Summary
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is a relatively small agency that plays a vital role in transportation safety and has a worldwide reputation for investigating accidents. With a staff of about 400 and a budget of $76.7 million in fiscal year 2006, NTSB investigates all civil aviation accidents in the United States, and significant accidents in railroad, highway, marine, and pipeline; and issues safety recommendations to address issues identified during accident investigations. To support its mission, NTSB built a training academy, which opened in 2003 and provides training to NTSB investigators and others. It is important that NTSB use its resources efficiently to carry out its mission and maintain its preeminence. This testimony, based on ongoing work for this committee, addresses the extent to which NTSB follows leading practices in selected management areas, addresses challenges in completing accident investigations and closing safety recommendations, and generates sufficient revenues to cover costs at its academy.
NTSB has recently made progress in following leading management practices, but overall has a mixed record. For example, NTSB has improved its financial management by hiring a Chief Financial Officer and putting controls on its purchasing activities, which should address past problems with unapproved purchases. However, NTSB lacks a full cost accounting system, which would inform managers of the resources spent on individual investigations and provide data to balance office workload. NTSB has also begun to develop a performance management system that should eventually link each individual's performance to the agency's strategic goals and objectives. However, the performance management system will not be fully functional until NTSB has developed a strategic plan with results-oriented goals and objectives and specific strategies for achieving them, which are lacking in the current strategic plan. Other areas, such as human capital and communications, partially follow leading practices. While NTSB is accomplishing its accident investigation mission, it faces challenges that affect the efficiency of the report production and recommendation close out processes. NTSB routinely takes longer than 2 years to complete major investigations. Several factors may affect the length of report production, including several revisions of draft reports through multiple layers of the organization. In addition, the processes for federal transportation agencies to implement NTSB's safety recommendations and for NTSB to change the status of recommendations are lengthy, paper-based, and labor intensive. While Department of Transportation officials have been working with NTSB to find acceptable means of implementing its recommendations, they cite the lengthy rule-making process as a challenge to speedy implementation. For fiscal years 2004 and 2005, NTSB's academy did not generate sufficient revenues to cover the costs of providing training. As a result, those portions of the academy's costs that were not covered by the revenues from tuition and other sources--approximately $6.3 million in fiscal year 2004 and $3.9 million in fiscal year 2005--were offset by general appropriations to the agency. While NTSB has taken action to generate revenue from other sources, such as renting academy space for conferences, it does not have a marketing plan that seeks to optimize opportunities for additional revenues at the academy.
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 functional management areas of strategic planning, human capital planning, financial management, and communications, the Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board should improve strategic planning by developing a revised strategic plan that follows performance-based practices; developing a strategic training plan that is aligned with the revised strategic plan and identifies skill gaps that pose obstacles to meeting the agency's strategic goals and curriculum that would eliminate these gaps; and aligning their organizational structure to implement the strategic plan and eliminate unnecessary management layers.
Agency Affected: National Transportation Safety Board
Status: Implemented
Comments: Since 2007, managers and Board members began holding periodic meetings with staff, such as brown bag lunches; conducting outreach visits to regional offices; and holding "townhall" meetings in which NTSB employees ask questions of the managing director. In November 2007, NTSB informed us that it is conducting meetings with union leadership to provide information on upcoming actions by the agency and to allow union leaders the opportunity to pose questions to management. In addition, the agency has formed two bodies comprising representatives from management and staff intended to enhance internal communication, including upward communication; one body was formed by NTSB and is comprised of employees from NTSB's administrative offices; and another was formed from NTSB's program offices. In addition, NTSB began conducting periodic surveys of employees, including (1) a July 2007 survey to measure staff satisfaction with internal communications; (2) a survey to obtain employees' views on the mission statement and goals that NTSB proposed for its revised strategic plan (conducted February 2007); (3) four separate surveys throughout 2007 to measure employee satisfaction with services provided by NTSB's administrative, human resources, and acquisition divisions and NTSB's health and safety program; and (4) a biennial survey, held in November 2007, to obtain employee feedback on NTSB's human resources efforts.
Recommendation: To improve agency performance in the key functional management areas of strategic planning, human capital planning, financial management, and communications, the Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board should develop a full cost-accounting system that would track the amount of time employees spend on each investigation and in training.
Agency Affected: National Transportation Safety Board
Status: In process
Comments: NTSB officials told us that the agency wants to add the ability to charge costs to projects (i.e., activities) to its accounting system and that it has discussed this addition with the provider of most of NTSB's financial system needs-the Department of Interior's (DOI) National Business Center. According to NTSB officials, this modification would enable direct recording by activity of hours worked and of corresponding payroll costs. NTSB officials also said that because the agency has not had sufficient funding to make this modification, it intends to request specific funding for this effort as part of its budget appropriation for fiscal year 2010. NTSB said that in the meantime, it will continue discussions with DOI and that it has begun to benchmark the planned modification to systems of agencies of comparable size. It anticipates that, once underway, DOI would work with NTSB to manage the implementation.
Recommendation: To improve agency performance in the key functional management areas of strategic planning, human capital planning, financial management, and communications, the Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board should develop mechanisms that will facilitate communications from staff-level employees to senior management, including consideration of contracting out a confidential employee survey to obtain employee feedback on management initiatives.
