Next Generation Air Transportation System: Status of the
Transition to the Future Air Traffic Control System (09-MAY-07,
GAO-07-784T).
The nation's current air traffic control system is reaching its
capacity limits as demand for air transportation grows. The Next
Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) represents a new
system that will use state-of-the-art technologies and
procedures. Transitioning to NextGen will require the Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) to continue to sustain the current
air traffic control system while acquiring new systems on
schedule and on budget. In 2003, Congress authorized the creation
of the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO), housed
within FAA, to plan NextGen and coordinate the transition. GAO's
testimony focuses on the progress FAA is making in implementing
businesslike operations that could provide a foundation for
managing the transition to NextGen, the status of JPDO's planning
and facilitation of NextGen, and some key challenges that FAA and
JPDO need to address in moving toward NextGen. This statement is
based on GAO's November 2006 report and recent testimonies as
well as ongoing work. GAO's November report recommended that FAA
study its technical and contract management expertise and that
JPDO take actions to institutionalize its collaborative
practices. FAA and JPDO said they would consider our
recommendations.
-------------------------Indexing Terms-------------------------
REPORTNUM: GAO-07-784T
ACCNO: A69385
TITLE: Next Generation Air Transportation System: Status of the
Transition to the Future Air Traffic Control System
DATE: 05/09/2007
SUBJECT: Air traffic control systems
Air traffic controllers
Air transportation
Commercial aviation
Concept of operations
Enterprise architecture
Future budget projections
Program evaluation
Program management
Strategic planning
Systems conversions
Transportation planning
Next Generation Air Transportation
System
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GAO-07-784T
* [1]Improved, Businesslike Operations Should Better Position FAA
* [2]Progress Has Been Made but Further Work Remains to Instituti
* [3]FAA Has Reported Cost Savings through Outsourcing and Facili
* [4]Mitigating Remaining Risks and Institutionalization of Impro
* [5]Institutionalizing Changes Within FAA Will Require Continued
* [6]JPDO Has Made Progress in Planning NextGen, but Continues to
* [7]JPDO Has Made Progress Toward Releasing Key Planning Documen
* [8]Institutionalizing the Collaborative Process Will Continue t
* [9]FAA and JPDO Continue to Face a Number of Challenges in Movi
* [10]FAA Needs to Explore Whether It Has the Technical and Contra
* [11]Although FAA Is Now Focusing on NextGen, It Must Continue to
* [12]FAA and JPDO Have Begun to Release Early Cost Estimates for
* [13]JPDO's Lack of Stable Leadership and the Authority to Enforc
* [14]Human Factors Research Is Critical to Some Fundamental NextG
* [15]JPDO Faces A Continuing Challenge in Ensuring the Involvemen
* [16]GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgment
* [17]GAO's Mission
* [18]Obtaining Copies of GAO Reports and Testimony
* [19]Order by Mail or Phone
* [20]To Report Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in Federal Programs
* [21]Congressional Relations
* [22]Public Affairs
Testimony
Before the Subcommittee on Aviation, Committee on Transportation and
Infrastructure, House of Representatives
United States Government Accountability Office
GAO
For Release on Delivery
Expected at 10:00 a.m. EDT
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
NEXT GENERATION AIR TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM
Status of the Transition to the Future Air Traffic Control System
Statement of Gerald L. Dillingham, Ph.D. Director, Physical Infrastructure
Issues
GAO-07-784T
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: I appreciate the opportunity
to testify before you today to discuss the future of air traffic control
modernization. The nation's current air traffic control system is reaching
its capacity limits as demand for air transportation continues to grow
each year. The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen)
represents a transformation to a new system that will use satellite-based
technologies and state-of-the-art procedures to handle the increasing
volume of air traffic, while further improving safety and security.
Transitioning to NextGen, however, will require the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) to continue to operate and sustain the current air
traffic control system while simultaneously acquiring and deploying the
new NextGen systems on budget and on schedule.
In December 2000, President Clinton signed an executive order, and
Congress passed supporting legislation that, together, provided FAA with
the authority to create the performance-based1 Air Traffic Organization
(ATO) to administer and improve FAA's management of its current air
traffic control modernization efforts. In 2003, Congress authorized the
creation of the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO), housed
within FAA, to plan for and coordinate a transition to NextGen--envisioned
as a move from largely ground-based radars to precision satellite-based
navigation and including digital, networked communications; an integrated
weather system; layered, adaptive security; and more. In addition to FAA,
JPDO operates in conjunction with multiple federal partner agencies and
with the private sector to collaboratively conceptualize and plan the
NextGen system.2
The reauthorization of FAA provides an opportunity to examine how the
agency is managing the transformation to NextGen. My testimony today
focuses on the following questions: (1) What progress is FAA making in
implementing initiatives that could provide a solid foundation for
managing the transition to NextGen? (2) What is the status of JPDO's
planning and facilitation of the transition to NextGen? and (3) What are
some key challenges that FAA and JPDO need to address in moving toward
NextGen? My statement is based on our November 2006 report3 and recent
testimonies4 as well as on-going work. We conducted this work in
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.
1Performance-based organizations are discrete units, led by a chief
operating officer, that commit to clear objectives, specific measurable
goals, customer service standards, and targets for improved performance.
2JPDO's partner agencies include the Departments of Transportation,
Commerce, Defense, and Homeland Security; FAA; the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA); and the White House Office of Science and
Technology Policy.
In summary:
o During the last few years, FAA has made significant progress in
implementing businesslike operations and procedures for acquiring
and managing air traffic control systems which have improved FAA's
management of the current system and should better position the
agency to manage the enormously complex transition to NextGen.
However, further work remains to fully address past problems in
acquiring systems and to institutionalize changes throughout the
agency. By creating the Air Traffic Organization and appointing a
chief operating officer, FAA established a new management
structure and adopted more leading practices of private sector
businesses to address the cost, schedule, and performance
shortfalls that have plagued air traffic control acquisitions. One
outcome of these changes is that for the past 3 fiscal years, FAA
has reported exceeding its system acquisition goals. For fiscal
year 2006, FAA reported that its critical acquisitions were 100
percent on budget and over 97 percent on schedule. FAA has also
improved its management of the air traffic control system through
increased efforts to achieve cost savings by outsourcing and
consolidating facilities. Currently, FAA is seeking savings
through outsourcing its planned nationwide deployment of a
critical NextGen surveillance technology. To help sustain progress
in managing acquisitions and address remaining program risks, FAA
is working with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to
develop goals and milestones for FAA to meet in further reducing
acquisition risks. Despite FAA's progress, however, the FAA
administrator's term ends in September 2007 and the chief
operating officer left in February 2007, after serving 3 years.
Thus, FAA will have lost two of its significant agents for change
by the end of September. FAA's new leaders will need to
demonstrate the same commitment to improvement as the outgoing
leaders.
3GAO, Next Generation Air Transportation System: Progress and Challenges
Associated with the Transformation of the National Airspace System,
[23]GAO-07-25 (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 13, 2006).
