After the FAA “failed to establish a clearly defined role” for the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) and did not “set expectations for leveraging research at other federal agencies,” the U.S. Congress cut JPDO funding. The JPDO was supposed to lead the effort to plan for implementation of the FAA’s Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) and to coordinate this effort with other government agencies, according to a Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General (OIG) Audit Report issued on August 25.
After the funding was eliminated, the FAA reassigned the JPDO coordination duties to its Interagency Planning Office (IPO). While the “IPO has made some progress in identifying R&D priorities,” according to the OIG report, “FAA has not established a normal process for identifying the R&D necessary to implement the agency’s longer-term vision for NextGen.”
The OIG report faults the FAA for focusing more on implementing infrastructure and not “transitioning new and enhanced operational capabilities into operational use.” Some of the missing capabilities include “automation for controllers for metering, merging and sequencing terminal airspace; use of flight plan information to determine which routes best meet airspace user needs based on aircraft equipment and performance capabilities; and complex, datalinked clearances to enable precise metering and four-dimensional trajectory management in both high altitude and terminal airspace.”
The OIG report concludes with five recommendations for improving the R&D process for air traffic management and linking the R&D with the long-term vision for NextGen: establishing and documenting a process with clear roles and responsibilities for identifying and prioritizing long-term R&D; linking the long-term vision for NextGen, once completed, with current R&D efforts to identify any additional necessary R&D; finalizing an MOU that establishes the structure for the FAA and partner agencies working on NextGen; updating the transition team document to include current projects in an annex, updated organization names and roles and assignments by position instead of name; and ensure that six high-priority NextGen capabilities are on the critical path for development.
The FAA responded to the OIG report’s recommendations by acknowledging them and providing estimated completion dates for most, but also highlighting budget constraints for the linking of its long-term vision for NextGen with current R&D efforts. The FAA plans to provide an update on the latter issue by Sept. 30, 2017.