Summary
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) plays a vital role in advancing transportation safety by investigating accidents, determining their causes, and issuing safety recommendations. To support its mission, NTSB's training center, which opened in 2003, provides training to NTSB investigators and others. It is important that NTSB use its resources efficiently to carry out its mission. GAO was asked to examine the extent to which NTSB follows leading management practices, how NTSB carries out its transportation safety function, and the extent to which NTSB's training center is cost-effective, including potential options for improving the center's cost-effectiveness. GAO reviewed NTSB documents and data concerning management practices and accident investigations, interviewed relevant NTSB and other federal officials, and evaluated NTSB's management practices based on leading practices identified in prior work.
While NTSB has recently made progress in following leading management practices, its overall use of leading management practices in the seven areas GAO examined was either minimal or partial. NTSB minimally follows leading practices in strategic planning, information technology, and knowledge management. NTSB partially follows leading practices in human capital management, communications, acquisition management, and financial accountability and control. For example, regarding human capital management, NTSB developed a detailed staffing plan. However, the agency lacks a strategic training plan and a diversity management strategy, which are important for ensuring that an organization has strategies for achieving the appropriate mix of skills to achieve its mission. In addition, while NTSB follows some leading practices for financial management, it is noncompliant with the Anti-Deficiency Act because it did not obtain budget authority for the net present value of the entire 20-year lease for its training center lease obligation at the time the lease agreement was signed in 2001. NTSB carries out its transportation safety function by selecting which accidents to investigate, investigating accidents and issuing recommendations, and taking proactive steps outside of specific accidents. For some transportation modes, NTSB has risk-based criteria for selecting which accidents to investigate, while for others it does not. Such criteria are important to ensure NTSB is using its resources to achieve a maximum safety benefit, particularly because, by statute, NTSB must allocate a large proportion of its resources to investigating aviation accidents, which may reduce the number of staff that NTSB can use to investigate accidents in other modes that may have critical safety implications. To its credit, although accident investigations are sometimes lengthy, NTSB issues urgent recommendations during the course of an investigation. In addition, NTSB proactively carries out its mission by conducting safety studies to consider issues that may be relevant to more than one accident. Safety studies, which sometimes result in recommendations, may also reduce the likelihood of recurrence of transportation accidents. Over the last 6 years, NTSB has conducted four safety studies. Industry stakeholders stated they would like NTSB to conduct more safety studies. NTSB's training center is not cost-effective, as the combination of the training center's revenues and external training costs avoided by NTSB staff's use of the facility do not cover the center's costs. In fiscal year 2005, costs exceeded revenues by $3.9 million. Furthermore, the training center has had a limited impact on avoiding external training costs, as the majority of NTSB staff training occurs externally. Potential strategies to increase revenues or decrease costs could increase the cost-effectiveness of the training center; however, vacating the space may be the least-cost strategy.
Recommendations
Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change
from "In process" to "Implemented" or "Not implemented" based on our follow up work.
Director:
Team:
Phone:
Gerald L. Dillingham
Government Accountability Office: Physical Infrastructure
(202) 512-4803
Recommendations for Executive Action
Recommendation: To improve agency performance in the key management areas of IT, knowledge management, and human capital management, NTSB should develop plans or policies for IT and knowledge management and develop a strategic human capital plan that is linked to its overall strategic plan. The human capital plan should include strategies on staffing, training, diversity management, and recruitment and retention. The IT plan should include a strategy to guide IT acquisitions.
Agency Affected: National Transportation Safety Board
Status: In process
Comments: In August 2007, NTSB issued an IT strategic plan. However, the plan is not well aligned with the agency's strategic plan. To improve knowledge management, NTSB (1) issued an agency strategic plan and an IT strategic plan that include knowledge management activities, (2) made the deputy managing director responsible for knowledge management activities within the agency, and (3) hired a chief information officer to implement policies and procedures on IT and information sharing. However, for knowledge management, NTSB still needs to (1) revise its strategic plan and IT strategic plan to clearly identify which agency plans, activities, and goals pertain to management of agency knowledge, and (2) develop its strategic training plan, which is expected to include a knowledge management component. In 2008, NTSB completed a draft strategic human capital plan, which includes strategies for addressing human capital objectives included in the agency's strategic plan. While the plan addresses recruitment and training, it lacks sufficient information on diversity management and retention.
Recommendation: To make the most effective use of its investigation resources and increase transparency, NTSB should develop orders for all transportation modes that articulate risk-based criteria for determining which accidents would provide the greatest safety benefit to investigate or, in the case of aviation accidents, explain which accidents are investigated at the scene, or remotely, in a limited manner.
Agency Affected: National Transportation Safety Board
Status: In process
Comments: NTSB developed a transparent policy containing risk-based criteria for selecting which rail, pipeline, and hazardous materials accidents to investigate. This policy assigns priority to investigating accidents based on whether the accident involved a collision or derailment and whether it involved fatalities or injuries, among other factors. It has also developed a transparent, risk-based policy explaining which aviation accidents are investigated at the scene, or remotely, in a limited manner, depending on whether they involve a fatality and the type of aircraft. NTSB has not developed risk-based criteria for marine accidents.
Recommendation: To be more proactive in identifying and correcting safety problems before accidents occur, NTSB should increase utilization of safety studies.
Agency Affected: National Transportation Safety Board
Status: In process
Comments: According to NTSB, the agency does not have enough staff to increase its output of safety studies. Therefore, the agency is examining the potential of using contractors to perform certain aspects of safety studies, such as data collection, and conducting some studies in collaboration with other entities, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or the Federal Aviation Administration.
Recommendation: NTSB should develop a business plan to increase the utilization of its training center or vacate it and submit the plan to Congress. As part of this effort, NTSB should determine the costs and feasibility of alternative actions such as adding more courses for NTSB staff, moving headquarters staff to the center, subleasing space to other entities, or buying out the lease.
Agency Affected: National Transportation Safety Board
Status: In process
Comments: NTSB completed a business plan in March 2007 and a revised plan in March 2008. While certain aspects of the revised business plan have been improved over the previous plan, overall, the revised plan lacks key financial and marketing information that is essential to a business plan. The plan also lacks discussion of cost-saving alternatives, such as using space already available at NTSB headquarters for certain offset activities, such as select training courses.
Recommendation: NTSB should identify and implement actions to correct its violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act and bring the agency in compliance with the act. These actions could include obtaining a deficiency appropriation for the full costs of the lease, renegotiating or terminating the training center lease so that it complies with the Anti-Deficiency Act, or obtaining authority to obligate lease payments using annual funds over the term of the lease.
Agency Affected: National Transportation Safety Board
Status: Implemented
Comments: NTSB officials told us that because Congressional appropriators do not want to appropriate funds for the remaining lease payments in a single appropriation law, NTSB worked with Congress to obtain authority to use its appropriations for fiscal years 2007 and 2008 to make its lease payments during those periods. To avoid future violations, NTSB will need to continue to work with Congress to obtain similar authority in its future annual appropriations. In addition, NTSB officials told us that the agency has asked Congress to ratify the lease payments it made from 2001 through 2006.