4GAO, Federal Aviation Administration: Key Issues in Ensuring the
Efficient Development and Safe Operation of the Next Generation Air
Transportation System, [24]GAO-07-636T (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 22, 2007)
and GAO, Joint Planning and Development Office: Progress and Key Issues in
Planning the Transition to the Next Generation Air Transportation System,
[25]GAO-07-693T (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 29, 2007).
o JPDO has made progress in furthering its key planning documents,
but continues to face challenges in institutionalizing its
collaborative practices. JPDO is developing several key
documents--a Concept of Operations, an Enterprise Architecture,
and an Integrated Work Plan--that together form the foundation of
NextGen planning. JPDO has missed earlier milestones regarding the
release of its Concept of Operations and Enterprise Architecture.
JPDO currently plans to release initial versions of all three
documents by July 2007. As we noted in November 2006, JPDO is
fundamentally a planning and coordinating body that lacks
authority over the key human and technological resources of its
partner agencies. Thus, institutionalizing the collaborative
process between these partner agencies will continue to be
critical to JPDO's success. However, JPDO still does not have in
place a formal, long-term agreement among its partner agencies on
their roles and responsibilities in planning and facilitating the
transition to NextGen. JPDO has been working since 2005 to
establish a memorandum of understanding between the partner
agencies, although as of May 4, 2007, the memorandum had been
signed by the Departments of Transportation and Commerce and NASA;
the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security had not yet
signed.5 It will also be important for institutionalizing
collaboration to incorporate NextGen goals and activities into the
partner agencies' key planning documents, as FAA is currently
doing with its Operational Evolution Partnership--FAA's new
implementation plan for NextGen. JPDO is also working with OMB to
establish mechanisms to identify NextGen-related projects across
the partner agencies and consider NextGen as a unified,
cross-agency program for funding decisions.
o FAA and JPDO continue to face a number of challenges in moving
toward NextGen, including determining whether the organizations
have the adequate and appropriate technical and contract
management expertise, managing and sustaining the current system,
identifying who will conduct necessary research and development
activities, obtaining stable leadership, conducting needed human
factors research, and ensuring the involvement of all key
stakeholders. In November 2006, we recommended that FAA examine
its strengths and weaknesses with regard to the technical and
contract management expertise that will be required to define,
implement, and integrate the numerous complex programs inherent in
the transition to NextGen. In response to our recommendation, FAA
is working with the National Academy of Public Administration to
explore these issues. JPDO recently estimated that the total
federal cost for NextGen infrastructure through 2025 will range
between $15 billion and $22 billion. However, questions remain
over which entities will fund and conduct some of the necessary
research, development, and demonstration projects that will be key
to achieving certain NextGen capabilities. According to officials
at FAA and JPDO, they are currently studying these issues and
trying to assess how much research and development FAA can assume.
Of critical importance in the area of NextGen research is human
factors research given the fundamental changes that NextGen
envisions in the roles of air traffic controllers and pilots due
to automation and changes in surveillance technologies and
communications. JPDO has suffered from a lack of stable leadership
and is now functioning under its third director. This issue is
exacerbated by JPDO's senior policy committee, which has met only
four times and has not met at all as a formal body since November
2005. Finally, JPDO faces a continuing challenge in ensuring the
involvement of all key stakeholders, such as active air traffic
controllers and technicians. Our work on past air traffic control
modernization projects has shown that a lack of stakeholder or
expert involvement early and throughout a project can lead to
costly increases and delays.
5According to JPDO, it is not appropriate for the Office of Science and
Technology Policy, as a White House agency, to sign the MOU.
In November 2006, we recommended that the Secretary of
Transportation direct FAA to undertake a formal exploration of the
agency's strengths and weaknesses with regard to the technical
expertise and contract management expertise that will be required
to define, implement, and integrate the numerous complex programs
and systems inherent in the transition to NextGen. We recommended
that the Secretary direct JPDO to take actions to institutionalize
the partner agencies' collaboration in supporting NextGen,
including action on a memorandum of understanding among the
partner agencies, actions to finalize procedures to leverage
partner agency resources, and actions to develop procedures for
dispute resolution. We also recommended that the Secretary direct
JPDO to determine whether key stakeholders and expertise are not
currently represented in JPDO planning efforts. FAA and JPDO
officials neither agreed nor disagreed with our recommendations,
but said they would consider them.
Improved, Businesslike Operations Should Better Position FAA to
Implement and Manage NextGen, but Further Work Remains
During the last few years, FAA has made significant progress in
implementing businesslike processes and procedures for managing
and acquiring air traffic control systems. This contrasts with the
previous decade's air traffic control modernization program which
was characterized by chronic cost and schedule difficulties with
systems acquisitions. The implementation of these businesslike
operations has improved FAA's management of the current system and
should better position the agency to manage the enormously complex
transition to NextGen. However, further work remains to fully
address past problems and institutionalize these changes
throughout the agency, especially given the changing leadership
within both FAA and ATO.
Progress Has Been Made but Further Work Remains to
Institutionalize Recent Improvements in Management and
Acquisition Processes
A successful transition to NextGen will depend, to a great extent,
on FAA's ability to manage the acquisition and integration of
multiple NextGen systems. In recent years, FAA has made
significant progress toward improving its management of
acquisitions. However, FAA's air traffic control modernization
program remains on our list of high risk programs because of its
history of systemic management and acquisition problems that
contributed to cost growth, schedule slippages, and performance
shortfalls and the relative recentness of the turnaround in the
program's performance. The realization of NextGen goals could be
severely compromised if FAA's improved program management and
outcomes are not institutionalized and carried over into the
implementation of NextGen, which is an even more complex and
ambitious undertaking than past modernization efforts.
By creating ATO and appointing a chief operating officer (COO) to
head ATO, FAA established a new management structure and adopted
more leading practices of private sector businesses to address the
cost, schedule, and performance shortfalls that have plagued air
traffic control acquisitions. ATO has worked to create a flatter
organization, with fewer management layers, and has reported
reducing executive staffing by 20 percent and total management by
16 percent. In addition, FAA uses a performance management system
to hold managers responsible for the success of ATO. More
specifically, to better manage its acquisitions and address
problems we have identified,6 FAA has
o undertaken human capital initiatives to improve its acquisition
workforce culture and build towards a results-oriented,
high-performing organization;
o developed and applied a process improvement model to assess the
maturity of its software and systems capabilities resulting in,
among other things, enhanced productivity and greater ability to
predict schedules and resources; and
o reported that it has established a policy and guidance on using
earned value management (EVM) in its acquisition management system
and that 19 of its major programs are currently using EVM.7
One outcome of the implementation of the changes in program
management and operations is that for the past three fiscal years,
FAA has reported exceeding system acquisition goals. FAA's goals
for fiscal year 2006 were to have 85 percent of critical
acquisition programs within 10 percent of budget, as reflected in
its capital investment plan, and to have 85 percent of critical
acquisition programs on schedule. For fiscal year 2006, FAA
reported that its critical acquisitions were 100 percent on budget
and over 97 percent on schedule.
