Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed: (1) the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) management of its information resources; and (2) whether FAA was acting to implement needed agency-wide corrective measures.
GAO found that: (1) since FAA has not always ensured that agencies effectively and efficiently acquired and managed computers, software, and related information resources, it has experienced problems in developing and acquiring new computer and communications systems and in operating and maintaining existing systems; (2) FAA failed numerous times to adequately define requirements, consider available alternatives, test systems before production, manage computer capacity, or ensure data reliability; (3) the FAA fundamental information resources management (IRM) program was ineffective and failed to minimize problems in acquiring and managing information resources; (4) the FAA IRM program suffered from a lack of top management involvement, an incomplete strategic plan, and inadequate application of accepted IRM practices; (5) the FAA strategic IRM plan inappropriately excluded most of the agency's needs for information resources; (6) FAA managers did not always recognize the importance of following sound IRM practices and had inadequate knowledge, skills, and training to know how to apply them; and (7) in response to an independent review, FAA began to recognize many of its IRM problems and established an IRM Quality Task Force.
