Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO: (1) reviewed the effectiveness of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) approach to computer capacity management; and (2) identified how FAA could improve its practices to alleviate problems with existing systems.
GAO found that: (1) FAA computer capacity management is critical to the safe and efficient use of the nation's airspace; (2) the two key components of capacity management are performance management, which is dedicated to measuring and evaluating current utilization of computer resources, and capacity planning, which involves determining what additional capacity is needed to support future missions and ensuring that it is available when needed; (3) federal regulations and related guidance require agencies to conduct capacity management activities; (4) private-sector organizations consider capacity management activities to be high-priority company programs and critical to their business success; (5) although FAA has improved its capacity management practices in some areas, for many systems performance objectives are not current, measurement of system performance is inconsistent, and the analysis and reporting of these data are limited; (6) FAA also has not projected future work loads, proposed additional resources, or prepared capacity plans for many systems; (7) as a result, FAA does not know how well its systems are performing, when it can anticipate capacity and performance-related problems, or how it will address those problems; (8) FAA has failed to implement effective performance management and capacity planning activities because it has not recognized the importance of capacity management as a priority activity; and (9) FAA lacks adequate computer capacity management policies, procedures, expertise, and tools.
