Aviation Acquisition

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA): (1) progress in incorporating federal acquisition principles into its acquisition process; and (2) budgeting procedures for major acquisitions.

GAO found that: (1) since 1990, FAA has undertaken such acquisition reforms as appointing an executive director for acquisitions and revising its acquisition order to increase compliance with federal guidance; (2) such reforms were instrumental in FAA postponement of two premature production contract awards; (3) even though the new orders should help FAA improve its acquisition process, the orders do not indicate the extent to which certain acquisitions will be exempt from federal acquisition processes; (4) although the new orders require every new major acquisition to have a mission needs statement that identifies project purposes and how the project meets FAA needs, the FAA fiscal year (FY) 1992 budget request includes $116.7 million for 10 new projects that do not include such statements; (5) FAA failed to consistently follow federal acquisition regulations or its own criteria for budgeting acquisition activities; (6) FAA does not effectively link its budgeting with its acquisition process for major systems; (7) although FAA acknowledged in its FY 1992 budget request that it was requesting facilities and equipment (F&E) funding for development activities, it did not state the full extent to which it would use F&E funds for such activities, define development work, or identify the projects' acquisition phases; and (8) FAA was reluctant to budget development activities in its research, engineering and development (RE&D) account, because of reductions to that account over the years.

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.

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