Aviation Acquisition

Because of the steady growth in air traffic operations and the failure of aging equipment in the air traffic control system, the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) timely acquisition of new equipment has become increasingly critical for aviation safety and efficiency. FAA estimates that it will need $13 billion during the next seven years to continue its modernization program. Persistent acquisition problems, however, raise questions about the agency's ability to field new equipment within cost, schedule, and performance parameters. This report (1) reviews FAA's management of the acquisition process, (2) discusses whether the organizational culture contributed to the agency's acquisition problems, and (3) identifies ways that FAA could improve its management of acquisitions through cultural change.

GAO found that: (1) the FAA organizational culture has been an underlying cause of FAA acquisition problems; (2) employees' attitudes do not reflect FAA focus on accountability, coordination, or adaptability; (3) FAA acquisition officials make little or no mission needs analyses, set unrealistic cost and schedule estimates, and begin production before systems development and testing is completed; (4) FAA fails to enforce accountability for defining systems requirements or for contract oversight; (5) the hierarchical FAA structure fosters a controlling environment, diminishes employee empowerment, and impedes information sharing; (6) FAA operations and development divisions have separate and distinct lines of authority and communications, which impedes coordination; (7) FAA officials are resistant to making needed changes in their acquisition process because FAA culture rewards conservatism and conformity and discourages innovation; (8) recognizing its need to improve the acquisition process through cultural change, FAA implemented a reform effort based on cross-functional, integrated product teams, and introduced a new acquisition management system; (9) FAA believes the product teams will improve accountability and coordination and infuse a more mission-oriented focus into the acquisition process; and (10) FAA has approved only one product team plan because it is still having difficulty in gaining the strong commitment of all employees who have a stake in the acquisition process and in forging partnerships across organizational divisions.

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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