Objective, Scope, and Methodology

In assessing actions taken by FAA to address the Year 2000 problem, our objective was to determine the effectiveness of FAA’s Year 2000 program, including the reliability of FAA’s Year 2000 cost estimate. FAA Does Not Know the Full Extent of Its Year 2000 Problem Because It Has Not Completed Assessment Activities

FAA has not completed key assessment activities, placing it at enormous risk of not achieving Year 2000 compliance by January 1 of that year. FAA states that it expects to complete assessment phase activities by the end of January 1998. This could result in delayed flights. Delays in Completing Awareness and Assessment Leave Little Time for Critical Renovation, Validation, and Implementation Activities

Renovation, validation, and implementation activities are the three critical final phases in correcting Year 2000 vulnerabilities. However, FAA has yet to completely define the scope of its Year 2000 program. FAA acknowledges the uncertainty of its current cost estimate due to incomplete inventory and assessment information. For example, only $18 million of the $246 million is currently in the fiscal year 1998 budget. It means that FAA has no way of knowing at this time how serious its Year 2000 date software-coding problem is—or what it will cost to address it. At a minimum, the Administrator should finalize an agencywide plan which provides the Year 2000 program manager the authority to enforce Year 2000 policies and outlines FAA’s strategy for addressing the Year 2000 date change; assess how its major business lines and the aviation industry would be affected if the Year 2000 problem were not corrected in time, and use the results of this assessment to help rank the agency’s Year 2000 activities, as well as a means of obtaining and publicizing management commitment and support for necessary Year 2000 initiatives; by January 30, 1998, complete inventories of all information systems and their components, including data interfaces; by January 30, 1998, finish assessments of all systems in FAA’s inventory to determine each one’s criticality and to decide whether each system should be converted, replaced, or retired; determine priorities for system conversion and replacement based on establish plans for addressing identified date dependencies; develop validation and test plans for all converted or replaced systems; craft Year 2000 contingency plans for all business lines to ensure continuity of critical operations; and make a reliable cost estimate based on a comprehensive inventory and completed assessments of the various systems’ criticality and handling needs.
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the effectiveness of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) year 2000 program, including the reliability of its year 2000 cost estimate.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) FAA's progress in making its systems ready for the year 2000 has been too slow; (2) at its current pace, it will not make it in time; (3) the agency has been severely behind schedule in completing basic awareness activities, a critical first phase in an effective year 2000 program; (4) for example, FAA appointed its initial program manager with responsibility for the year 2000 only 6 months ago, and its overall year 2000 strategy is not yet final; (5) FAA also does not know the extent of its year 2000 problem because it has not completed most key assessment phase activities, the second critical phase in an effective year 2000 program; (6) it has yet to analyze the impact of systems' not being year 2000 date compliant, inventory and assess all of its systems for date dependencies, develop plans for addressing identified date dependencies, or develop plans for continuing operations in case systems are not corrected in time; (7) FAA currently estimates it will complete its assessment activities by the end of January 1998; (8) until these activities are completed, FAA cannot know the extent to which it can trust its systems to operate safely after 1999; (9) the potential serious consequences include degraded safety, grounded or delayed flights, increased airline costs, and customer inconvenience; (10) delays in completing awareness and assessment activities also leave FAA little time for critical renovation, validation, and implementation activities--the final three phases in an effective year 2000 program; (11) with 2 years left, FAA is quickly running out of time, making contingency planning for continuity of operations even more critical; (12) FAA's inventory and assessment actions will define the scope and magnitude of its year 2000 problem; since they are incomplete, FAA lacks the information it needs to develop reliable year 2000 cost estimates; and (13) FAA's year 2000 project manager currently estimates that the entire program will cost $246 million based on early estimates from managers throughout the agency.