Spending on air traffic control operations has doubled over two decades, while productivity has declined and efforts to improve performance have been ineffective, according to a report released Wednesday by a government watchdog.
The report by the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General blames the decline in productivity on a culture resistant to change within the Federal Aviation Administration and the agency’s failure to adopt business-like practices.
Lawmakers who want to remove air traffic operations from the Federal Aviation Administration’s control and turn them over to a nonprofit corporation quickly pounced on the report as evidence the agency is incapable of modernizing its air traffic operations. The agency has been engaged for more than decade in transitioning from a radar-based air traffic control system to one based on satellite navigation.
Decades of personnel, organizational and acquisition reforms have failed to slow the agency’s cost growth, improve its productivity or improve its performance in modernizing air traffic operations, said Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
“This report shows that the FAA simply isn’t suited to successfully modernize our nation’s antiquated air traffic control system,” Shuster said. “The FAA remains a vast government bureaucracy, not a high-tech service provider.”
Shuster is expected to introduce legislation within the next two months that would spin off the agency’s air traffic operations to a nonprofit controlled by a board of aviation “stakeholders,” including airlines, airports and others. With the exception of Delta Air Lines, the airline industry has been lobbying aggressively for the change. Business aircraft operators are opposed to privatizing air traffic operations, fearing they’ll have to pick up a larger share of the cost of operations and be forced out of some airports to make room for more airline flights.
An FAA memo responding to the report insists the agency has been effective at controlling the cost of its operations and improving efficiency and effectiveness.
(AP)
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I worked at the FAA for several years as an engineer. IBM had been awarded a 4 billion dollar contract to upgraded computers and software at 20 major airports in the US. The 4 billion was spent by IBM Federal Systems in Wash, D.C. RESULT: NO new computers, No new software only 4 billion down the drain. Typical government management–ITS YOUR MONEY!!!!—no one in the government was fired or reprimanded, not the slightest punishment of government supervisors or managers–the fact is that they held their positions–many were probably promoted and continued business as usual, they all received a nice pension, I’m quite sure. Some are at IBM systems after they retired.
Suggest that ALL, ALL government positions be CONTRACTED OUT–including local police, garbage collection, water services, all municipal employees, etc.
As a side note to frum people, several brilliant scientists worked for years at the Weissman Insitute and discovered a drug (copanese ??) to alleviate the symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Well tested in Yisreal, it took approx. another, 7-8 yrs for US FDA approval. How many MS patients suffered needlessly I’ll never know–plenty I’m sure—congratulations to the FDA an their “Brilliance”.
B’vah’chah’sha, suggest all frum do more Talmud Torah !!
Toddah rabbah a goy,
Gerry Mullen