysis of FAA
data.

FAA?s Suggested Time As part of its rulemaking reform in January 1998, FAA
established its own Frames Often Not Met

time frames for developing and publishing proposed and final rules, as shown
in figure 17.

Figure 17: FAA?s Time Frames for Steps After Initiation of the Rulemaking
Process Source: Based on FAA?s Rulemaking Manual, December 1998.

Although these time frames were established as a part of FAA?s reforms and
were, thus, not an applicable standard for rulemaking efforts prior to the
reforms, we compared processing times for the 3- year period preceding FAA?s
reforms to processing times for the 3- year period following FAA?s reforms
to measure the extent of the change. The percentage of FAA?s proposed rules
that proceeded from initiation through release for public comment within
FAA?s suggested time frames dropped from 47 percent prior to the reforms to
19 percent after the reforms. The percentage of rules that proceeded from
the close of the public comment period to publication as a final rule within
FAA?s suggested time frames dropped from 39 percent to 36 percent in the
same time periods. Overall, FAA did not meet time frames suggested in its
rule making guidance for more than half of its proposed and final rules
published, as shown in figure 18.

Figure 18: Percentage of FAA?s Significant Proposed and Final Rules
Published Before and Since FAA?s Reforms That Met Time Frames Suggested in
FAA?s Reform Guidance Note: The time frames suggested in FAA?s guidance are
450 days (about 15 months) for developing

proposed rules and 310 days (about 10 months and 10 days) for final rules.
Source: GAO?s analysis of FAA data.

Incomplete Implementation of FAA's Reforms Impaired Efforts to Address Long-
standing

Chapt er 4

Rulemaking Problems Despite the reforms FAA made to its rulemaking process,
many of the problems that have historically impeded the efficiency of
rulemaking at FAA continued. Our survey of FAA rulemaking staff showed that
less than 20 percent agreed that FAA has made the changes necessary to
improve the rulemaking process. 1 In addition, only about 20 percent of the
staff surveyed agreed that the rulemaking process has become more efficient
and effective in the last 2 years. (A copy of the survey is provided in app.
II.) Our interviews with FAA rulemaking staff and management and our
observations of specific rulemaking projects supported the staff's

perception and confirmed that problems in the three central areas of
management involvement, the administration of the rulemaking process
(process administration), and human capital continued to slow the process.
Problems Related to

Problems related to three general areas of management involvement Management
continued to slow the process. Multiple, shifting priorities made it
difficult

to allocate resources effectively and often disrupted the timing of the
Involvement Continued rulemaking process. Too often, policy issues were not
resolved in a timely to Slow the Process

manner. Finally, multiple layers of review continued to contribute to
delays. Numerous and Shifting

An excessive number of rulemaking priorities continued to impair the
Priorities Created Staffing efficiency of the process. The number of
projects on FAA's top priority list Resources Problems That grew from 35 in
February 1998, when FAA established the priority list after

Slowed the Rulemaking implementing its reforms, to 46 in April 2000. At that
time, the Associate Administrator for Regulation and Certification said it
was critical to

Process shorten that list to a more manageable number. However, the number
of

top rulemaking priorities continued to increase, to 49 rules by March 2001.
According to the Director of the Office of Rulemaking, the maximum number of
rulemaking projects that can be effectively managed is about 30 to 35
projects. Rulemaking officials cited external and internal pressures to add
rules to its priority list, noting that the agency's priorities change due
to

external influences such as accidents, NTSB recommendations and
congressional actions and mandates. Internally, they attributed the growth
in the number of priority rulemaking projects in part to a lack of
commitment to the reformed process of some participants and to what they

1 We surveyed 134 FAA rulemaking staff members that worked on significant
rules since fiscal year 1994 and received 109 responses, a response rate of
about 81 percent. Additional details are provided in chapter 1 in the
objectives, scope, and methodology section.

described as ?parochial? views of priorities that resulted in efforts to
circumvent the decisions of the rulemaking steering committee. For example,
officials said that some program offices circumvented the approval process
for adding rulemaking projects to the top priority list by adding projects
to their own short- term incentive plans, creating pressure on the steering
committee to add the rules to the top priority list. Our survey of
rulemaking staff showed that less than one- third (29 percent) of

the staff agreed that senior managers supported the steering committee's
decisions regarding priorities.

Not only were too many rules given top priority, but changes in the relative
ranking of ?top? priorities created problems in managing staffing resources,
thereby increasing the processing time for significant rules. Eighty- three
percent of the survey respondents agreed that changing priorities in the
rulemaking process caused delays in the process. Team members said they were
frequently pulled off of top- priority rules to work on other projects that
their management considered higher priority. They noted that these
disruptions created delays.

It is important to note that, while some of the causes of shifting
priorities stem from the current rulemaking process and can be changed,
others relate to events that FAA cannot control. For example, new safety
issues may emerge whenever there is an aviation accident. In addition,
rulemaking efforts in progress that are related to issues such as safety
threats can be overtaken by new events that then drive the agency's

priorities. While the agency can monitor the effects of outside situations,
there is little it can do to control them. Figure 19 provides an
illustration of the impact of events on FAA's development of a proposed rule
on aviation

security.

Figure 19: Case Study of FAA's Rulemaking to Revise Airport Security Rules

Source: GAO?s analysis of FAA information.

Although FAA cannot prevent unexpected events from influencing its
rulemaking priorities, FAA's system for prioritizing rules established as
part of its 1998 reform lacks explicit criteria to guide rulemaking
management in establishing and ranking the priority of projects and
assigning available resources. While FAA's rulemaking manual describes
factors that must be considered in prioritizing rulemaking projects- such as
the legislative time frames established by the Congress and projects

initiated in response to special commissions and the NTSB- the policy does
not define how these criteria should be ranked in order of importance.

