FAA Has Adopted Aspects of Some Leading Workforce Planning Practices but Lacks a Strategic Approach to Planning for Its Technician Workforce

FAA’s workforce planning for technicians partially or mostly incorporates  key practices of leading organizations, but no practices are fully  incorporated, and FAA has no comprehensive, written strategy to guide its  efforts. To the extent that the agency does not incorporate leading  practices, it may be limited in its ability to plan effectively for the right  number of technicians with the right skill sets, both now and in the near  term. FAA Has an Annual Process for Allocating Its Technician Workforce but Lacks a Succession Planning Strategy for Addressing Impending Retirements and a Staffing Model

FAA’s workforce planning efforts partially address leading practices in  developing strategies to close the gap between needed and actual skills  and competencies. FAA does not have a workforce planning communication strategy, a key  practice designed to create shared expectations, promote transparency,  and report progress. FAA’s Ability to Plan for Technician Training Is Limited by Shortfalls in Its Workforce Planning and Identification of Needed Skills and Competencies

FAA at least partially follows key practices of leading organizations in its  training and development for technicians. FAA Is Identifying Annual Training Goals but Needs to Identify Strategic Training Goals and Those Skills and Competencies Needed to Meet Such Goals

FAA has partially implemented initiatives—such as establishing annual  training goals and incorporating employees’ developmental goals—to plan  for strategic training and development of its technicians. FAA is taking action to ensure that its training goals are consistent with its  overall mission, goals, and culture in that it plans to train annually at least  the minimum number of technicians that it believes it needs to maintain  air traffic management facilities; however, FAA has not identified future  training needs beyond the annual cycle and has only just begun to  determine the critical skills and competencies that it will need to maintain  NextGen systems. With the transition to  NextGen, technicians’ training requirements—and thus critical skills and  competencies—will increase, since technicians will have to learn how to  maintain the new systems while remaining proficient in maintaining the  legacy systems that FAA plans to continue operating indefinitely. No vendor courses have been approved to replace academy training for  legacy courses, although Technical Operations Training is studying the  feasibility of having vendors provide certain courses that are currently  offered through the academy and are filled to capacity. Certain Academy Training Costs Have Been Roughly Stable, while Those Vendor Training Costs That FAA Can Identify Have Risen with the Rollout of Courses for New Equipment

		Instructor Costs of Academy Training on Established Equipment Have Remained Stable, but Student Travel Costs Have Increased

In the past few years, the academy has provided hundreds of training  classes to thousands of FAA technicians. The  costs that FAA identified for academy training include those for instructor  services and those for student travel to and from the academy in  Oklahoma City. Recommendations for Executive Action

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, we  recommend that the Secretary of Transportation direct the FAA  Administrator to take the following four actions:  1.  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; 2.  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; 3. improve planning for any future NextGen systems training by including  input from FAA’s NextGen Integration and Implementation Office,  ATO’s 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; and 4.  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. The department provided technical  corrections, which we incorporated as appropriate. Specifically, we  addressed the following questions: (1) To what extent does FAA  incorporate key practices of leading organizations in its workforce  planning for technicians? (2) How does FAA’s technician training compare  with key practices of leading organizations? (3) How have the costs of  technician training, including travel costs, changed in recent years? We also conducted semistructured interviews with FAA  management about technician training costs.
Why GAO Did This Study

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.

What GAO Found

FAA has followed some key practices of leading organizations in its strategic workforce planning for technicians but lacks a comprehensive, written strategy to guide its efforts. GAO assessed whether FAA followed those practices fully, mostly, or partially, or did not follow them. For example, FAA partially follows one practice--determining critical skills and competencies--because it assesses those skills and competencies its technicians now have to maintain legacy systems, but has just begun to identify those they will need to maintain NextGen systems. FAA also partially develops strategies to close the gap between the technician workforce it needs and the one that it has: It determines staffing needs annually, but lacks a longer-term strategy to address the hundreds of technician retirements projected through 2020. Without a comprehensive, written technician workforce planning strategy, FAA does not have a transparent road map to acquire and retain the right number of technicians with the right skills at the right time. FAA mostly follows other leading workforce planning practices, although it only partially involves key stakeholders--managers, but not technicians--in workforce planning and may thus be missing opportunities for improvement. FAA at least partially follows key practices of leading organizations in its strategic training and development for technicians, but it lacks a strategic training plan, and workload issues limit its ability to fully incorporate key leading practices. With the transition to NextGen, technicians will need to be trained both to maintain new systems and to remain proficient in maintaining the legacy systems that FAA plans to continue operating. FAA has partially implemented a strategic approach to planning for training in that it has established annual training goals and incorporated employees' developmental goals in its planning processes. As noted, however, it has just begun to identify the skills and competencies technicians will need to maintain NextGen systems. FAA mostly follows other key practices for design and development, such as developing a mix of in-house and vendor training. FAA is studying the feasibility of having vendors provide certain courses that are currently offered through the FAA Training Academy and are filled to capacity. FAA partially follows leading practices for implementing training and development, but workload demands often limit technicians' opportunities to attend training. FAA also partially follows leading practices for demonstrating how training and development efforts contribute to improved performance and results. For example, FAA identifies annual training goals, but does not link them to specific performance goals. As a result, it is limited in its ability to assess the effectiveness of its investments in training. Recent compensation costs for instructors at the FAA Training Academy have been roughly stable, while those for student travel to and from the academy and for training courses provided by vendors, exclusive of travel costs, have risen. The higher student travel costs reflect increases in air fares, and vendor training costs have grown as FAA has rolled out more courses for new equipment in preparation for the deployment of NextGen systems. Among other things, FAA should develop a written technician workforce planning strategy that identifies needed skills and staffing, and a strategic training plan showing how training efforts contribute to performance goals. The Department of Transportation provided technical corrections.