In his continuing effort to build a case for sweeping air traffic control reform, U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) pointed to a newly released Department of Transportation Inspector General (DOT IG) report on the FAA’s shortcomings on modernizing the ATC system.

 “This report shows that the FAA simply isn’t suited to successfully modernize our nation’s antiquated air traffic control system,” Shuster said. Adding the agency remains a “vast government bureaucracy” instead of a service provider, the lawmaker adds: “Over two decades of FAA personnel, organizational, and acquisition reforms have failed to slow the agency’s cost growth, improve its productivity, or improve its performance in modernizing the system. It’s clear from the DOT IG’s findings that we need transformational FAA reform if we are going to have a safe, efficient, 21st century aviation system.”

The report, released on January 20, is the latest in series of reports that both the DOT IG and the Government Accountability Office have released over the past five months that were conducted at the behest of the committee and were mostly critical of various ATC practices. A few of the other reports—one by the GAO and one by the DOT IG—contemplated other ATC models and were inconclusive on whether that would fully solve the stated problems.

The most recent report does not look at other ATC models but finds that while the FAA has implemented past reform mandates, “these efforts have not achieved anticipated cost savings and operational efficiencies.” The report points to the implementation of performance-based compensation systems and several reorganizations. “However, costs continue to rise while operational productivity has declined,” the report said, noting the FAA’s budget has grown by 95 percent and personnel compensation costs are up by 98 percent even though workforce levels have remained relatively constant as have the number of air traffic facilities.

“The FAA’s disappointing reform outcomes are largely the result of the agency’s failure to take full advantage of its authorities when implementing new personnel systems, and not using business-like practices to improve its operational efficiency and cost effectiveness,” the DOT IG said.

Reforms further have fallen short in improving delivery of new technologies and capabilities, the report finds. “While FAA reports improvements in its management of acquisitions, major projects continue to experience problems that delay the introduction of new technologies, such as performance-based navigation; postpone benefits to users; and defer the retirement of costly legacy systems.” The DOT IG points to the nearly four years of delays and cost growth of more than $400 million involved in the multibillion-dollar En Route Automation System (ERAM) program.

While the FAA is now taking a phased approach to implementing systems to better identify early issues, the DOT IG said this approach “has led to unclear and inconsistent reporting on overall program costs, schedules, and benefits.”

The DOT IG made three main recommendations for improving the FAA’s effort: identify and implement agency-wide cost-saving initiatives that come with implementation timelines and metrics to measure their effectiveness; identify and report estimated cost for each system involved in a major acquisition and look at cumulative amounts of acquisition costs; and review and identify federal and industry best practices that could be incorporated into the agency’s practices.