Agency Affected: National Transportation Safety Board
Status: Implemented
Comments: NTSB management officials have put in place processes to improve communication within the agency. For example, managers and Board members hold periodic meetings with staff, such as brown bag lunches; conduct outreach visits to regional offices; hold "town-hall" meetings in which NTSB employees ask questions of the managing director; and conduct meetings with union leadership to provide information on upcoming actions by the agency and to allow union leaders the opportunity to pose questions to management. In addition, the agency has formed two bodies comprising representatives from management and staff intended to enhance internal communication, including upward communication. One body is comprised of employees from NTSB's administrative offices, and the other from NTSB's program offices. In addition, NTSB has begun conducting several periodic surveys of employees, including (1) a survey to measure staff satisfaction with internal communications; (2) a survey to obtain employees' views on the mission statement and goals that NTSB proposed for its revised strategic plan; (3) four separate surveys to measure employee satisfaction with services provided by NTSB's administrative, human resources, and acquisition divisions and NTSB's health and safety program; and (4) a biennial survey to obtain employee feedback on NTSB's human resources efforts. This latter survey supplements-by being conducted during alternating years-the Office of Personnel Management's biennial survey of federal employees that measures employees' perceptions of the extent to which conditions characterizing successful organizations are present in their agencies. NTSB officials told us that because the communications survey indicated a need for NTSB's individual offices to hold more frequent staff meetings, the agency has established a goal for fiscal year 2008 for each of its offices to achieve 75 percent of staff being either satisfied or very satisfied with their office staff meetings.
Recommendation: To enhance the efficiency of the report development and recommendation close-out processes, the Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board should identify better practices in the agency and apply them to all modes. Consider such things as using project managers or deputy investigators-in-charge in all modes, using incentives to encourage performance in report development, and examining the layers of review to find ways to streamline the process, such as eliminating some levels of review and using concurrent reviews as appropriate.
Agency Affected: National Transportation Safety Board
Status: In process
Comments: NTSB examined and made several improvements to its report development process. For example, NTSB directed its office of safety recommendations and advocacy to provide comments on draft reports at the same time as other offices, instead of beforehand. NTSB estimates that this has reduced the time it takes to develop a report by 2 weeks. NTSB officials also told us that the agency established and filled a permanent position with a primary responsibility of quality assurance in the report development process. In addition, NTSB officials told us that the agency held a comprehensive training program in February 2008 for investigators in charge to learn about and share best practices across NTSB's modal offices related to investigations and report development. NTSB also took or is taking the following steps to improve the efficiency with which Board members are able to review and approve draft reports: (1) it is relying more on electronic rather than paper distribution of draft reports; (2) it reduced the time allotted to Board members to concur or non-concur with staff responses to a Board member's proposed revisions from up to 20 days to up to 10 days; (3) it is developing an information system to manage the process, which it aims to fully implement by the end of fiscal year 2008. Aside from its highway office which was already doing so, NTSB's modal offices decided not to use project managers or deputy investigators-in-charge to lead report development because the offices did not believe that doing so would appropriately address their report development issues; NTSB did not provide any further explanation of the basis for this decision. NTSB officials told us that its office of marine safety has improved the efficiency and effectiveness of its report development process by shifting responsibility for writing reports from three writer/editors to investigators-in-charge; the office's one remaining writer/editor now focuses on editing. Finally, in December 2007, NTSB's office of railroad, pipeline, and hazardous materials safety hired a deputy chief in the railroad division who will be responsible for streamlining the division's report development process.
Recommendation: To enhance the efficiency of the report development and recommendation close-out processes, the Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board should improve the efficiency of the review process for changing the status of recommendations by computerizing the documentation and implementing concurrent reviews.
Agency Affected: National Transportation Safety Board
Status: In process
Comments: NTSB recently completed a pilot program that involved electronic distribution of documents related to recommendation status. The results of that test are helping to guide development of an information system intended to help the agency manage its process for changing the status of recommendations. NTSB aims to fully implement the system by the end of fiscal year 2008. NTSB said that the system is being developed to support concurrent reviews. When fully implemented, this system should serve to close our recommendation.
Recommendation: To enhance the utilization of the academy and improve the ability to generate revenues that will cover academy costs, the Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board should develop a comprehensive marketing plan for the academy. The plan should consider such things as outreach to potential users, working with the Department of Agriculture and the General Services Administration to market it as classroom and conference space, and conducting market research for additional curriculum development. If ethical and conflict-of-interest issues can be addressed, the plan should also consider options for allowing transportation manufacturers to conduct company-sponsored symposia and technical training at the academy facility, which would benefit NTSB investigators in keeping up with new technologies. In addition the plan should consider the feasibility of subleasing a portion of the academy space.
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. For example, NTSB's revised business plan does not contain historical financial information or forecast financial information beyond fiscal year 2008. Further, the plan does not describe assumptions included in the plan, such as the inclusion of imputed fees for NTSB students in NTSB's tuition revenues. 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: To enhance the utilization of the academy and improve the ability to generate revenues that will cover academy costs, the Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board should develop core investigator curriculum for each mode and maximize the delivery of that training at the academy.
Agency Affected: National Transportation Safety Board
Status: In process
Comments: Although NTSB has developed a list of core competencies and associated courses for investigators, the agency has not described the knowledge, skills, and abilities for each competency. In addition, NTSB has not described the specialized competencies for its investigators in its various modes. However, the marine office plans to develop specialized core competencies and curriculum for its investigators in 2008, and NTSB's other modal offices plan to do so at some later date after evaluating their investigators' individual development plans.
Recommendation: To enhance the utilization of the academy and improve the ability to generate revenues that will cover academy costs, the Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board should conduct a study to determine the costs and feasibility of moving certain functions from headquarters to the academy facility in preparation for the renegotiation of the headquarters lease, which expires in 2011.
Agency Affected: National Transportation Safety Board
Status: Implemented
Comments: NTSB's managing director consulted with the agency's senior leadership to discuss the issue of moving additional functions to the training center. Input from management was analyzed, and the managing director determined that it was not cost beneficial to move functions to the training center beyond the current staff already working at the center. In part because of this decision, NTSB implemented a strategy to sublet remaining space at the training center.