FAA Has Reported Cost Savings through Outsourcing and Facility
Consolidations
FAA has also improved its management of its air traffic control
program through increased efforts to achieve cost savings by
outsourcing and consolidating facilities. For example, FAA is
outsourcing flight service stations and estimates a $2.2 billion
savings over 12 years. Similarly, FAA is seeking savings through
outsourcing its planned nationwide deployment of Automatic
Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), a critical NextGen
surveillance technology. FAA is planning to implement ADS-B
through a performance-based contract in which FAA will pay
"subscription" charges for the ADS-B services and the vendor will
be responsible for building and maintaining the infrastructure.
(FAA also reports that the ADS-B rollout will allow the agency to
remove 50 percent of its current secondary radars, saving money in
the program's baseline. The remaining radars will serve as a
back-up system to ADS-B.) As for consolidating facilities, FAA is
currently restructuring ATO's administrative service areas from
nine offices to three offices, which FAA estimates will save up to
$460 million over 10 years.
6GAO, Federal Aviation Administration: Stronger Architecture Program
Needed to Guide Systems Modernization Efforts, [26]GAO-05-266 (Washington,
D.C.: Apr. 29, 2005); Air Traffic Control: System Management Capabilities
Improved, but More can be Done to Institutionalize Improvements,
[27]GAO-04-901 (Washington, D.C.: Aug. 20, 2004); and Information
Technology: FAA Has Many Investment Management Capabilities in Place, but
More Oversight of Operational Systems is Needed, [28]GAO-04-822
(Washington, D.C.: Aug. 20, 2004).
7EVM is a project management technique that combines measurements of
technical performance, schedule performance, and cost performance with the
intent of providing an early warning of problems while there is time for
corrective action.
We previously reported that FAA should pursue further cost control
options, such as exploring additional opportunities for
contracting out services and consolidating facilities. However, we
recognize that FAA faces challenges with consolidating facilities,
an action that can be politically sensitive. In recognition of
this sensitivity, the administration's reauthorization proposal
presents an initiative in which the Secretary of Transportation
would be authorized to establish an independent, five-member
Commission, known as the Realignment and Consolidation of Aviation
Facilities and Services Commission, to independently analyze FAA's
recommendations to realign facilities or services. The Commission
would then send its own recommendations to the President and
Congress. In the past, we noted the importance of potential cost
savings through facility consolidations; however, any such
consolidations must be handled through a process that solicits and
considers stakeholder input throughout and fully considers the
safety implications of both proposed facility closures and
consolidations.
Mitigating Remaining Risks and Institutionalization of
Improvements Will Continue to Be a Challenge for FAA
Sustaining the acquisition progress achieved to date and
addressing the remaining program risks remains a challenge for
FAA. FAA's air traffic control modernization program has been on
GAO's high-risk list since 1995. In recent years the agency has
made measurable improvements in its acquisition processes. GAO
acknowledged those improvements in its 2007 high risk report.8 In
2005, FAA submitted a plan to OMB for reducing the risks of cost
overruns, schedule slippages, and performance shortfalls with
goals and milestones for FAA to meet in further reducing
acquisition risks. FAA expects to complete the risk mitigation
plan by the end of calendar year 2008.
8GAO, High Risk Series: An Update, [29]GAO-07-310 (Washington, D.C.:
January 2007).
Additionally, we have an ongoing study that is examining FAA's
performance and reporting on its critical acquisitions, including
applicable performance measures. We are exploring FAA's use of the
most recently approved cost and schedule baselines, which may have
changed significantly since the start of an acquisition, to
measure and report on program performance. Rebaselining
acquisitions is an accepted practice and there can be valid
reasons for doing so, such as when changes in a program's
requirements fundamentally alter the acquisition and make the
originally approved schedule unrealistic. Because rebaselining
resets the cost and schedule variances to zero, however, we want
to verify that FAA's practice is not masking acquisition
performance problems and is providing full disclosure to the
Congress. We expect to issue a report on these issues later this
year.
Institutionalizing Changes Within FAA Will Require Continued Strong
Leadership
It will be important, as FAA begins to implement NextGen systems,
to maintain critical acquisitions on schedule and on budget to
meet the goal of transitioning to NextGen by 2025 and to prevent
escalation of the costs of NextGen. While FAA has implemented many
positive changes to its management and business processes in
recent years, it currently faces the loss of key leaders. We
reported that the experiences of successful transformations and
change management initiatives in large public and private
organizations suggest that it can take 5 to 7 years or more until
such initiatives are fully implemented and cultures are
transformed in a sustainable manner.9 Such changes require
focused, full-time attention from senior leadership and a
dedicated team. However, FAA will have lost two of its significant
agents for change--the FAA administrator and the COO--by the end
of September 2007. The administrator's term ends in September
2007; the COO left in February 2007, after serving 3 years. For
the financial, management, and acquisition improvements to further
permeate the agency, and thus provide a firm foundation upon which
to implement NextGen, FAA's new leaders will need to demonstrate
the same commitment to improvement as the outgoing leaders.
Because this is a critical time for FAA, the agency needs to move
expeditiously to find a new COO for ATO. A COO who could commit to
the current statutory 5-year term also would be useful in
providing stable leadership at ATO as foundational NextGen systems
begin to be implemented.
9GAO, National Airspace System: Transformation will Require Cultural
Change, Balanced Funding Priorities, and Use of All Available Management
Tools, [30]GAO-06-154 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 14, 2005).
JPDO Has Made Progress in Planning NextGen, but Continues to Face
Challenges with Its Organization
JPDO has continued to make progress in furthering its key planning
documents, but still faces challenges in institutionalizing its
collaborative practices.
JPDO Has Made Progress Toward Releasing Key Planning Documents,
although Further Work Remains
JPDO's authorizing legislation requires the office to create a
multi-agency research and development plan for the transition to
NextGen. To comply, JPDO is developing several key documents that
together form the foundation of NextGen planning. These documents
include a NextGen Concept of Operations, a NextGen Enterprise
Architecture, and an Integrated Work Plan.
The Concept of Operations is the most fundamental of JPDO's key
planning documents, as the other key documents flow from it.
Although an earlier version was delayed so that stakeholder
comments could be addressed, Version 1.2 of the Concept of
Operations is currently posted on JPDO's Website for review and
comment by the aviation community. This 226-page document provides
written descriptions of how the NextGen system is envisioned to
operate in 2025 and beyond, including highlighting key research
and policy issues that will need to be addressed.10 For example,
some key policy issues are associated with automating the air
traffic control system, including the need for a backup plan in
case automation fails, the responsibilities and liabilities of
different stakeholders during an automation failure, and the level
of monitoring needed by pilots when automation is ensuring safe
separation between aircraft. Over the next few months, JPDO plans
to address the public comments it receives and issue a revised
version of the Concept of Operations.