Identifying and ranking the agency's top rulemaking priorities is important
because FAA's ?A? list includes the Administrator's priorities as well as
other top priority rules sponsored by different offices. The FAA
Administrator's set of rulemaking priorities constitute about half of the
?A? list of projects that are actively worked on. For example, in July 2000,
21 of the agency's 45 top priority rules were on the Administrator's list.
Yet FAA's policy for determining rulemaking priorities does not establish
the relative importance of the different factors that rulemaking managers
must consider in determining the priority of rules within the ?A? list of
top

priority projects. Without clear criteria for determining the rules'
relative ranking and consensus among all offices involved in rulemaking,
rulemaking managers may have difficulty in objectively determining, for
example, whether legislated time frames take precedence over the
Administrator's priorities or the safety recommendations of the NTSB. Thus,
a final ranking is de facto left to the steering committee, which is made up
of managers whose priorities are tied to the functions of their individual
offices. One result is that managers from different offices may be more
likely to allocate their staff resources on an ad- hoc, short- term basis,
rather than in a strategic fashion to complete the agency's highest priority

rules. During our review, the Office of Rulemaking suggested that one way of
allocating staff resources to ensure that top priority rules are completed
is to ?dedicate? team members to work on rules until they are completed.
This approach was recommended in previous reviews of FAA's rulemaking
process and is used in FAA's acquisitions of air traffic control equipment.
According to the Office of Rulemaking, if this approach was put into place,

managers of offices involved in rulemaking activities, including the offices
involved in legal, technical, and economic analyses as well as the Office of
Rulemaking, would ensure that rulemaking team members worked only on the
highest priority rule by dedicating their staffs to that project. FAA

successfully used this approach to develop its ?commuter rule? in 1995, as
shown in figure 20.

Figure 20: Case Study of FAA's Rulemaking to Revise Commuter Operations and
General Certification and Operations Requirements Source: GAO?s analysis of
FAA information.

The Office of Rulemaking, which also cited changing priorities as an ongoing
problem, noted that a continuing lack of realism in prioritizing fostered a
sense of overload on the part of rulemaking staff. Our survey of rulemaking
staff showed that only about 17 percent agreed that the amount

of work was reasonable, allowing team members to produce high- quality
products and services. Furthermore, less than one- third (about 30 percent)
agreed that management from their office provided sufficient staff and
resources to support and promote improvement in the rulemaking process.

Management Difficulties in On some rulemaking projects, the time FAA
management took to resolve Resolving Complex Policy complex policy issues
added years to the overall time taken to complete Issues Continued to Slow
the rule. Based on findings that sequential review and decisionmaking by the
Rulemaking Process

management late in the process had previously caused problems such as
extensive backlogs, rework, and delays, FAA intended in its reform to
promote a proactive management approach in which policy decisions

would be made early in the process. However, only about 28 percent of the
rulemaking staff we surveyed agreed that senior management focused on the
prevention of problems rather than on the correction of problems, and only
11 percent of the staff surveyed agreed that sequential processing does not
impact the timeliness of the rulemaking process. Figure 21 provides a case
study of a rulemaking effort related to Flight Operational Quality Assurance
(FOQA) Programs in which management's inability to resolve difficult policy
issues early in the process contributed significantly to the

overall time the rule has been in the process. This rule has taken years to
develop because of complex policy issues that at the time of our review
still had not been resolved. The policy issues concern the waiving of
enforcement actions for violations discovered through FOQA data voluntarily
provided by airlines. Agency officials said that the reason this issue has
been so difficult to resolve is that the rule could set a precedent that
would affect other regulatory agencies' enforcement efforts, and it
therefore has ramifications beyond the Department's efforts to improve

aviation safety. As a result, they considered their rulemaking efforts to be
a management success.

Figure 21: Case Study of FAA's Rulemaking to Govern Air Carriers' Flight
Operational Quality Assurance (FOQA) Programs

Source: GAO?s analysis of FAA information.

Multiple Levels of Delays in the process caused by multiple layers of review
within the agency Management Review continued despite FAA's reform efforts
because the reduction in layers of Continued to Slow the

review and the level of employee empowerment envisioned in FAA's Process
reform did not materialize. In reviewing approved project records, we found
that delegation of authority beyond the director's office had not been
achieved in spite of FAA's plans to do so. (FAA's plans are detailed in ch.
3.) For example, in reviewing projects approved since the reform was
implemented in January 1998, we found that in five of six projects not only
did the directors of team members' offices review and approve team

members' decisions, but so did their immediate managers and other managers.
In 1997, FAA had concluded that multiple layers of review fostered a lack of
accountability in the rulemaking process and that this, in turn, led to
milestones that were unrealistic or not observed because final
responsibility for the project was unclear. Our survey of rulemaking team
members showed that few (4 percent) agreed that layers of review did not
interfere with the timely processing of

rules. As noted above, only 11 percent agreed that sequential processing
does not impact the time required to complete the rulemaking process.
Finally, a minority of the respondents agreed they had the ability to
establish realistic schedules; 36 percent of the survey respondents agreed
that rulemaking teams set realistic schedules, and 19 percent of rulemaking
staff agreed that rulemaking teams have sufficient control over the
rulemaking process to set realistic milestones. Senior rulemaking managers
at FAA said that there was a fine line between

employee empowerment and the need for adequate oversight, particularly for
rules that were likely to have a significant economic or other impact on the
aviation industry. They said that FAA's reform was not intended to eliminate
managers from decisionmaking in the rulemaking process or give rulemaking
teams total independence, noting that the primary focus of the rulemaking
reform effort was to reduce the levels of review for nonsignificant rules.
According to officials from the Office of Rulemaking, review and approval of
certain nonsignificant rules that would harmonize certification requirements
for passenger aircraft established by the Joint Aviation Authorities (FAA's
European counterpart) have already been delegated below the level of
associate administrators.

