The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is taking the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to task for slow progress on its years-long Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) project which aims to modernize U.S. air traffic management systems by moving from a ground-based air-traffic control system that uses radar, to one based on satellite navigation and digital communications.
In a Nov. 9 report, GAO pointed to “mixed progress, across four critical program areas, [that] has slowed FAA’s NextGen efforts to improve the safety and efficiency of air travel and address growing congestion in the national airspace.”
GAO’s review of FAA progress on NextGen was not all bad news.
“FAA’s efforts to implement NextGen fully or substantially met four leading practices for program management,” the watchdog agency said. “For example, FAA has a lessons learned database and a program roadmap in line with these practices.”
“However, closer adherence to five other practices could better position the agency to manage the program,” GAO said. “For example, the agency has not updated NextGen life-cycle cost estimates since 2017. Doing so could help FAA better assess budget needs and refine annual budget requests, as well as measure its performance against the life-cycle cost estimate.”
“In addition, FAA does not have a NextGen risk mitigation plan that identifies and prioritizes the highest programmatic risks or contains detailed risk alternatives analyses to mitigate identified risks,” GAO said. “Such a plan could better equip FAA in its efforts to address the greatest risks and challenges to NextGen.”
On the plus side, “FAA beat its milestone for deploying more reliable digital communication services at air traffic control towers,” GAO said. “
“However, it did not deploy initial services to all 20 facilities serving en route flights by its September 2021 milestone,” GAO continued. “As of August 2023, FAA had not completed the deployment of those services at eight en route facilities. FAA also extended milestones for systems to improve flight spacing and sequencing.”
GAO also noted that the coronavirus pandemic “played a large part in missed milestones, delaying, for example, system testing and training.”
The report says FAA should work on four recommendations to improve its execution on the project, and FAA concurred with the following:
- Develop an updated life-cycle cost estimate for NextGen, measure FAA’s performance against it, and create a schedule for updating the life-cycle cost estimate regularly;
- Develop a detailed risk mitigation plan on potential risks and assess their impact and how the agency would mitigate such risks;
- Establish a clear and measurable performance metrics that are aligned with the NextGen programs goals; and
- Improve stakeholder communication and engagement in the continued development of the program.
“Given NextGen’s complexities, its long timeline, and the challenges stakeholders and FAA identified, implementation may at times warrant risk mitigation or course change,” GAO said.
“While FAA engages in a number of risk management activities, unless it develops a comprehensive risk management plan that is focused on NextGen and identifies alternatives to address high-level risks, FAA will be less equipped to quickly and effectively pivot to adapt to change and mitigate risks,” the watchdog agency said.