10Following an introductory section, the Concept of Operations has eight
sections covering air traffic management operations, airport operations
and infrastructure services, net-centric infrastructure services, shared
situational awareness services, security services, environmental
management framework, safety management services, and performance
management services.
In addition to the Concept of Operations, JPDO is working on an
Enterprise Architecture for NextGen--that is, a technical
description of the NextGen system, akin to blueprints for a
building. The Enterprise Architecture is meant to provide a common
tool for planning and understanding the complex, interrelated
systems that will make up NextGen. According to JPDO officials,
the Enterprise Architecture will provide the means for
coordinating among the partner agencies and private sector
manufacturers, aligning relevant research and development
activities, and integrating equipment. JPDO plans to issue an
early version of its Enterprise Architecture next month, although
three previous release dates--March 2006, June 2006, and September
2006--were not met. According to JPDO officials, until the
Enterprise Architecture is released, precise cost estimates cannot
be developed and the partner agencies' research plans cannot be
coordinated.
Finally, JPDO is developing an Integrated Work Plan that will
describe the capabilities needed to transition to NextGen from the
current system and provide the research, policy and regulation,
and acquisition timelines necessary to achieve NextGen by 2025.
The Integrated Work Plan is akin to a project plan and will be
critical for fiscal year 2009 partner agency budget and program
planning. According to a JPDO official, the office intends to
issue its initial draft of the Integrated Work Plan in July 2007.
Figure 1: Key NextGen Planning Documents
We have discussed JPDO's planning documents with JPDO officials
and examined both an earlier version of JPDO's Concept of
Operations11 and the current version that is out for public
comment.12 As we previously testified, JPDO is focusing on the
right types of key documents for the foundation of NextGen
planning.13 As for the Concept of Operations, the current version
is improved from the prior version due to additional detail.
Nonetheless, we believe that it still does not include key
elements such as scenarios illustrating NextGen operations, a
summary of NextGen's operational impact on users and other
stakeholders, and an analysis of the benefits, alternatives, and
trade-offs that were considered for NextGen. In addition, it lacks
an overall description that ties together the eight key areas that
the document covers. As noted earlier, JPDO does plan to release
another version of the Concept of Operations later this year.
In fact, JPDO plans further versions of all of its key planning
documents. We see the development of all three of JPDO's key
documents as part of an iterative and evolutionary process. Thus,
it is unlikely that any of these documents will ever be truly
"finalized," but rather will continue to evolve throughout the
implementation of NextGen to reflect, for example, the development
of new technologies or problems uncovered during research and
development of planned technologies.
11Concept of Operations for the Next Generation Air Transportation System,
version 0.2, July 24, 2006.
12We reviewed JPDO's current Concept of Operations for the Next Generation
Air Transportation System, version 1.2, dated February 28, 2007, by
comparing it with the IEEE Standard 1362-1998 for concept of operations
documents.
13 [31]GAO-07-693T .
Finally, while each of the three key documents has a specific
purpose, the scope and technical sophistication of these documents
makes it difficult for some stakeholders to understand the basics
of the NextGen planning effort. To address this issue, JPDO is
currently drafting what the office refers to as a "blueprint" for
NextGen, meant to be a short, high-level, non-technical
presentation of NextGen goals and capabilities. We believe that
such a document could help some stakeholders develop a better
understanding of NextGen and the planning effort to date.
Institutionalizing the Collaborative Process Will Continue to be
Critical to JPDO's Facilitating NextGen
In our November 2006 report, we noted that JPDO is fundamentally a
planning and coordinating body that lacks authority over the key
human and technological resources of its partner agencies.
Consequently, institutionalizing the collaborative process with
its partner agencies will be critical to JPDO's ability to
facilitate the implementation of NextGen. JPDO, however, has not
established some practices significant to institutionalizing its
collaborative process. For example, at a fundamental level, JPDO
does not have formal, long-term agreements among its partner
agencies on their roles and responsibilities in creating NextGen.
There is no mechanism that assures that the partner agencies'
commitment will continue over the 20-year timeframe of NextGen or
that ensures accountability to JPDO. According to JPDO officials,
they are working to establish a memorandum of understanding (MOU),
signed by the Secretary or other high-ranking official from each
partner agency, which will broadly define the partner agencies'
roles and responsibilities. JPDO first informed us of the
development of this MOU in August 2005; in November 2006 we
recommended that JPDO finalize the MOU and present it to JPDO's
senior policy committee for its consideration and action.
Nonetheless, according to a JPDO official, as of May 4, 2007, the
MOU has been signed by the Departments of Transportation and
Commerce and NASA, but remains unsigned by the Departments of
Defense and Homeland Security.
Another key method for institutionalizing the collaborative effort
is incorporating NextGen goals and activities into the partner
agencies' key planning documents. For example, we noted in
November 2006 that NASA and FAA had incorporated NextGen goals
into their strategic plans. These types of efforts will be
critical to JPDO's ability to leverage its partner agency
resources for continued JPDO planning efforts. Even more
importantly, these efforts will be critical to helping ensure that
partner agencies--given competing missions and resource
demands--dedicate the resources necessary to support the
implementation of NextGen research efforts or system acquisitions.
Recognizing that JPDO does not have authority over partner agency
resources, FAA and JPDO have initiated several efforts to
institutionalize NextGen. First, JPDO is working with FAA to
refocus one of FAA's key planning documents on the implementation
of NextGen--an effort that also appears to be improving the
collaboration and coordination between JPDO and ATO. FAA has
expanded and revamped its Operational Evolution Plan
(OEP)--renamed the Operational Evolution Partnership--to become
FAA's implementation plan for NextGen.14 The OEP is being expanded
to apply to all of FAA and is intended to become a comprehensive
description of how the agency will implement NextGen, including
the required technologies, procedures, and resources. (Figure 2
shows the new OEP framework.) An ATO official told us that the new
OEP is to be consistent with JPDO's key planning documents and its
budget guidance to the partner agencies. According to FAA, the new
OEP will allow it to demonstrate appropriate budget control and
linkage to NextGen plans and help ensure that FAA's research and
development is relevant to NextGen's requirements. According to
FAA documents, the agency plans to publish a new OEP in June 2007.
14Prior to expansion of the OEP, the document centered around plans for
increasing capacity and efficiency at 35 major airports.
Figure 2: New OEP Framework
Note: The concentric rings indicate the nature of initiative
development from the outer ring (NextGen strategic initiatives),
in which new programs and concepts are analyzed and demonstrated;
to the second ring, where decisions are made regarding safety,
operating policy, performance standards, and certification
requirements; to the third ring (technical development), where
concepts are prototyped and investment analysis decisions are
made. The progression through the rings is not necessarily linear,
and a program may be in more than one ring at a time. Data
communications, for example, is in the technical development ring
and also in the middle ring as policy and rulemaking is
considered. The core is divided into three sections, which
indicate the FAA offices that implement the final NextGen program.