Our discussions with rulemaking staff revealed a variety of reasons why they
strongly disagreed that rulemaking teams had enough control over the process
to set realistic milestones. Staff noted that internal management decisions
to change rulemaking priorities before a project was completed

and external reviews by OST caused process delays and were beyond their
control. Less than 2 percent of the rulemaking team members agreed that
departmental reviews improved the timeliness of the rulemaking process,

and less than 15 percent agreed that departmental reviews improved the
quality of rulemaking. Figure 22 shows the impact of coordination with OST
on FAA's time frames in its rulemaking efforts to revise regulations
governing the standards for aircraft repair stations.

Figure 22: Case Study of FAA's Rulemaking to Revise Aircraft Repair Station
Regulations

Source: GAO?s analysis of FAA information.

FAA's internal review process reflects the lack of empowerment as well.
Officials from OST and the Office of Rulemaking said that the requirement
for numerous layers of review reflects FAA's hierarchical management

structure and that the lack of empowerment is embodied in FAA's ?grid sheet?
for signing off on a proposed rule. The grid sheet can involve 20 different
signatures, each indicating a different layer of review. Moreover, they said
that these extensive reviews can reduce accountability, noting that, because
FAA requires a lot of signatures, rulemaking documents are sometimes passed
through the process without FAA officials reading them. Figure 23
illustrates the multiple layers of review that occurred in reaching team
concurrence for a proposed rule to require that emergency medical equipment
be carried aboard certain passenger aircraft. Figure 23: Case Study of FAA's
Rulemaking to Require Emergency Medical Equipment on Aircraft

Source: GAO?s analysis of FAA information.

DOT officials said that the time needed for their review and approval of
FAA's significant rules can be lengthy if FAA's position is not thoroughly
evaluated in terms of departmental policy early in the rulemaking process.
DOT officials also cited lack of coordination among FAA's program offices

and a lack of empowerment and accountability of rulemaking teams as problems
that continued to contribute to delays in the process. They said that
departmental review served a valuable role in ensuring that OMB's concerns
were adequately addressed and noted, for example, that OST's efforts to
coordinate proposed changes were hindered when FAA staff did not have the
authority to make the suggested changes. Problems in Process

Problems in three central areas related to the administration of the
Administration

rulemaking process continued to contribute to delays. Significant confusion
persisted regarding the roles and responsibilities of rulemaking Continued
to Impair team members. Information systems lacked complete, accurate, or
current Rulemaking

data and were inconsistently used. Finally, key elements of a continuous
improvement program to identify and correct problems in the process were not
in place.

Confusion Remained Although FAA attempted to address confusion over roles
and

Regarding the Roles and responsibilities in its reforms, our survey
indicated that only about 40

Responsibilities of percent of the individuals we surveyed agreed that the
?roles and

Participants responsibilities are clearly understood.? In addition, less
than half (47 percent) of the survey respondents agreed that ?roles and
responsibilities

are clearly established.? The effort by the Office of Rulemaking to define
roles and responsibilities for rulemaking participants in its rulemaking
manual did not appear to have eliminated confusion. As we indicated in
chapter 3, the manual describes the specific roles of legal and economic
reviewers. According to FAA's guidance, legal reviews should focus on the
legal authority for the action proposed, compliance of the proposal with
applicable laws, and whether the requirements being imposed are stated with
sufficient clarity and justification to be enforced and defended in court,
if need be. Economic reviews should estimate the costs and benefits of a
proposed or final rulemaking. However, rulemaking management said that legal
reviews continued, in some cases, to focus on nonlegal issues and that the
scope of

economic reviews could potentially be reduced. Senior legal staff involved
in the rulemaking process noted that FAA's Chief Counsel is a political
appointee whose role as advisor to the Administrator can result in the

office's involvement in policy issues, as well as assessments of the quality
of analyses conducted to support rules.

Information Systems In September 2000, we reported on the importance of
information

Consistently Track Only ?A? technology resources for federal agencies to
gather and share information, 2 List Rules and Are Not and FAA officials
cited the development of a rulemaking management Consistently Used

information system as a major element of its rulemaking reforms. According
to FAA's Office of Rulemaking, its new automated system consolidated the
functions of the existing project- tracking and documentmanagement systems.
FAA's tracking of its 24 ?A? list significant rules on this system has
established data on rulemaking times for specific steps that should help it
to monitor the rulemaking process. However, the small number of rules that
it consistently tracks and a lack of agencywide implementation has made the
system less useful than it could potentially be. Because FAA used the
project- tracking portion of the automated system only for its ?A? list of
priority projects, including 24 significant rules, the

system was missing complete and accurate data for many of the remainder of
FAA's significant rulemaking projects. FAA rulemaking officials said that
they did not have the resources available to complete, correct, or update
records of rules that were not being actively worked on from the agency's
?A? list of rules, citing resource limitations. However, since previously
initiated rulemaking projects may be shifted onto the ?A? list, historical
data could be useful for measuring the performance of the rulemaking

process over time. FAA rulemaking officials also noted that FAA's rulemaking
policy allows teams to select milestones on a case- by- case basis. However,
continuing to consider some milestones in the system voluntary may result in
a lack of consistent and comparable information on rules. Without complete,
accurate, and consistent data on all FAA's rulemaking projects, FAA

managers will not be able to use the information system to its fullest
capacity- to measure the time elapsed between specific steps in the process
to identify where and to what extent delays occur over time. Since the
rulemaking process can take years to complete, a longer- term management
perspective on the performance of the process is essential. 2 Human Capital:
A Self- Assessment Checklist for Agency Leaders, (GAO/ OCG- 00- 14G, Sept.
2000).

