Aviation Safety: Certification and Approval Processes Are Generally Viewed as Working Well, but Better Evaluative Information Needed to Improve Efficiency

In October 2010, GAO reported that FAA had taken action to address variation in decisions and inefficiency in its certification and approval processes but without outcome-based performance measures and a continuous evaluative process to determine if these actions are having their intended effects. GAO recommended that the Secretary of Transportation direct the FAA Administrator to determine the effectiveness of actions taken to improve the certification and approval processes by developing a continuous evaluative process and use it to create measurable performance goals for the actions, track performance toward those goals, and determine appropriate process changes. To the extent that this evaluation of agency actions identifies effective practices, consider instituting them agency wide. On October 1, 2011 FAA implemented new metrics that provide the ability to track process performance and product conformity. These metrics will allow FAA to set measurable performance goals necessary to determine the effectiveness of the certification and approval processes and assist it in deciding the appropriate actions necessary to address systemic issues that may negatively impact certain processes and their outcomes.

GAO reported in October 2010 that FAA's Flight Standards and Aircraft Certification Services notify applicants for certification services as to whether resources are available to begin work on their projects. However, while Aircraft Certification tracks in a national database how long individual submissions are wait-listed, Flight Standards does not track wait-listed submissions and, therefore, is unaware how long projects are wait-listed and unable to reallocate resources to better meet demand for certification services. Further, industry stakeholders face uncertainty with respect to any plans or investments that depend on obtaining a certification in a timely manner. GAO recommended that the Secretary of Transportation direct the FAA Administrator to develop and implement in Flight Standards a process to track how long certification and approval submissions are wait-listed, the reasons for wait-listing them, and the factors that eventually allowed initiation of the certification process. In October 2011, FAA indicated that it had altered the software in Flight Standards' Certification Service Oversight Process (CSOP) database to designate when certification submissions are wait-listed. The database now tracks how long certification submissions are wait-listed. As a result, FAA now has the capability to track how long certification submissions are waitlisted and reallocate resources, as appropriate, to better meet demand.