In addition, to further align FAA's efforts with JPDO's plans for
NextGen, FAA has created a NextGen review board to oversee the
OEP. This review board is co-chaired by JPDO's director and ATO's
vice president of operations planning services. Initiatives, such
as concept demonstrations or research, proposed for inclusion in
the OEP now need to go through the review board for approval.
These efforts are assessed for relation to NextGen requirements,
concept maturity, and risk. An ATO official told us that the new
OEP process should also help identify some smaller programs that
might be inconsistent with NextGen and which could be
discontinued. Additionally, as a further step towards integrating
ATO and JPDO, the administration's reauthorization proposal calls
for the JPDO director to be a voting member of FAA's joint
resources council and ATO's executive council.
While progress is being made in incorporating NextGen initiatives
into FAA's strategic and planning documents, more remains to be
done with FAA and the other JPDO partner agencies. For example,
one critical activity that remains in this area will be
synchronizing the NextGen enterprise architecture--once JPDO
releases and further refines it--with the partner agencies'
enterprise architectures. Doing so should help align agencies'
current work with NextGen while simultaneously identifying gaps
between agency plans and NextGen plans. Also, while FAA is making
significant progress toward creating an implementation plan for
NextGen with its OEP, the other partner agencies are less far
along or have not begun such efforts. JPDO's lack of authority
over partner agency resources will be minimized as a challenge if
the partner agencies commit to NextGen goals and initiatives at a
structural level. By further incorporation of NextGen efforts into
strategic planning documents, the partner agencies will better
institutionalize their commitments to JPDO and the NextGen
initiative.
Finally, JPDO has made progress in establishing mechanisms for
leveraging partner agency resources--another important practice
for institutionalizing JPDO's collaborative effort. As we noted in
our November 2006 report, JPDO is working with OMB to develop a
process that would allow OMB to identify NextGen-related projects
across the partner agencies and consider NextGen as a unified,
cross-agency program. We recommended that JPDO develop written
procedures that formalize agreements with OMB regarding the
leveraging of partner agency resources and the identification of
NextGen-related programs within agency budgets. We recently met
with OMB officials who said that they felt there has been
significant progress with JPDO over the last year. JPDO is now
working on an OMB Exhibit 300 form for NextGen that will allow
JPDO to present OMB a joint business case for the NextGen-related
efforts within the partner agencies and will be used as input to
funding decisions for NextGen research and acquisitions across the
agencies.15 This Exhibit 300 will be due to OMB in September 2007
to inform decisions about the partner agencies' 2009 budget
submissions.
Ultimately, the success of JPDO will have to be measured in the
efforts of its partner agencies to implement policies and
procedures, conduct research, and acquire systems that support
NextGen. For example, JPDO is currently working to establish a
joint weather office involving FAA and the Departments of Defense
and Commerce. The goal of this joint office is to eliminate
redundancies in weather research and leverage the resources of
these partner agencies to implement a joint weather product by
2012, according to a senior JPDO official. Similarly, JPDO has
secured a commitment from the Departments of Defense and Homeland
Security and FAA to jointly fund the developmental testing of
scenarios for network enabled operations.
With regard to implementation of NextGen technologies, JPDO can
point to its success in collaborating with FAA to fund and speed
FAA's rollout of two systems considered cornerstone technologies
for NextGen: ADS-B and System Wide Information Management (SWIM).
ADS-B will replace many existing radars with less costly
ground-based transceivers. SWIM will provide an initial network
centric capability to all the users of the air transportation
system. This means that the FAA and the Departments of Homeland
Security and Defense will eventually share a common, real-time,
secure picture of aviation operations across the airspace system.
Identifying such NextGen programs across the partner agencies and
establishing implementation plans for them in JPDO's Integrated
Work Plan will be critical going forward to creating performance
metrics for JPDO.
15Section 300 of OMB Circular No. A-11, Preparation, Submission, and
Execution of the Budget (Nov. 2, 2005), sets forth requirements for
federal agencies for planning, budgeting, acquiring, and managing
information technology capital assets.
FAA and JPDO Continue to Face a Number of Challenges in Moving
Toward NextGen
FAA and JPDO continue to face a number of challenges as they move
toward the implementation of NextGen systems and procedures,
including assessing FAA's technical and contract management
expertise, sustaining the current air traffic control system,
identifying which entities will handle necessary research and
development, addressing JPDO's leadership challenges, conducting
human factors research, and ensuring the involvement of all key
stakeholders.
FAA Needs to Explore Whether It Has the Technical and Contract
Management Expertise Necessary to Implement NextGen
In the past, a lack of expertise contributed to weaknesses in
FAA's management of air traffic control modernization efforts, and
industry experts with whom we spoke questioned whether FAA will
have the technical expertise needed to implement NextGen. In
addition to technical expertise, FAA will need contract management
expertise to oversee the systems acquisitions and integration
involved in NextGen.
Recognizing the complexity of the NextGen implementation effort
and the possibility that FAA may not have the in-house expertise
to manage it without assistance, we have identified potential
approaches for supplementing FAA's capabilities. One of these
approaches is for FAA to contract with a lead systems integrator
(LSI). Generally, an LSI is a prime contractor that would help to
ensure that the discrete systems used in NextGen will operate
together and whose responsibilities may include designing system
solutions, developing requirements, and selecting major system and
subsystem contractors. The government has used LSIs before for
programs that require the integration of multiple complex systems.
Our research indicates that although LSIs have certain advantages,
such as the knowledge, understanding, skills, and ability to
integrate functions across various systems, their use also entails
certain risks.16 For example, because an LSI may have
significantly more responsibility than a prime contractor usually
does, careful oversight is necessary to ensure that the
government's interests are protected and that conflicts of
interest are avoided. Providing the oversight that is needed,
however, can be compromised when government expertise is lacking.
Consequently, selecting, assigning responsibilities to, and
managing an LSI could pose significant challenges for JPDO and
FAA.
16GAO, Defense Acquisitions: Future Combat System Risks Underscore the
Importance of Oversight, [32]GAO-07-672T (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 27,
2007).
Another approach that we have identified involves obtaining
technical advice from federally funded research and development
corporations to help the agency oversee and manage prime
contractors. These nonprofit corporations are chartered to provide
long-term technical advice to government agencies in accordance
with various statutory and regulatory rules to ensure independence
and prevent conflicts of interest.
In November 2006, we recommended that FAA examine its strengths
and weaknesses with regard to the technical expertise and contract
management expertise that will be required to define, implement,
and integrate the numerous complex programs inherent in the
transition to NextGen.17 In response to our recommendation, FAA
has contracted with the National Academy of Public Administration
(NAPA) to determine the needed skill mix and the number of those
skilled persons, such as technical personnel and program managers,
that would be necessary to implement the new OEP and to compare
those requirements with current FAA staff resources. According to
FAA, the next step in this process would be to contract with NAPA
or another organization for advice on how best to fill any skills
gaps and how to proceed with management and oversight of the
implementation of NextGen. We believe this is a reasonable
approach that should help FAA begin to address this challenge.
