Aeronautics Innovation NASA's Challenges and Opportunities (2006) / Chapter Skim
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2 Innovation Facilitators and Accelerators for Aeronautics
2 Innovation Facilitators and Accelerators for Aeronautics
Pages 41-78
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The public good areas of NASA R&D work in which the argument for government involvement is strongest -- safe, efficient air traffic management and environmentally benign 41
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, and planning for technology transitioning. In addition, we outline a number of personnel and financial management practices that can contribute to innovation.
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See D Busher et al., Management of Technology in Europe 2003: Comparing Strategies and Tools in 17 High Technology Organizations, T
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, developed by a growing industry of consultants, textbooks, and how-to primers.2 Our committee's collective experience suggests that Recommendation 3-B: Graphical illustrations of the portfolio are particularly useful tools for fostering communication and discussion and identifying and resolving disagreements, both internally among managers and in engaging external stakeholders and customers. We emphasize that what is important is not the specific tools employed -- organizational idiosyncrasies suggest that no single set of tools will work in all contexts -- but that the decision-making system is transparent, designed and understood by those who will implement it.
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One NASA project manager, speaking about silos in a single NASA center, described it this way: "I look out the window here and see all these ostriches in separate sandboxes, not looking up to know what's going on around in other sandboxes, or understanding why they are doing what, or how their activities connect with the customer." Similarly, John Klineberg, chair of a National Academies study assessing NASA's aeronautics technology programs, speaking before Congress in March 2005, testified that "subproject and task-level plans, funding, goals, metrics, staffing, and responsibility are often difficult to define or cannot be clearly traced back to a plan or vision for the program as a whole."3 3Statement of Dr.
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4E.g., National Research Council, Review of NASA's Aerospace Technology Enterprise: An Assessment of NASA's Aeronautics Technology Programs (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2004)
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We also heard multiple reports of a third significant impediment to R&D portfolio best practices, a reluctance to terminate projects Indeed, the incentive structure works strongly against it. Terminating projects does not quickly save resources because legislation makes it difficult or impossible for ARMD managers independently to move resources or reduce civil service staff quickly.
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House of Representatives, March 16, 2005. 7Review of NASA's Aerospace Technology Enterprise.
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Compare this to the entire budget for air traffic management research, the Airspace Systems Program for that same year: $152 million. Indeed, fully 14 percent of the ASP budget was congressionally earmarked.
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For example, we are troubled that managers at Langley perceived that the review primarily focused on supporting space exploration, not aeronautics. Recommendation 3-E: NASA should continue to undertake core competency reviews and explicitly include aeronautics among the highest priority core competencies.
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J Victor Lebacqz, associate administrator for aeronautics research, NASA, "Appropriations Subcommittee Staff Briefing," March 8, 2005.
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This is particularly important for ARMD given its dependence on other entities to implement the technologies it develops. The implementation process is especially bifurcated in civil aeronautics, in which the FAA regulates and has to buy into new technologies operationally but lacks in 13For example, see NASA, Aerospace Technology Enterprise Strategy.
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The first and most obvious implication of this institutional separation from implementation is that, unless ARMD effectively partners externally, it will fail. The technology management literature is quite clear that engaging users is a particularly important element of successful innovation and implementation.16 The users who would expect to be the recipients of ARMD innovations, in the main, require system-level innovation, for example, aircraft, engines, air traffic management systems.
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, FAA air traffic management operations, FAA acquisition and R&D functions, FAA regulatory functions, FAA's foreign counterparts, air traffic controllers, local airport authorities, industry and university wind tunnel research users, large airframe manufacturers, small aircraft manufacturers, avionics manufacturers, information technology systems providers, propulsion system manufacturers, and university aeronautics and related departments. Working closely with that numerous and diverse a group of stakeholders by bringing them in early and jointly prioritizing projects represents a daunting challenge.
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Another sign that the institutional culture is not sufficiently attuned to understanding stakeholder needs and capabilities was a decision a few years ago to cut funding for ARMD scientists to participate in national scientific meetings. This not only reduced the visibility of NASA's national aeronautics research role in national leadership but also opportunities for midlevel ARMD staff to interact informally with external stakeholders in professional forums.
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At best, it makes field-testing new concepts difficult. A related hurdle is uneasy relations with the air traffic controllers union, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers' Association (PATCO)
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A second source of the lack of confidence is the periodic reshuffling of priorities in the annual budget process. With aeronautics taking a back seat relative to space priorities, ARMD programs can and regularly have been arrested midstream with the approval of OMB.
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JPDO is nevertheless limited in its capacity to raise the profile of the need for modernization of air traffic management and the role of technology development. It has, for example, no independent budget authority, although it can influence participating agency budget allocations.
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NASA participates using a nontraditional funding approach whose flexibility we think is worth exploiting more often, a joint sponsored research agreement. Similarly, NASA also quietly participated in the Super 10 Initiative developing supersonic business jet technologies with all the large airframe and engine firms, by most reports working effectively and collaboratively.23 Finally, we encourage experiments like the science and technology park at the Ames Research Center in engaging corporate and educational partners.24 Despite the nod of ARMD strategy documents to measuring success by implementation, project managers told us that transition planning is not a regular expectation either as projects come up for consideration or when they commence.
