Greater Emphasis on Information Resource Management Is Needed at the Federal Aviation Administration

In response to a congressional request, GAO reviewed Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) planning, management, acquisition and use of automatic data processing (ADP) for personnel, financial management, accident/incident/violation reporting and other administrative functions.

FAA has taken steps to improve its ADP procedures and guidelines for initiating and approving national hardware and software development projects. However, despite these improvements, GAO found a number of management and technical problems remaining in these FAA information-related functions. Despite the growing complexity and size of FAA computer hardware and software acquisitions, FAA has not made a comprehensive analysis of its overall information requirements. FAA is procuring excessive computer hardware capacity at the Aeronautical Computer Center and at its regional offices. In addition, major software projects are proceeding or are being developed without appropriate management controls. These conditions prevail because ADP management control and oversight are dispersed throughout the agency. Information requirements planning is conducted on a project-by-project basis. FAA does not conduct overall planning to meet agencywide needs. Therefore, overlapping or duplicative systems have not been identified, long-term planning has been impeded, and evaluation of the overall effectiveness of existing information systems has been hampered. Furthermore, information requirements analyses are not adequately conducted to support computer acquisitions. GAO found that, at the secretarial level, the Department of Transportation could provide better guidance on acquiring, managing, operating, and using information resources to its subunits, including FAA.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Herbert R. Mclure Team: General Accounting Office: Resources, Community, and Economic Development Division Phone: (202) 275-7783