Although FAA Is Now Focusing on NextGen, It Must Continue to
Manage and Sustain the Current System
While FAA works to acquire and deploy NextGen technologies, it
will be equally important that FAA maintain many existing systems
and, for those systems that FAA determines should be phased out,
that the agency do so using a risk-based approach. The adequacy of
FAA's maintenance of existing systems was raised following a power
outage and equipment failures in Southern California that caused
hundreds of flight delays during the summer of 2006.
Investigations by FAA and the Department of Transportation
Inspector General into these incidents identified a number of
underlying issues, including the age and condition of equipment.
Nationwide, the number of scheduled18 and unscheduled outages of
air traffic control equipment and ancillary support systems has
been increasing. Increases in the number of unscheduled outages
indicate that systems are failing more frequently. It will be
critical for FAA to monitor and address equipment outages to
ensure the safety and efficiency of the legacy systems, since they
will be the core of the national airspace system for a number of
years and, in some cases, will become part of NextGen.
17 [33]GAO-07-25 .
18Scheduled outages occur for scheduled maintenance.
FAA and JPDO Have Begun to Release Early Cost Estimates for
NextGen, but Questions Remain Over Who Will Conduct Necessary
Research and Development
In our November report, we noted that JPDO had not yet developed a
comprehensive estimate of the costs of NextGen. Since then, in its
recently released 2006 Progress Report,19 JPDO reported some
estimated costs for NextGen, including specifics on some early
NextGen programs. JPDO believes the total federal cost for NextGen
infrastructure through 2025 will range between $15 billion and $22
billion. JPDO also reported that a preliminary estimate of the
corresponding cost to system users, who will have to equip with
the advanced avionics that are necessary to realize the full
benefits of some NextGen technologies, produced a range of $14
billion to $20 billion. JPDO noted that this range for avionics
costs reflects uncertainty about equipage costs for individual
aircraft, the number of very light jets that will operate in
high-performance airspace, and the amount of out-of-service time
required for installation.
FAA, in its capital investment plan for fiscal years 2008-2012,
includes estimated expenditures for 11 line items that are
considered NextGen capital programs.20 The total 5-year estimated
expenditures for these programs is $4.3 billion. In fiscal year
2008, only 6 of the line items are funded for a total of roughly
$174 million; funding for the remaining 5 programs would begin
with the fiscal year 2009 budget. According to FAA, in addition to
capital spending for NextGen, the agency will spend an estimated
$300 million on NextGen-related research and development from
fiscal years 2008 through 2012. The administration's budget for
fiscal year 2008 for FAA includes a total of $17.8 million to
support the activities of JPDO.
19JPDO, Making the NextGen Vision a Reality: 2006 Progress Report to the
Next Generation Air Transportation System Integrated Plan (Washington,
D.C.; Mar. 14, 2007).
20FAA has six capital investment programs that it considers
transformational NextGen programs slated to receive funding in fiscal year
2008: ADS-B nationwide implementation, System Wide Information Management
(SWIM), NextGen Data Communications, NextGen Network Enabled Weather,
National Airspace System Voice Switch, and NextGen Technology
Demonstration. In addition, five other programs are slated to begin
funding in 2009: NextGen System Development, NextGen High Altitude
Trajectory Based Operations, NextGen High Density Airports, NextGen
Networked Facilities, and NextGen Cross-Cutting Infrastructure.
While FAA and JPDO have begun to release estimates for FAA's
NextGen investment portfolio, questions remain over which entities
will fund and conduct some of the necessary research, development,
and demonstration projects that will be key to achieving certain
NextGen capabilities. In the past, a significant portion of
aeronautics research and development, including intermediate
technology development, has been performed by NASA. To its credit,
NASA plans to focus its research on the needs of NextGen. However,
NASA is also moving toward a focus on fundamental research and
away from developmental work and demonstration projects, which
could negatively impact NextGen if these efforts are not assumed
by others.
In addition, JPDO will need to conduct modeling for NextGen and
may look to its partner agencies to provide modeling capabilities
and support. For example, NASA's NAS-wide modeling platform, the
Airspace Concepts Evaluation System (ACES),21 permits JPDO to,
among other things, evaluate alternative research ideas and assess
the performance of competing vendors. According to a JPDO
official, this capability, which is critical to NextGen research,
is eroding as JPDO's investment simulation requirements are
expanding. As part of its fundamental research mission, NASA
intends to upgrade to ACES-X (a more sophisticated representation
of the national airspace system), but not for another two years.
Until then, JPDO's investment modeling capability will be
constrained unless the office or another partner agency can assume
the modeling work. For example, the Department of Defense has
detailed aircraft models and the Department of Homeland Security
has detailed models of airport terminals that are relevant for
JPDO's simulations. This is an issue that needs to be addressed in
the short-term.
JPDO faces the challenge of determining the nature and scope of
the research and technology development necessary to begin the
transition to NextGen, as well as identifying the entities that
can conduct that research and development. According to officials
at FAA and JPDO, they are currently studying these issues and
trying to assess how much research and development FAA can assume.
An FAA official recently testified that the agency proposes to
increase its research and development funding by $280 million over
the next 5 years. However, a draft report by an advisory committee
to FAA stated that FAA would need at least $100 million annually
in increased funding to assume NASA's research and development
work, and establishing the necessary infrastructure within FAA
could delay the implementation of NextGen by 5 years.22 JPDO's
Integrated Work Plan will permit NASA and the other partner
agencies to assess the research and development needs of NextGen,
determine funding, and conduct the necessary initiatives. The
Integrated Work Plan is critical for the timely completion of
research and testing of proposed NextGen systems and keeping
NextGen on schedule.
21ACES provides a detailed flight simulation environment and an open
framework to integrate the results of other simulations. This allows JPDO
to test concepts well before they have to be demonstrated with real
hardware and people. This platform provides a basis for evaluating the
timing of many agencies' current budget requests and is a method for
comparing competitive ideas.
JPDO's Lack of Stable Leadership and the Authority to Enforce
Accountability Threaten the Credibility of Organization
While basic organizational structure of JPDO has been in place for
several years (see app. 1), it has suffered from a lack of stable
leadership. As JPDO begins its fourth year in operation, it is
functioning under its third director and operated for much of 2006
under the stewardship of an acting director. The current director
of JPDO has held the position since August 2006. The Next
Generation Air Transportation System Institute (the Institute),
created to facilitate the participation of nonfederal stakeholders
in the NextGen effort, noted in its recent annual report that
JPDO's leadership turnover had made it a challenge for JPDO to
move out more aggressively on many goals and objectives, as the
office waited on a full-time director. The Institute also stated
that JPDO's leadership turnover had limited the ability of the
Institute's executive committee23 to forge a stronger relationship
with JPDO leadership and work jointly on strategic issues and
challenges. These fundamental leadership issues are exacerbated by
the lack of meetings of JPDO's senior policy committee. Although
JPDO has been functioning for just over 3 years, the senior policy
committee has met only four times, and has not met at all as a
formal body since November 2005.