FAA agreed that additional performance and statistical measures should be
incorporated into the reporting system to enhance its ability to manage the
process and said it had begun making changes to the system.

The document management portion of the automated system was limited in its
usefulness because it had not been fully implemented across all offices
involved in rulemaking. FAA's technology plan called for an ?automation

champion? to lead the initiative across all of the affected offices.
However, according to the Office of Rulemaking, FAA had not designated a
champion or developed a plan or goals for an integrated system outside the
Office of Rulemaking. As a result, offices outside of the Office of
Rulemaking had

not fully implemented the new system. Although all rulemaking team members
received initial training on the new system, only 26 percent of the
respondents to our survey agreed that rulemaking team members were provided
with training when new technologies and tools were introduced. After the
initial training, we found that the system was not effectively implemented
outside of the Office of Rulemaking. We reviewed the rulemaking documents in
the system for four significant

safety- related rules and found that since FAA's reforms in 1998, only 1 of
27 rulemaking staff outside of the Office of Rulemaking on the 4 rulemaking
teams had used the automated system. This staff person used the system

only twice, on the same day in February 1998. Although officials from the
Office of Rulemaking said that the new system was available to all
rulemaking staff, only about 23 percent of the survey respondents agreed
that their coworkers used FAA's automated capabilities to record

rulemaking actions. Individuals from the Office of the Chief Counsel said
that they either did not have access to the automated system or that their
computers were not capable of using the rulemaking software. While
economists in the Office of Policy and Plans with whom we spoke had access
to the system, they said that the software was too cumbersome. One economist
said that he preferred to develop rulemaking documents that were
inaccessible to change by other team members in order to maintain the
integrity of his work product.

FAA's Implementation of Despite explicit efforts in the rulemaking reform to
establish systems to

Continuous Improvement evaluate the new process and establish quality
standards and guidance, Efforts Was Incomplete

FAA had not fully implemented a continuous improvement or quality review
program. The concept of continuous improvement is embodied in quality
management principles as well as the Government Performance and

Results Act. 3 Continuous improvement efforts are essential for identifying

problems in the rulemaking process. However, continuous improvement and
quality management teams established in FAA's reforms reported problems in
attempting to implement review systems. In the fall of 1999, members of the
continuous improvement team expressed concerns about the purpose and
authority of the team related to management's participation in establishing
and supporting the evaluation

function. To improve the effectiveness of the system, FAA combined the teams
to include both staff and management. Despite the reorganization, little
substantive work had been done in the area of process improvement at the
time of our review. For example, project teams are to complete a

?lessons learned? evaluation after publication of a proposed rule to
document practices and procedures that worked well, identify problem areas,
and determine opportunities to improve the entire rulemaking process.
However, since the process was reformed in January 1998 through fiscal year
1999, we found that FAA had not documented any evaluations. The quality and
continuous improvement teams were also expected to review sample rulemaking
documents during the progress of a selected project, perform periodic
quality assurance reviews with selected rulemaking teams, and make
recommendations to the management council regarding their findings. However,
none of these quality review functions had been accomplished. No evaluations
or recommendations had been

documented, and the rulemaking manual had not been updated since its
publication in December 1998. In discussing the issue at a steering
committee meeting, members of the management council attributed the lack of
implementation of process improvement efforts to an inadequate level of
organizational commitment to the reformed process. Rulemaking officials said
that, although the continuous improvement team met on a

regular basis to discuss lessons learned, the team had not documented the
results of their discussions. They said they planned to incorporate the
ability to document lessons learned in the next version of the management
information system and that they were updating the rulemaking manual. They
also said that another team, made up of managers from key offices,

has met monthly and sometimes weekly to implement and improve the reformed
process. 3 Executive Guide: Effectively Implementing the Government
Performance and Results

Act, (GAO/ GGD- 96- 118, June 1996).

Human Capital Human capital management initiatives focusing on training,
performance

Management Initiatives measurement and evaluation, and rewards for
rulemaking efficiency and

quality work were generally not implemented at the time of our review. for
Rulemaking According to the National Performance Review, which made
Activities Were

recommendations regarding federal agencies' rulemaking processes in
Overlooked 1993, proper training, performance measurement, and performance
incentives are needed to ensure that the agency officials involved in
regulatory activities work as effectively as possible. We reported on the

importance of training, performance measures, and performance incentives as
key elements of an effective human capital strategy in September 2000. 4 In
preparing its 1997 report, FAA's working team recommended a series of human
capital management initiatives to help rulemaking participants adjust to the
revised process and foster change throughout FAA. These areas included
training and skills assessment as

well as performance measurement, evaluation, and rewards for rulemaking
participants. Recurring Rulemaking Although FAA's reform plan called for
orientation training on the new

