Federal Aviation Administration: Agency Is Taking Steps to Plan for and Train Its Technician Workforce, but a More Strategic Approach Is Warranted
GAO-11-91
Published: Oct 22, 2010. Publicly Released: Oct 22, 2010.
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Highlights
Since 2006, air traffic control (ATC) equipment outages and failures at Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facilities have caused hundreds of flight delays and raised questions about FAA's maintenance capabilities. About 6,100 technicians maintain FAA's current (legacy) facilities and equipment and will be responsible for the Next Generation (NextGen) technologies planned for the next 15 years. Safe and efficient air travel will therefore partly depend on FAA's having technicians with the right skills now and in the future. As requested, GAO reviewed how (1) FAA incorporates key practices of leading organizations in its workforce planning for technicians, (2) FAA's technician training compares with key practices of leading organizations, and (3) the costs of technician training, including travel costs, have changed in recent years. GAO analyzed FAA workforce and training data, compared FAA planning and training practices with criteria identified in prior GAO work, and conducted focus group interviews with FAA technicians and FAA Training Academy instructors.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Department of Transportation | To ensure that FAA can hire and retain the technician staff it needs to install, maintain, repair, and certify equipment and facilities in the national airspace system, in the current and NextGen environments, the Secretary of Transportation should direct the FAA Administrator to develop and implement a comprehensive, written workforce strategy or policy for the technician workforce that incorporates the key leading practices in strategic workforce planning that FAA has not fully incorporated, such as determining the critical skills and competencies that will be needed to achieve current and future results. | In 2010, GAO reported that FAA lacks a comprehensive, written strategy to guide its planning for its technician workforce--a workforce responsible for maintaining FAA's current legacy air traffic control facilities and equipment and Next Generation (NextGen) technologies in the future. GAO found that FAA is not fully incorporating key leading practices in its strategic workforce planning for technicians, nor does it have a comprehensive, written technician workforce strategy to help it identify and focus on the long-term technician human capital issues with the greatest potential to affect mission results. Further, FAA had partially implemented initiatives for meeting strategic human... capital goals and analyzing attrition to evaluate its progress in workforce planning for technicians. The lack of a written strategy limits transparency, and thus the ability to evaluate and measure performance, in FAA's workforce planning approach. Therefore, GAO recommended that FAA develop and implement a comprehensive, written workforce strategy or policy for the technician workforce that incorporates the key leading practices in strategic workforce planning that FAA has not fully incorporated, such as determining the critical skills and competencies that will be needed to achieve current and future results. In September 2015, FAA provided GAO with a draft of the technician workforce strategy document that FAA expects to be finalized by the end of September 2015. The document outlines FAA's on-going and planned initiatives to support technician workforce hiring, forecasting staff needs, and development. Specifically, to better follow the leading practice of determining critical skills and competencies, the strategy discusses an initiative involving an on-going job task analysis to identify the skills and competencies technicians need to address current needs--expected to be completed around January 2016--and later, a planned strategic job analysis to determine the "to be" skills and competencies needed for the workforce of the future. Secondly, to more fully follow the leading practice to develop gap-closure strategies, the document states that FAA's hiring targets are now developed using data from its staffing model, prioritization process, and estimated attrition. The document describes a new technician staffing model currently under development, which--as recommended by the National Academy of Sciences in 2013--would be capable of predicting future staffing needs, identifying specific disciplines required, and examining the consequences of staffing decisions, among other things. Initial results from this staffing model have been used as inputs in FAA's technician hiring prioritization process, which determines hiring needs at a national level to prioritize hiring for the most critical staff. As a result, by incorporating these leading practices into its technician workforce strategy, FAA can better hire and retain the technician staff it needs to install, maintain, repair, and certify equipment and facilities in the national airspace system, in the current and NextGen environments.
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| Department of Transportation | To ensure that FAA can hire and retain the technician staff it needs to install, maintain, repair, and certify equipment and facilities in the national airspace system, in the current and NextGen environments, the Secretary of Transportation should direct the FAA Administrator to develop and implement a strategic training plan that is aligned with a written technician workforce strategy and incorporates key leading practices in training and development that FAA has not fully incorporated, such as determining how training and development efforts are expected to contribute to improved performance and results. | In 2010, GAO reported that FAA has not developed a strategic training plan for its technician workforce--a workforce responsible for maintaining FAA's current legacy air traffic control facilities and equipment and Next Generation (NextGen) technologies in the future. Technicians possess unique skills and are critical to safety and efficiency of the national air transportation system, as well as the successful implementation of NextGen. GAO found that FAA is not fully incorporating key leading practices in strategic training and development for its technicians, specifically in the areas of planning, design and development, implementation, and evaluation. For example, we found that FAA...
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| Department of Transportation | To ensure that FAA can hire and retain the technician staff it needs to install, maintain, repair, and certify equipment and facilities in the national airspace system, in the current and NextGen environments, the Secretary of Transportation should direct the FAA Administrator to improve planning for any future NextGen systems training by including input from FAA's NextGen Integration and Implementation Office, Air Traffic Organization's (ATO) Technical Operations Training and Development Group, technician supervisors, technical experts, and technicians to develop an integrated way to address specific performance gaps or incorporate necessary enhancements in the technician training curriculum. | In October 2010, we reported on FAA's workforce planning and training for its technicians. We found that, with the transition to NextGen, FAA technicians will need training on both new (NextGen) and old (legacy) systems that FAA plans to continue operating, but that FAA had just begun to identify the skills and competencies technicians will need to maintain NextGen systems. We recommended that FAA improve the planning for any future NextGen systems training by including input from key stakeholders--such as FAA's NextGen Integration and Implementation Office, the Air Traffic Organization's Technical Operations Training and Development Group (training office), and technicians. In response,...
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| Department of Transportation | To ensure that FAA can hire and retain the technician staff it needs to install, maintain, repair, and certify equipment and facilities in the national airspace system, in the current and NextGen environments, the Secretary of Transportation should direct the FAA Administrator to consider modifying FAA's cost accounting system or cost analysis techniques to develop information about the cost of in-house and vendor-provided training and of the travel related to those training activities to assist Congress in understanding the costs of operations and making informed decisions. | In 2010, GAO reported that, according to data provided by FAA, costs for vendors to provide training for technicians on new equipment have risen very quickly in the past few years. However, an FAA employee identified by the agency as a subject matter expert told GAO the agency's cost accounting system is unable to accumulate costs for vendor training and travel related activities. Specifically, these travel costs could not be accumulated because the funds for that travel are derived from multiple sources?including the system program office, a centralized training fund, and in some cases the local facility. FAA is subject to various laws and standards that have an effect on its...
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AviationBest practicesEmployee trainingHuman capitalHuman capital managementHuman capital planningHuman capital policiesKnowledge, skills and abilitiesLabor forceLegacy systemsMaintenance standardsSkilled laborStrategic planningTraining utilizationStaff utilizationCost analysisAir traffic control systemsCost estimatesMaintenance operations