This Report Probably Won't Change Your Perception

The FAA's own structure and culture are largely responsible for the huge gobs of twine that seem to wrap around the axles of all moving parts at the agency, a just-released Government Accounting Office report (GAO-04-227T) seems to say. The quotes below are all straight from the report (subheads are ours); we encourage you to look at the whole thing, to get a more-complete picture --ed.

Over the years, systemic management issues, including inadequate management controls and human capital issues, have contributed to the cost overruns, schedule delays, and performance shortfalls that FAA’s major ATC projects have consistently experienced. These problems occurred, in large part, because FAA lacked the information technology and financial management systems that would have helped it reliably determine the projects’ technical requirements and estimate and control their costs and schedules. In addition, organizational culture issues discouraged collaboration among technical experts and users, and frequent changes in FAA’s leadership—seven different Administrators and Acting Administrators in the first 10 years—hampered the modernization efforts.

There's hope:

FAA has taken steps to improve the management of its ATC modernization efforts and has made progress. For example, it implemented a costeffective, incremental development approach that avoided costly late-stage changes. In addition, it has fully or partially implemented over 30 GAO recommendations designed to improve its management controls and address human capital issues. The Congress also extended the term of the FAA Administrator to 5 years, providing for greater continuity and stability, and enacted legislation designed to bring the benefits of performance management to ATC modernization.

Living in 'Interesting Times'

FAA faces a number of challenges in fully implementing recommendations that GAO and others have made to improve its management controls and address human capital issues. FAA also faces the challenge of becoming a more efficient and accountable performance-based air traffic organization.

How bad is it?

Initially FAA estimated that its ATC modernization efforts would cost $12 billion and could be completed over 10 years. Now, two decades and $35 billion later, FAA expects to need another $16 billion through 2007 to complete key projects, for a total cost of $51 billion.

FMI: www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-227T