Training Was Limited to the rulemaking process and ongoing training in a
wide range of areas for all Office of Rulemaking Staff

staff involved in rulemaking, rulemaking participants outside the Office of
Rulemaking generally received training only on the information system
software and an introduction to the new process. A formal program for

continuing the training of all rulemaking team members in the areas of
functional skill development, conflict resolution, facilitation of and
consensus- based decisionmaking, project management, and team- leader

training was not implemented. About 50 percent of the staff surveyed agreed
that they received the training they needed to perform their jobs.
Similarly, although FAA's reforms called for the analysis of the skills
needed to function in the revised rulemaking process and to establish a
mentoring program, the Office of Rulemaking had not conducted a formal
analysis, and we found no evidence of such an analysis in the other offices

involved in rulemaking. Only the Office of Rulemaking had established a
mentoring program. Representatives from the Office of Policy and Plans and
the Office of the Chief Counsel said that they had recurring training
programs, but they agreed that these programs did not include a formal

4 Human Capital: A Self- Assessment Checklist for Agency Leaders, (GAO/ OCG-
00- 14G, Sept. 2000).

segment devoted to training to support the rulemaking process, as envisioned
by the reform. Lack of Rulemaking As we reported in January 2000, 5 a key
element of human capital Performance Measurement, management is the use of
performance management systems, including pay

Evaluation, and Rewards and other incentives, to link performance to
results. However, in the area of

Hinders Effectiveness of rulemaking, FAA has not consistently done so for
rulemaking staff and management. Although FAA's reform effort included
recommendations to Reforms

measure and evaluate team and individual team member performance and to
develop an associated rewards system, these human capital management efforts
were not implemented on a consistent, agencywide basis. According to
rulemaking officials, the staff resources needed to develop and implement
these initiatives were not available because rulemaking staff and management
were fully occupied with the day- to- day management of the rulemaking
process. As noted above, we found

evidence that some individual senior managers' performance evaluations
included rulemaking projects specific to their program areas. The Government
Performance and Results Act of 1993 requires agencies to pursue performance-
based management including results- oriented goal setting and performance
measurement. Although the act gives agencies the impetus for tailoring their
human capital systems to their specific missions and objectives, it is up to
agencies, like FAA, to follow through on the opportunity. FAA implemented an
agencywide effort to link performance with rewards in April 2000. FAA's new
core compensation plan provides for pay increases tied to performance and
individual contributions. Despite the

opportunities provided by the new compensation system, as well as personnel
reforms enacted in 1996 to provide FAA with greater flexibility in human
capital management, FAA management has not established systems to measure
and reward performance in rulemaking based on the quality or timeliness of
the process. One measure of rulemaking performance is the time taken to
complete steps in the process to develop and issue a rule. To implement
rulemaking reforms, senior managers involved in FAA's rulemaking agreed that
process milestones were appropriate measures of rulemaking

performance. However, results from our survey of rulemaking staff indicate
that, while slightly more than one- half (51 percent) agreed that milestones

5 Human Capital: Key Principles from Nine Private Sector Organizations (GAO/
GGD- 00- 28, Jan. 31, 2000).

are used to assess the overall performance of teams, team members did not
believe that using milestones is an accepted or acceptable means of
measuring performance. For example, less than one half of the respondents

(about 48 percent) agreed that senior management holds team members
accountable when teams do not meet milestones. Only 20 percent agreed that
senior management is held accountable when teams do not meet milestones.
Less than 20 percent agreed that rulemaking teams have sufficient control
over the rulemaking process to set realistic milestones. Only 36 percent of
the staff agreed that teams set realistic schedules. Only 8

percent agreed that their offices provide incentives based on the milestones
of the rulemaking process. Officials in the Office of Rulemaking suggested
that one method to provide agencywide incentives for timely rulemaking would
be to include a goal for the agency's timely rulemaking in the short- term
incentive plans for all senior managers involved in rulemaking.

The Office of Rulemaking did not develop a separate rulemaking award system
as recommended by the working team. They said rulemaking awards were given
based on the preexisting agency award system in which individuals and teams
are recognized for outstanding performance on

various projects. Although about 70 percent of the staff surveyed agreed
that management from their offices provides an environment that ?supports my
involvement, contributions, and teamwork on the rulemaking team,? few
rulemaking staff that responded to our survey agreed that teamwork is
rewarded. Specifically, only 28 percent of rulemaking staff agreed with the
statement ?I am appropriately rewarded for teamwork in the rulemaking
process (e. g., performance ratings, cash awards,

certificates, or public recognition).? Conclusions FAA's reforms of its
rulemaking process have not fully addressed the longstanding problems that
can lead to unnecessary delays because the initiatives have either not been
fully implemented or their implementation has been impaired by a lack of
management commitment and support. Management's attention to factors
critical to achieving desired results- establishing baseline data,
priorities, a plan for addressing root causes, and an evaluation system to
measure the agency's progress- would facilitate effective implementation of
the reform initiatives begun in 1998.

FAA's management committees that were established as a part of the reform
are a step in the right direction in FAA's efforts to improve management
involvement, encourage timely resolution of policy issues,

and reduce layers of review. Clarifying staff and management's roles in the
process and including performance expectations, measures, evaluations, and
rewards based on these roles is an essential step in establishing a
performance system for rulemaking that emphasizes accountability and

results. The system must hold staff and managers accountable for producing
timely, quality rules that are needed to improve aviation safety and
security. Equally essential are automated information systems to monitor the
performance of the individuals and offices in the process and provide
information to continually evaluate and improve rulemaking. A performance
management system is a key element of an effective human capital strategy
that is the best, and perhaps the only, means of obtaining the needed level
of commitment and support from FAA management and staff. FAA's new Core
Compensation Plan that provides for pay increases tied to performance and
individual contributions offers the agency an

opportunity to establish new systems for performance measurement,
evaluation, and rewards based on timeliness and quality in rulemaking for
all offices involved in the process. Finally, the Wendell H. Ford Aviation
Investment and Reform Act for the 21st Century provides an as yet

unrealized opportunity for FAA to reduce the number of rules that must go
through one of the levels of review- the review by the Office of the
Secretary of Transportation. Adhering to the provisions of the act could
reduce the processing time for selected significant rules that meet the
criteria established in the act.