22Research, Engineering and Development Advisory Committee, Draft Report
on Financing the Next Generation Air Transportation System (Washington,
D.C.; April 2006).
23The Institute's executive committee is a subset of the Institute's
governing body, the Institute Management Council. The Institute Management
Council members represent commercial airline operations, commercial
pilots, air traffic control technology, air traffic controllers, airport
operators, business aircraft operations, federal advisory committees,
universities, and non-profit research organizations, small aircraft
general aviation, helicopter operations, manufacturers of air vehicles and
airborne/space-borne and ground based equipment, and regional commercial
airline operations. The JPDO director is an ex-officio member and there
are two at-large members.
In addition to the lack of stable leadership, JPDO's management
lacks the authority to hold much of JPDO's staff accountable for
their performance. As we noted in November 2006, JPDO has staffed
the various levels of its organization with employees from its
partner agencies and this practice helps to leverage partner
agency human resources. However, a drawback of such staffing is a
lack of real or perceived accountability to JPDO. According to
JPDO officials, the JPDO workforce consists largely of part-time
partner agency personnel who have been detailed to JPDO and
part-time private sector volunteers. Only a few
permanently-assigned FAA staff have their performance appraised by
JPDO management, although the director does provide input to the
performance appraisals of some of the managers detailed to JPDO
from partner agencies. We have noted in previous studies that
improved performance has been linked to accountability.24
Similarly, although the organizational structure of the Institute
has been in place for 2 years, the Institute is currently led by
an acting director while a search is being conducted for the
Institute's third executive director. Some Institute Management
Council (IMC) members with whom we spoke believed that this
turnover might be indicative of problems with the structure of the
Institute and a need for greater clarity in roles and
responsibilities. For example, these IMC members noted that there
were stresses placed on the Institute's executive director
resulting from the need to meet the competing demands of the IMC,
the IMC executive committee, and JPDO management. Other IMC
members attributed the stresses on the executive director to the
lack of clarity in the Institute's role. These members noted that
while the Institute is clearly charged with selecting private
sector participants for JPDO's work groups, the Institute's role
of conducting research for the JPDO could be viewed as overlapping
with other advisory organizations such as RTCA.25 Two IMC members
believed that the Institute's award of only two research contracts
in two years illustrates that the Institute is not yet functioning
as intended. Some IMC members also pointed out that a formal
mechanism for providing industry input to JPDO on NextGen concepts
and issues has not yet been fully established, even though this is
one of the missions of the Institute. Although the Institute is
currently seeking a new executive director, some IMC members felt
that the IMC would do better to first try and gain a better
understanding of the factors that have led to the turnover in the
executive director position.
24GAO, Air Traffic Control Modernization: Status of the Current Program
and Planning for the Next Generation Air Transportation System,
[34]GAO-06-653T (Washington, D.C.: June 21, 2006)
25Organized in 1935 and once called the Radio Technical Commission for
Aeronautics, RTCA is today known by its acronym. RTCA is a private,
not-for-profit corporation that develops consensus-based performance
standards for ATC systems. RTCA serves as a federal advisory committee,
and its recommendations are the basis for a number of FAA's policy,
program, and regulatory decisions.
Human Factors Research Is Critical to Some Fundamental NextGen
Capabilities
Among the central assumptions of the NextGen system is a concept
of operations that envisions an increased reliance on automation,
which dramatically changes the roles and responsibilities of both
the air traffic controllers and the pilots. In such an automated
environment some of the controller's responsibilities will shift
from air traffic control to air traffic management and pilots will
take on a greater share of the responsibility for maintaining safe
separation and other tasks currently performed by controllers.
These changes in roles and responsibilities raise significant
human factors issues for the safety and efficiency of the national
airspace system.
Although JPDO has begun to model how shifts in air traffic
controllers' workloads would affect their performance, it has not
yet begun to model the effect of how this shift in workload to
pilots would affect pilot performance. According to a JPDO
official, modeling the effect of changes in pilot workload has not
yet begun because JPDO has not yet identified a suitable model to
incorporate into its suite of modeling tools. According to a JPDO
official, the evolving roles of pilots and controllers is the
NextGen initiative's most important human factors issue, but will
be difficult to research because data on pilot behavior are not
readily available for use in creating models. In addition to the
study of changing roles, JPDO has not yet studied the training
implications of various systems or solutions proposed for NextGen.
For example, JPDO officials said they will need to study the
extent to which new air traffic controllers will have to be
trained to operate both the old and the new equipment as the
concept of operations and enterprise architecture mature.
JPDO Faces A Continuing Challenge in Ensuring the Involvement
of All Key Stakeholders
Some stakeholders, such as current air traffic controllers and
technicians, will play critical roles in NextGen, and their
involvement in planning for and deploying the new technology will
be important to the success of NextGen. In November 2006, we
reported that active air traffic controllers were not involved in
the NextGen planning effort and recommended that JPDO determine
whether any other key stakeholders and expertise were not
represented on its integrated product teams, divisions, or
elsewhere within the office. Since then, the head of the
controllers' union has taken a seat on the IMC. However, no active
controllers are yet participating at the more detailed group
planning level. Also, aviation technicians do not participate in
NextGen efforts. Input from current air traffic controllers who
have recent experience controlling aircraft and current
technicians who will maintain NextGen equipment is important when
considering human factors and safety issues. Our work on past air
traffic control modernization projects has shown that a lack of
stakeholder or expert involvement early and throughout a project
can lead to costly increases and delays.
In addition, we found that some private sector stakeholders have
expressed concerns that participation in the Institute might
either preclude bidding on future NextGen acquisitions or pose
organizational conflicts of interest. FAA's acquisition process,
generally, precludes bids from organizations that have
participated in, materially influenced, or had prior knowledge of
the requirements for an acquisition. The Institute was aware of
this concern and attempted to address it through an amendment to
its governing document that strengthened the language protecting
participants from organizational conflicts of interest for
participation in the NextGen initiative. However, while the
amendment language currently operates to protect stakeholders, the
language has never been tested or challenged. Thus, it is unclear
at this time whether any stakeholder participation is being
chilled by conflict of interest concerns.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. I would be pleased to
respond to any questions from you or other Members of the
Subcommittee.
GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgment
For further information on this testimony, please contact Dr.
Gerald L. Dillingham at (202) 512-2834 or [email protected].
Individuals making key contributions to this statement include
Kevin Egan, Jessica Evans, Colin Fallon, Ed Menoche, Faye
Morrison, Taylor Reeves, and Richard Scott.
Appendix I: JPDO's Organizational Structure Facilitates
Collaboration, but Continues to Evolve
In November 2006, we reported that the Joint Planning and
Development Office's (JPDO) organizational structure incorporated
some of the practices that we have found to be effective for
federal interagency collaborations--an important point given how
critical such collaboration is to the success of JPDO's mission.
