4
Effective Communication Between the FAA and Congress
During the course of this study, the committee conducted discussions with the FAA staff directly involved in the generation of the February 2014 Research Plan,1 congressional staff who authored the original legislation that called for the research plan, foreign and other U.S. government agency personnel involved in similar activities, and aviation industry representatives. The committee also heard from other members of FAA management. From these discussions, the committee noted that significant inconsistencies in expectations exist in relation to what will be conducted and who benefits from NextGen initiatives, when the benefits will be achieved, and who controls the implementation.
Since the FAA began initiating upgrades to the National Airspace System over a decade ago, there have been substantial changes in the underlying conditions that initially justified NextGen. The overcrowding of the airspace that resulted in air travel gridlock in the previous decade has significantly decreased, and safety concerns have been alleviated with a continuous statistical improvement in U.S. aviation safety as the number of flights in the National Airspace System increased.
Based on the committee’s discussions and the observation that the original driving forces that helped initiate NextGen have weakened in the current environment, the committee concluded that measurable performance objectives for NextGen will likely change. The committee also concluded that there is a need for champions to lead specific elements of NextGen’s implementation. Emerging disruptive technologies or new systems, such as the introduction of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)2 into the National Airspace System, may also provide a significant requirement to cause accelerating the implementation of NextGen capabilities. These will have broad system-wide applications.
In addition, based on past experience, the committee is aware that the FAA has a dedicated and capable group of practitioners who can implement the complex systems required for a fully capable NextGen. However, cultural barriers to cross-departmental and agency collaboration limit full integration of the multiple projects in a timely way.
The FAA informed the committee that it has plans for aviation research and is committed to enhancing the certification process that leads to new capabilities and improved system safety and performance. The FAA is primarily an operating agency providing air traffic control services, and its culture reflects the priorities associated with operating an around-the-clock air traffic system that is the largest, most sophisticated, safest, and most
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1 FAA, Research Plan: Methods and Procedures to Improve Confidence in and Timeliness of Certification of New Technologies Into the National Airspace System, Final, Office of NextGen, Washington, D.C., February 2014; reprinted in Appendix A.
2 Also often referred to as Uninhabited Aerial Systems (UAS).
diverse in the world. The core attribute of the system is its extremely high safety level, and the key mission FAA has is to achieve annual improvements in the safety level.
Adding new capabilities can introduce risk into the system and, therefore, new capabilities are subjected to thorough analysis and testing prior to implementation. The required safety and performance levels for these capabilities means that progress will be deliberate, incremental, and evolutionary. However, in the end, NextGen will be transformational. In addition, the supporting research activities as well as the processes associated with planning and identifying operational benefits will also be incremental as the FAA pursues the essential engagement with dozens of external stakeholders.
The modernization of the National Airspace System is a highly integrated process and in a program that requires the incorporation of needs both internal and external to FAA control and influence. For an operational change and benefit to be deployed and implemented, the agency has to coordinate thousands of people and multiple levels of approval, frequently over many years and changing environmental conditions.
A good recent example of a relevant FAA initiative is the Navigation Procedures Initial Implementation Plan (NAV Lean) program.3 This targeted and pragmatic initiative by FAA leadership has thoroughly reviewed its certification processes and identified useful steps to streamline and improve its ongoing evolution. The benefits are a certification process that is more responsive in less time and at lower cost to applicants, while also being rigorous, thorough, and continuing to ensure public safety outcomes.
During the course of this study, including interviews with many government employees and industry stakeholders, it became clear that the February 2014 Research Plan was clearly a missed opportunity for FAA to reassure Congress and stakeholders about much of the excellent progress that NextGen has already achieved, as well as the various efforts currently under way to demonstrate confidence in the timeliness of certification of new technologies into the National Airspace System.
The committee also concluded that there is widespread lack of a knowledgeable understanding of all of the complex aspects of this problem. The committee hopes that this report can serve as a catalyst for more effective communication and collaboration between Congress and the FAA.
The FAA is a vital 24-hours-7-days-a-week operating agency providing critical public transportation safety services. It does not have a culture oriented toward skillfully communicating its programs or successes to Congress or other stakeholders. Yet Congress performs an essential service by conducting oversight and providing funding for the FAA that depends on knowledge of the FAA’s management efficiency, productivity, and clear strategic implementation.
The February 2014 Research Plan does not provide a robust or insightful outline of the FAA’s direction or integrated programs. In fact, the plan seemed overly cautious and excessively edited, thus limiting its usefulness. The committee concluded that Congress was actually seeking a broad answer that went beyond simply the FAA’s plans for “research,” but the FAA responded in a narrow fashion, after giving the response a low priority. The congressional request was well intentioned but insufficiently clear about what Congress actually was seeking. The FAA’s response (the February 2014 Research Plan) was too limited to actually be helpful to Congress, the FAA, and its stakeholders and clarify the current situation and efforts to make progress.
The only way to break the cycle of miscommunication that this report reflects is for the FAA to prioritize its responses to Congress and actively communicate its actions and integration strategies. The FAA is streamlining processes to speed the procedures approval process and has involved stakeholders, like air traffic controllers, more actively in its integrating process. Overall, the FAA is following the priorities established by its key advisory group of stakeholders in the NextGen Advisory Committee.
Numerous studies and reports have recognized the extremely complex and challenging nature of FAA’s certification and system modernization tasks, most recently in an October 2014 MITRE study.4 In addition, the FAA tasked the School of Systems and Enterprises of the Stevens Institute to study lessons learned from comparable
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3 FAA, Navigation Procedures Initial Implementation Plan (NAV Lean), June 1, 2011, http://www.faa.gov/nextgen/media/SIGNED%20Initial%20NavLean%20Implementation%20Plan%201%20June%202011.pdf.
4 MITRE, NextGen Independent Assessment and Recommendations, MITRE Project No. 0214DL01-IF, Center for Advanced Aviation System Development, McLean, Va., October 2014.
large-scale, complex, systems-integration projects.5 Also, the Stevens Institute developed a competency model for acquiring large, highly complex systems of systems and prepared a report that was published by the International Council on Systems Engineering.6
FAA’s certification activities that are supported by associated research are necessarily conservative and methodical and occur at a measured pace. Congressional expectations for clarity, efficiency, and annual progress are reasonable. However, neither the legislative language that called for a research plan nor the plan that the FAA eventually produced were clear and unambiguous. There is also the reality that a research plan is only one part of a much broader series of actions and activities that ultimately determine the implementation of new technologies. The FAA is not and cannot be a command and control authority driving the aligned investments required by a broad and diverse industry with corporations that have their own business cases to evaluate and pursue.
The committee believes that FAA’s future responses to Congress should not be narrowly constructed, onetime communications that lack context. The February 2014 Research Plan was too narrow in scope to provide an adequate response to what Congress was seeking. It would enhance FAA’s credibility and effectiveness if the FAA ensured that the readers of its communications were presented with a wider context of its key activities and investments as well as guidance on how to interpret them.
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5 R. Turner, D. Verma, and W. Weitekamp, The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), School of Systems and Enterprises, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, N.J., August 31, 2009.
6 J.R. Armstrong, D. Henry, K. Kepchar, and A. Pyster, Competencies required for successful acquisition of large, highly complex systems of systems, INCOSE International Symposium 21(1):629-647, 2011.
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