Recommendations To improve the efficiency of its rulemaking process and reap
the maximum benefits from its rulemaking reform efforts, we recommend that
the Secretary of Transportation direct the FAA Administrator to take steps
to improve management involvement in the rulemaking process by  reducing
the number of top- priority projects to a manageable number over time by
limiting the number of projects added until existing

projects are completed and establishing criteria for ranking the highest
priority rules so that the lowest ranked of these priority rules may be
tabled if necessary to allow sufficient resources to be applied to emerging,
higher- priority projects;

 providing resources sufficient for rulemaking teams to meet the agency's
suggested time frames. One approach, suggested by the Office of Rulemaking,
is to prototype the use of dedicated rulemaking teams by assigning staff for
the duration of rulemaking projects. This approach would give the teams the
ability to focus their efforts and manage projects to completion;

 holding managers at the director and associate administrator level
accountable for making and supporting policy decisions as early as possible
in the rulemaking process; and

 empowering team members by giving them the authority to coordinate with
their associate administrators so that they can represent the associate
administrator's policies, thus eliminating the need for the separate step of
associate administrator's review and approval; empowering team members by
permitting them to set their own schedules and deadlines; and holding staff
and management accountable for ensuring that schedules are realistic.

In addition, the Secretary of Transportation should direct the FAA
Administrator to take steps to improve administration of the rulemaking
process by

 clearly communicating the roles and responsibilities of program and
support staff on rulemaking teams and holding team members and their
managers accountable for limiting their reviews to established criteria;

 ensuring that information systems used for rulemaking tracking and
coordination contain current, complete, and accurate data on the status of
all significant rulemaking projects, including the time elapsed between
FAA's transmission of rules to OST and the receipt of OST's comments or
approval; and

 implementing elements of its proposed continuous improvement program and
using the resulting information to identify problems in the process and
potential solutions. Finally, the Secretary of Transportation should direct
the FAA Administrator to take steps to improve human capital management of
the rulemaking process by establishing a human capital management strategy
for offices involved in rulemaking that includes

 providing training and support to all participants that promotes use of
the agency's automated information system and collaborative, teambased
decisionmaking skills, and assessing the skills of rulemaking staff and
developing targeted training to better enable them to fulfill their
rulemaking roles; and

 establishing and implementing performance measures based on expectations,
evaluations, and incentives that promote timely, quality rules. One approach
suggested by the Office of Rulemaking would be to include a goal for the
agency's timely rulemaking in the short- term incentive plans for all senior
managers involved in rulemaking.

In addition, we recommend that the Secretary revise departmental policies to
make them consistent with the provisions of the Wendell H. Ford Aviation
Investment and Reform Act for the 21st Century and reduce the number of
FAA's significant rules subject to its review.

Agency Comments We provided a draft of this report to the Office of the
Secretary of the Department of Transportation and FAA for their review and
comment. In following discussions, departmental and FAA officials indicated
that they

agreed with a number of the draft report's recommendations. For example,
they said that FAA will take steps to ensure that the rulemaking tracking
system is completely accurate and up- to- date, and includes all appropriate
tracking milestones. Furthermore, they agreed that FAA will use its
continuous improvement program to identify potential process improvements
and will hold senior management accountable for

providing policy input as early as possible in the rulemaking process. These
officials also indicated that some of the draft report's recommendations
will require further consideration, and that a specific response to each of
the report's recommendations will be provided in the Department's response
to the final report. FAA officials provided technical comments, which we
incorporated into the report. The Department also provided written comments
on the report,

which discussed four main points about the results of the review. The full
text of FAA's written comments is provided in appendix V, along with our
detailed response to these comments.

Appendi xes Status of 76 Significant Rules in FAA?s

Appendi x I

Workload FY 1995 - FY 2000 Publication of a proposed Publication of the
Initiation

rule in the Federal

final rule in the Terminated or

Rule title date

Register Federal Register withdrawn

1 Revision of Airman Medical Standards 07/ 09/ 82 10/ 21/ 94 03/ 19/ 96 and
Certification Procedures

Aircraft Flight Simulator Use in Pilot 01/ 07/ 83 08/ 11/ 92 07/ 02/ 96

2

Training, Testing, and Checking and at Training Centers Improved Standards
for Determining 10/ 07/ 83 11/ 30/ 87 02/ 18/ 98