For example, the JPDO partner agencies have worked together to
develop key strategies for the Next Generation Air Transportation
System (NextGen) and JPDO has leveraged its partner agency
resources by staffing various levels of its organization with
partner agency employees. Also, our work has shown that involving
stakeholders can, among other things, increase their support for a
collaborative effort.
Vision 100 includes requirements for JPDO to coordinate and
consult with its partner agencies, private sector experts, and the
public. JPDO's approach has been to establish an organizational
structure that involves federal and nonfederal stakeholders
throughout the organization. This structure includes a federal
interagency senior policy committee. JPDO's senior policy
committee is headed by the Secretary of Transportation (as
required in Vision 100) and includes senior-level officials from
JPDO's partner agencies. The JPDO board is an adjunct to the
senior policy committee and is composed of at least one senior
representative from each of the partner agencies.
The Next Generation Air Transportation System Institute (the
Institute) was created by an agreement between the National Center
for Advanced Technologies1 and the Federal Aviation Administration
to meet Vision 100's requirement that JPDO coordinate and consult
with the public. The Institute incorporates the expertise and
views of stakeholders from private industry, state and local
governments, and academia. In addition, the Institute arranges for
the participation of nonfederal stakeholders in JPDO's planning
efforts, reviews and selects private sector organizations to
conduct research studies needed by JPDO, and holds public meetings
to obtain the views of the aviation community. The Institute held
its first public meeting in March 2006 and plans to hold another
public meeting in May 2007. The Institute is directed by an
Institute Management Council (IMC), which consists of top
officials and representatives from the aviation community. The IMC
oversees the policy, recommendations, and products of the
Institute and provides a means for advancing consensus positions
on critical NextGen issues. An executive committee, consisting of
the IMC's two co-chairs and three members selected by them,
conducts business on behalf of the IMC. The Institute is managed
on a day-to-day basis by an executive director, who reports to the
IMC and the executive committee, and works closely with JPDO
management.
1The National Center for Advanced Technologies is a nonprofit unit
established by the Aerospace Industries Association.
Recently, JPDO announced they are in the process of implementing
several structural and operational changes to improve the
efficiency of the organization (see fig. 3). JPDO's structure used
to include eight integrated product teams (IPT), which was where
the federal and nonfederal experts came together to plan for and
coordinate the development of capabilities for NextGen. The eight
IPTs were linked to eight key strategies that JPDO developed early
on for guiding its NextGen planning work. The IPTs were headed by
representatives of JPDO's partner agencies and include more than
200 nonfederal stakeholders from over 100 organizations.
JPDO recently converted each IPT into a "working group" with the
same participants as the former IPT, but with each working group
led by a joint government and industry steering committee. These
steering committees will oversee the creation of small, ad hoc
subgroups that will be tasked with short-term projects exploring
specific issues and delivering discrete work products. Under this
arrangement, working group members will be free of obligations to
the group when not engaged in a specific project. According to
JPDO officials, they believe the working groups will be more
efficient and output- or product-focused than the former IPTs.
JPDO officials noted that they are also in the process of staffing
a new, ninth working group to address avionics issues.
Figure 3: JPDO New Organizational Chart
Note: There are nine working groups covering aircraft, air navigation
services, airports, environment, global harmonization, net-centric
operations, safety, security, and weather.
We believe that these changes could help address concerns that we have
heard from some stakeholders about the productivity of some IPTs and the
pace of the planning effort at JPDO. However, it will be important to
monitor these changes to ensure that the participation of stakeholders is
neither decreased nor adversely affected. Maintaining communications
within and among work groups could increase in importance if, as work
group members focus on specific projects, they become less involved in the
overall collaborative planning effort. The effectiveness of the changes to
JPDO's organizational structure will need to continue to be evaluated over
time. Currently, we have on-going study examining the views and
concerns of JPDO's federal and nonfederal stakeholders about the office
and its performance. We expect to issue a report on our findings later
this year.
(540151)
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Highlights of [42]GAO-07-784T , a testimony before the Subcommittee on
Aviation, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of
Representatives
May 9, 2007
NEXT GENERATION AIR TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM
Status of the Transition to the Future Air Traffic Control System
The nation's current air traffic control system is reaching its capacity
limits as demand for air transportation grows. The Next Generation Air
Transportation System (NextGen) represents a new system that will use
state-of-the-art technologies and procedures. Transitioning to NextGen
will require the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to continue to
sustain the current air traffic control system while acquiring new systems
on schedule and on budget. In 2003, Congress authorized the creation of
the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO), housed within FAA, to
plan NextGen and coordinate the transition. GAO's testimony focuses on the
progress FAA is making in implementing businesslike operations that could
provide a foundation for managing the transition to NextGen, the status of
JPDO's planning and facilitation of NextGen, and some key challenges that
FAA and JPDO need to address in moving toward NextGen. This statement is
based on GAO's November 2006 report and recent testimonies as well as
ongoing work. GAO's November report recommended that FAA study its
technical and contract management expertise and that JPDO take actions to
institutionalize its collaborative practices. FAA and JPDO said they would
consider our recommendations.
During the last few years, FAA has made significant progress in implementing
businesslike operations and procedures for managing and acquiring air traffic
control systems. These operations and procedures have improved FAA's management
of the current system and should better position the agency to manage the
enormously complex transition to NextGen. One outcome of these changes is that
FAA has reported exceeding its system acquisition goals for the past 3 fiscal
years. However, further work remains to fully address past problems in acquiring
systems and institutionalizing changes throughout the agency.
JPDO has continued to make progress in furthering its key planning documents.
JPDO has experienced delays in the release of key documents, but currently plans
to have initial versions of these documents released by July 2007. JPDO has been
working since 2005 to establish a memorandum of understanding between its
partner agencies, although as of May 4, 2007, the memorandum had been signed by
the Departments of Transportation and Commerce and NASA, but was not yet signed
by the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. JPDO is also working with
the Office of Management and Budget to establish mechanisms to identify
NextGen-related projects across the partner agencies and consider NextGen as a
unified, cross-agency program for funding decisions.
FAA and JPDO continue to face a number of challenges in moving toward
NextGen, including questions about FAA's technical and contract management
expertise; FAA's ability to maintain a number of existing systems,
including monitoring and addressing equipment outages to ensure the safety
of these existing systems as it transitions to NextGen; and conducting
necessary human factors research. In addition, while JPDO recently
estimated that the total federal cost for NextGen infrastructure through
2025 will range between $15 billion and $22 billion, questions remain
about which entities will fund and conduct the necessary research,
development, and demonstration projects that will be key to achieving
certain NextGen capabilities. Also, JPDO faces a continuing challenge in
ensuring the involvement of all key stakeholders, such as active air
traffic controllers and system technicians, in its NextGen planning
efforts.
References
Visible links
23. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-25
24. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-636T
25. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-693T
26. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-266
27. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-901
28. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-822
29. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-310
30. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-154
31. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-693T
32. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-672T
33. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-25
34. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-653T
42. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-784T
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