Summary

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) efforts to develop the Advanced Automation System (AAS), focusing on whether FAA was effectively managing the first key AAS phase, the Initial Sector Suite System (ISSS), in order to minimize program delays.

GAO found that: (1) FAA estimated that AAS would cost approximately $5 billion; (2) FAA intended AAS to replace aging air traffic control computer systems with new hardware, software, and controller workstations; (3) 8 months after beginning work, FAA and the contractor task force reported a minimum 10-month delay in the ISSS software schedule, primarily due to unresolved requirements issues and inadequate schedule estimates, but thereafter amended the delay projection to 13 months; (4) FAA and the contractor had not modified the contract to reflect the delay; (5) additional delays are likely, since FAA has still not resolved requirements issues and has identified new requirements; (6) FAA and the contractor planned to perform early demonstrations of software capabilities, but software delays made it difficult to fully realize the benefits of such demonstrations; (7) by failing to run early demonstrations, the contractor might not be able to identify problems and resolve them in a timely manner; and (8) FAA expects ISSS delays to negatively impact subsequent AAS phases.