3

Rejected Takeoff and Landing Perfor mance

4 Passenger- Carrying and Cargo Air 05/ 18/ 84 10/ 12/ 88 12/ 20/ 95

Operations for Compensation or Hire

5 Flight Attendant Requirements 02/ 04/ 86 04/ 14/ 89 06/ 06/ 96

6 Part 145 Review: Repair Stations 09/ 18/ 86 06/ 21/ 99 not yet published
Type and Number of Passenger

10/ 15/ 86 02/ 22/ 90 11/ 08/ 96

7

Emergency Exits Required in Transport Category Airplanes

8 Improved Survival Equipment for 05/ 01/ 85 06/ 30/ 88 not yet published

Inadvertent Water Landings

9 Air Carrier and Commercial Operator 08/ 01/ 88 12/ 13/ 94 12/ 20/ 95

Training Programs

10 Retrofit of Improved Seats in Air Carrier 01/ 26/ 88 05/ 17/ 88 not yet
published Transport Category Airplanes

11 Drug Enforcement Assistance 11/ 18/ 88 03/ 12/ 90 not yet published

12 Sole Radio Navigation System; Minimum 05/ 12/ 89 not yet published

Standards for Certification Airworthiness Standards; Occupant

05/ 29/ 87 07/ 14/ 93 06/ 30/ 98

13

Protection Standards for Commuter Category Airplanes

14 Fatigue Evaluation of Structure 04/ 18/ 88 07/ 19/ 93 03/ 31/ 98

15 Fatigue Test Requirements for Aging 12/ 01/ 89 07/ 07/ 95

Aircraft

16 Aircraft Operator Security 03/ 10/ 87 08/ 01/ 97 not yet published

17 Airport Security 03/ 10/ 87 08/ 01/ 97 not yet published

18 Alternative Means of Compliance 11/ 02/ 89 02/ 03/ 97

19 Pilot Operating and Experience 10/ 11/ 90 03/ 23/ 93 04/ 27/ 95

Requirements

20 Child Restraint Systems 05/ 30/ 90 02/ 13/ 96

(Continued From Previous Page)

Publication of a proposed Publication of the

Initiation rule in the Federal

final rule in the Terminated or

Rule title date

Register Federal Register withdrawn

Cost of Services and Transfer of Fees to 06/ 07/ 90 not yet published

21

Part 187 from Parts #47, #49, #61, #63, #65, and #143

22 Unescorted Access Privilege 11/ 27/ 90 02/ 13/ 92 10/ 03/ 95

23 Aging Aircraft Safety 10/ 29/ 91 10/ 05/ 93 not yet published
Airworthiness Standards: Systems and 03/ 01/ 94 07/ 22/ 94 02/ 09/ 96

24

Equipment Rules based on European Joint Aviation Requirements Airworthiness
Standards: Powerplant 03/ 01/ 94 06/ 30/ 94 02/ 09/ 96

25

Rules based on European Joint Aviation Requirements Airworthiness Standards:
Flight Rules 07/ 23/ 91 07/ 25/ 94 02/ 09/ 96

26

Based on European Joint Aviation Re quirements

27 Airport Noise Compatibility Planning 08/ 14/ 90 not yet published Anti-
Drug and Alcohol Misuse Prevention 10/ 29/ 91 12/ 05/ 92 01/ 13/ 00

28

Programs for Employees of Foreign Air Carriers Engaged in Specified Aviation
Activities

29 Corrosion Control Program 03/ 09/ 93 not yet published

30 Revised Access to Type III Exits 10/ 30/ 92 01/ 30/ 95 not yet published

31 Flight Operational Quality Assurance 01/ 11/ 93 07/ 05/ 00 not yet
published

Program

32 National Air Tour Safety Standards 10/ 11/ 90 not yet published Revision
of Emergency Evacuation 11/ 18/ 93 07/ 18/ 95 not yet published

33

Demonstration Procedures to Improve Participant Safety

34 Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance 04/ 22/ 93 03/ 31/ 94 12/ 29/ 94

System (TCAS 1) Operations of Jet Aircraft in Commuter

11/ 10/ 92 02/ 14/ 96

35

Slots at LaGuardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport

36 Rules of Practice for Federally- Assisted 04/ 06/ 94 06/ 09/ 94 10/ 16/
96 Airport Proceedings

Overflights of Units of the National Park 02/ 17/ 94 not yet published a

37 System

38 Child Restraint Systems 07/ 18/ 94 06/ 09/ 95 06/ 04/ 96

39 Controlled Rest on the Flight Deck 03/ 10/ 93 not yet published

(Continued From Previous Page)

Publication of a proposed Publication of the

Initiation rule in the Federal

final rule in the Terminated or

Rule title date

Register Federal Register withdrawn

Commuter Operations and General 12/ 06/ 94 03/ 29/ 95 12/ 20/ 95

40

Certification and Operations Requirements Flight Crewmember Duty Period

05/ 24/ 94 12/ 20/ 95 not yet published

41

Limitations, Flight Time Limitations and Rest Requirements

42 Submission to Drug Tests 12/ 01/ 89 02/ 09/ 00

43 Mountain Flying 01/ 03/ 95 03/ 26/ 98

44 Type Certification Procedures for 10/ 14/ 94 05/ 02/ 97 6/ 07/ 00

Changed Products

45 Passenger Facility Charges 06/ 03/ 94 04/ 16/ 96 04/ 10/ 00

46 Revisions to Flight Data Recorder Rules 03/ 08/ 95 07/ 16/ 96 07/ 17/ 97

47 Special Flight Rules in the Vicinity of 03/ 01/ 95 07/ 31/ 96 12/ 31/ 96
Grand Canyon National Park

48 Financial Responsibility Requirements for 01/ 11/ 96 07/ 25/ 96 08/ 26/
98

Licensed Launch Activities

49 Commercial Space Transportation 01/ 11/ 96 03/ 19/ 97 04/ 21/ 99
Licensing Regulations

Duration Between Examinations for 12/ 16/ 94 02/ 09/ 00

50

First- and Second- Airman Medical Certifi cates

51 False and Misleading Statements 08/ 22/ 94 not yet published Regarding
Aircraft Parts

52 Special Flight Rules in the Vicinity of the 02/ 26/ 96 05/ 15/ 96 01/ 08/
97 Rocky Mountain National Park

53 Placarding Certain Cargo or Baggage 06/ 10/ 96 07/ 21/ 97 Compartments

54 Security Programs of Foreign Air Carriers 06/ 06/ 96 11/ 23/ 98 not yet
published Fees for Providing Production 07/ 15/ 96 07/ 15/ 97 10/ 27/ 97

