June, 2010 update

 

I have a few items to update you on that we are currently working at the national level.

 

The NEB attended a meeting with Randy Babbitt again. It was another 90 minute discussion with Randy on the many issues facing the agency. He is still talking about "change takes time" and "building a better understanding" of exactly where his people are in relation to where he wants to go. I did get the feeling that he is getting ready to make some real change in either the organization or some of the obstructionists who are impeding his progress. Not that he said anything specific, just that his tone has been different than previously; more frustrated I would say.

 

I brought up ESEP with Randy and discussed where I believe the hang-up to ending this failed plan rests; the FAA CFO! I brought up the whole Flight Plan 2008-2013, which was developed by the Blakey regime. I acknowledged that Randy wasn't responsible for this piece of work but that it still had references in it that were bottom line driven and that was hurting the agency and was preventing the agency from finally ending ESEP. At this point Trish interjected that the agency has asked for a couple of weeks to work through these issues and that at this point Randy just needed to be aware and we could be getting back to him if the ATO VP's couldn't work this out once and for all.

 

He also discussed the "collaborative Process" that NATCA and FAA are in the process of negotiating. This will be the process for how we interact collaboratively in the future and will eventually be applicable to all NATCA bargaining units.

 

Randy mentioned that the whole FAA Table of Penalties were "under review" and it was his thought they would be "moderated". His quote was "everybody has a bad day".

 

I also brought up his recent response to the AIR Safety Culture letter and told him the agency response was quite disappointing to our AIR engineering workforce since it seemed to be a rubber stamp of management's response and because the fact is that within AIR there is no safety culture. The agency has refused to work with us on SMS and SIRS and they keep on ignoring the opinions of the subject matter experts who are hired to certify aircraft and ensure that federal safety standards are met. Randy said that he is very serious about a safety culture for all the FAA and if the message of a safety culture was not making its way to all the FAA organizations that was not acceptable and "he takes that to heart". We will have to see if the rhetoric is followed by actions.

 

We also got a briefing from Vicki Cox, FAA VP for NextGen and Mel Davis, NATCA Rep to Nextgen. This briefing was enlightening to say the least. The Nextgen Program Office (NPO, my term, not theirs) is tasked with developing a "business case" for new systems. They do not look at the integration or implementation aspect of deploying these systems. I told Vicki that they are missing a whole piece of this puzzle if they don't consider the integration and implementation. Vicki said that after the proof of concept and business plan are developed and accepted, then the program is handed off to the responsible acquisition organization to procure the system. I explained to Vicki that the National Association of Public Administration report on FAA staffing for Nextgen clearly doesn't factor in any type of implementation/integration staffing or even a role for this type of input into the process. I used the examples of ASDE-X and the ASR-11 programs as prime examples of where this lack of implementation/integration input on the front end could have saved them lots of money on the back end. Vicki seemed to understand the issue but I got the impression that this was a process issue beyond her control. I did make the point that it would be in the NPO's best interest to use ES engineers when necessary to get a better idea of exactly what problems they may encounter as they try and integrate a new system into the live NAS environment. She said she was open to that.

 

In Solidarity,

Mike MacDonald