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The AFRL experience, described in the committee's second workshop, is instructive. According to Colonel Mike Leahy, taking a broad array of 25As one example of the DARPA requirements for transition planning and taking technology to demonstration, see "Proposer Information Pamphlet (PIP)
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ARMD has demonstrated an ability at the individual project level to field-test air traffic management demonstration modules working with the FAA. Research transition plans (RTPs)
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J Victor Lebacqz, associate administrator for aeronautics research, NASA, "Appropriations Subcommittee Staff Briefing," March 8, 2005.
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One significant change in personnel policy outlined in the FY 2006 ARMD budget proposal is an overall reduction in the workforce, albeit a more rapid reduction of civil service positions than of contractor positions.30 In this section we consider other human resource practices that could enable more flexibility and innovativeness within existing structures. The new ideas and fresh thinking that are often necessary ingredients in innovation are injected in part by bringing in new people.
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Several ARMD managers we interviewed noted that the lack of personnel exchanges among NASA, the FAA, and the airlines inhibited effective cooperation in ATM modernization. "Our customers don't know who we are," one said, adding that unless ARMD "can understand the end user's requirements, we are shooting in the dark." Recommendation 5-B: ARMD should increase rotation and seconding of personnel to and from its several research centers and its external partners as tools for enhancing staffing and competency flexibility, fostering the early engagement of partners, and facilitating technology transitioning.
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34Testimony of Col. Mike Leahy, AFRL, to the committee, January 18, 2005.
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NASA recently launched the Centennial Challenges program of prize contests related to space exploration.38 The largest prize announced thus far -- the 2006 Space Elevator Climber Competition -- is only $150,000. Although this is an encouraging start, the program does not target aeronautics challenges, and the prize levels may not be large enough to generate both serious effort and public attention.
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In the joint university engineering program, Ames provides seed money that supports graduate students to investigate new concepts in air traffic management and opportunities for students and faculty to interact with aerospace industry technical experts and government officials.39 Stanford and two University of California campuses, Berkeley and Los Angeles, are participants in a program modeled after a similar East Coast program that includes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and Ohio State University. Again, the expenditure level, $120,000 per school per year, may be too small to have an important impact.
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Believing that time rather than money is the more severe constraint on creativity, we encourage ARMD to institute more such programs for in-house investigators. FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT TO MINIMIZE THE DISRUPTIVE EFFECTS OF EXTERNAL DEMANDS Our last set of recommendations for fostering aeronautics innovation through NASA deals with the structuring of financial management at ARMD.
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This can lead to less utilization as fixed costs are spread over fewer and fewer users, as has been the case with NASA's wind tunnels -- in short, a "death spiral." Reportedly, fees increased on average 30-35 percent from 2003 to 2005, and, in one particular case, "utilization hours for the 20-Foot Vertical Spin Tunnel dropped 71 percent between 2003 and 2004, from 855 hours to 248 hours."42 42D. Schleck, "NASA Windtunnel Feed Under Review," Hampton Roads Daily Press, June 12, 2005.
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In ARMD this is particularly burdensome for air traffic management research, which tends not to be fixed capital intensive but rather relies on people and on rapidly advancing information technologies. In some of our interviews, project managers suggested that ATM projects end up paying high overhead to support facilities used mainly for non-ATM research.
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Because a customer has to put up all the funding to use a facility, substantive research collaboration with external partners potentially suffers: "government people become data generators and technicians for operating facilities to a greater extent and experts in the field to a lesser extent." This could result in the hollowing out of internal leading edge research competencies, with ARMD centers becoming simply a for-hire infrastructure with a high fixed cost. Other external reviewers have expressed similar reservations about NASA's approach.
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Average costbased pricing is not considered best practice in industry50 and is particularly problematic in circumstances of large fixed costs and high public value. NASA should centrally bear the fixed overhead costs incurred to maintain strategically important facilities.
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. One component of this new management approach may be a direct ARMD investment in key facilities to ensure longer-term facility sustainability." In another initiative, NASA's new administrator, Michael Griffin, has directed a group of headquarters officials to study how to "better manage NASA research facilities in a full-cost environment."54 We hope that these deliberations embrace the principle of central funding of shared fixed costs and incremental pricing for internal and external users.
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Two principal challenges in dealing with the inevitable uncertainties in leading edge research are the rigidity of the annual appropriations process and the constraints imposed by overreliance on project budgets. The shortterm planning needed to accommodate annual budget cycles and the associated fluctuations in priorities are especially challenging for long-term research.
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Recommendation 6-E: ARMD should negotiate with congressional sponsors and earmark recipients to align mandated activities better with established programs and should assign the projects to a separate budget account and management area. The immediate effect of a separate budget for congressionally directed projects would be to reduce the apparent size of the balance of the ARMD budget and seemingly narrow the discretion of associated program managers.
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In this case, too, NASA's space program could contract with NASA's aeronautics program for planetary aircraft work, but it would be more difficult to divert aeronautics resources to space activities. The Defense Department and the military services could similarly directly contract for aeronautics R&D services.
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Another precedent, closer in time and related in function, is the Air Traffic Organization (ATO) , established within the FAA in February 2004 with its own chief operating officer and 36,000 employees.58 ATO organizationally combines responsibility for air traffic operations, equipment acquisition, and research, separate from FAA's regulatory role.
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