55

Certification- Related Services Outside the United States

56 Civil Aviation Security User Fees 05/ 30/ 96 02/ 05/ 98 Noise Limitations
for Aircraft Operations 12/ 24/ 96 12/ 31/ 96 not yet published

57

in the Vicinity of Grand Canyon National Park Prohibition of the
Transportation of 12/ 11/ 96 08/ 27/ 98 not yet published

58

Devices Designed as Chemical Oxygen Generators as Cargo in Aircraft

(Continued From Previous Page)

Publication of a proposed Publication of the

Initiation rule in the Federal

final rule in the Terminated or

Rule title date

Register Federal Register withdrawn

59 Protection of Voluntarily Submitted 12/ 11/ 96 07/ 26/ 99 not yet
published

Information

60 Licensing and Safety Requirements of 01/ 13/ 97 not yet published

Launch From Non- Federal Launch Site Establishment of Corridors in the Grand
03/ 01/ 97 05/ 15/ 97 07/ 15/ 98

61

Canyon National Park Special Flight Rules Area Revised Standards for Cargo
or Baggage 10/ 12/ 96 06/ 13/ 97 2/ 17/ 98

62

Compartments in Transport Category Airplanes

63 Child Restraint Systems 04/ 07/ 97 not yet published

64 Air Tour Operators in the State of Hawaii 06/ 09/ 94 08/ 28/ 00 09/ 29/
00

65 Terrain Awareness and Warning System 02/ 11/ 97 08/ 26/ 98 03/ 29/ 00

66 High Density Airports; Allocation of Slots 09/ 26/ 97 01/ 12/ 99 10/ 01/
99

67 Security of Checked Baggage on Flights 07/ 08/ 97 04/ 19/ 99 not yet
published Within the United States

68 Transport Airplane Fuel Tank System 03/ 12/ 98 10/ 29/ 99 not yet
published

Design Review Commercial Air Tour Limitations in the

10/ 04/ 98 07/ 09/ 99 04/ 04/ 00

69

Grand Canyon National Park Special Flight Rules Area Modification of the
Dimensions of the 12/ 14/ 98 07/ 09/ 99 04/ 04/ 00

70

Grand Canyon National Park Special Flight Rules Area

71 Certification of Screening Companies 05/ 20/ 98 01/ 05/ 00 not yet
published Revisions to Digital Flight Data Recorder 05/ 10/ 99 11/ 18/ 99
not yet published b

72

Regulations for Boeing 737 Airplanes and Part 125 Operations 73 Emergency
Medical Equipment 10/ 05/ 98 05/ 24/ 00 not yet published

74 Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance 05/ 28/ 98 not yet published

Systems Improved Flammability Standards for

12/ 04/ 98 09/ 25/ 00 not yet published

75

Thermal/ Acoustic Insulation Materials Used in Transport Category Airplanes

76 Certification of Airports 02/ 28/ 97 07/ 05/ 00 not yet published a In
commenting on the draft report, FAA officials noted that the proposed rule
had been published on April 27, 2001.

b In commenting on the draft report, FAA officials noted that the proposed
rule had been published on April 4, 2001.

Survey of Federal Aviation Administration

Appendi x II

Rulemaking Participants         
   

Introduction

Please return the completed survey to: The U. S. General Accounting Office
(GAO), a congressional agency that reviews federal programs, has been asked
by

Mark Lambert/ Chris Keisling Congress to review the Federal Aviation
Administration?s

U. S. General Accounting Office (FAA) rulemaking efforts and obtain
information on the

Room 6K17R results of the recent reengineering of the process. We are

441 G St., NW focusing on significant rulemaking, for example, those rules

Washington, D. C. 20548 with substantial impact on safety problems, those
that are controversial, or those that have a potential economic impact on
the aviation industry of $100 million or more. As part of

Thank you in advance for your assistance. this effort, we are: (1)
developing a data base of time required to process significant rules, (2)
conducting a survey

Definitions of Key Terms

of rulemaking team members, (3) interviewing selected staff, and (4)
conducting case studies.

?Teams? refer to your personal experience as a member of a cross- functional
rulemaking team. We are sending this questionnaire to all FAA staff that
were team members on significant rules listed in the Unified

?Office? refers to your organizational affiliation (e. g., AAM, Agenda of
Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions from

ACP, AFS, AGC, AIR, ARM, or APO). October 1999. This questionnaire asks your
opinions of the rulemaking process based on your participation on a

?ARAC? refers to the Aviation Rulemaking rulemaking team( s) for a
significant rule. We plan to

Advisory Committee aggregate the survey responses and use the resulting
information in our report on the status of FAA?s rulemaking

?NTSB? refers to the National Transportation process.

Safety Board

We recognize that there are great demands on your

?OST? refers to the Office of the Secretary of Transportation

time and appreciate your efforts in helping us collect information on the
rulemaking process.

?OMB? refers to the Office of Management and Budget

BEFORE YOU CONTINUE:

?Team leader? refers to the individual representing Have you participated in
formulating significant security or

the Office of Primary Interest safety rules since October 1993 (beginning of
fiscal year 1994)? (Check one)

?Project manager? refers to the individual representing the Office of
Rulemaking

1. [ ] Yes Please continue with this survey.

2. [ ] No STOP! Please return this survey in the enclosed postage- paid
envelope.

Instructions

In order to gather consistent information, we are providing definitions for
key terms used in this questionnaire. If you have any questions regarding
these terms, please contact Chris Keisling, GAO Senior Evaluator at 404-
679- 1917 (email is keislingc. atlro@ gao. gov) or Mark Lambert, GAO Senior
Evaluator at 404- 679- 1965 (email is lambertm. atlro@ gao. gov).

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     