National Transportation Safety Board: Reauthorization Provides an Opportunity to Focus on Implementing Leading Management Practices and Addressing Human Capital and Training Center Issues
Released: 2009-10-29T00:00:00

Letter

NTSB Has Made Progress in All Management Areas, but Further Actions Are Needed to Fully Implement Some Recommendations

Overall, NTSB has fully implemented or made significant progress in following leading management practices in all eight areas that our recommendations addressed in 2006 and 2008—communication, strategic planning, IT, knowledge management, organizational structure, human capital management, training, and financial management. We made 15 management recommendations in these areas based on leading agency management practices that we identified through our governmentwide work. Although NTSB is a relatively small agency, such practices remain relevant. Figure 1 summarizes NTSB’s progress in implementing our management recommendations.

NTBS had fully implemented three of our management recommendations as of our last report in April 2008—our recommendations to (1) facilitate communication from staff to management, (2) align organizational structure to implement a strategic plan, and (3) correct an Antideficiency Act violation related to purchasing accidental death and dismemberment insurance for employees on official travel. In addition, NTSB has made further progress on seven of our management recommendations since 2008. First, it started reporting to Congress on the status of our recommendations by including the actions it has taken to address them in its Annual Report to Congress. In addition, NTSB has taken steps to implement all three of our IT-related recommendations: NTSB has fully implemented an IT strategic plan that addresses our comments. Moreover, in compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA), NTSB has undergone annual independent audits, hiring outside contractors to perform security testing and evaluation of its computer systems.

We performed limited testing to verify that NTSB has implemented our recommendation to install encryption software. Agency officials confirmed, however, that while encryption software is operational on 410 of the agency’s approximately 420 laptop computers, the remaining laptops do not have encryption software installed because they do not include sensitive information and are not removed from the headquarters building.

NTSB has made significant progress in limiting local administrator privileges while allowing for employees to add software and print from offsite locations as necessary.

NTSB has also drafted a strategic training plan that, when finalized, would address GAO guidance on federal strategic training and development efforts and establish the core competencies needed for investigators and other staff. In addition, two modal offices have developed core curricula that relate specifically to their investigators.

In addition, NTSB obligated $1.3 million in September 2009 to the National Business Center—an arm of the Department of the Interior that provides for-fee payroll services to federal agencies—to develop a full cost accounting system for NTSB based on a statement of work. NTSB officials said that the first phase of the cost accounting system will be implemented late in fiscal year 2010. When completed to permit recording time and costing of investigations and other activities, including training, this action will fully implement our recommendation.

The remaining five management recommendations have not yet been fully implemented. However, NTSB has initiated actions that could lead to the full implementation of the remainder of the recommendations. For example, GAO offered suggestions in 2008 for improving NTSB’s agencywide strategic plan, and NTSB is in the final stages of updating its strategic plan, which may address our comments by incorporating all five agency mission areas in its goals and objectives and obtaining comments from Congress or other external stakeholders potentially affected by or interested in the plan. In addition, NTSB has continued to improve its knowledge management by developing a plan to capture, create, share, and revise knowledge, and the agency is deploying Microsoft SharePoint® to facilitate sharing useful information within NTSB.

In April 2008, we reported that NTSB had made significant progress in implementing our human capital planning recommendation by issuing a human capital plan that incorporated several strategies on enhancing the recruitment process but was limited in some areas of diversity management. As we have previously reported, diversity management is a key aspect of strategic human capital management. Developing a workforce that includes and takes advantage of the nation’s diversity is a significant part of an agency’s transformation of its organization to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The most recent version of NTSB’s human capital plan establishes goals for recruiting, developing, and retaining a diverse workforce, and NTSB provided diversity training to 32 of its senior managers and office directors in May 2009. Table 1 compares the diversity of NTSB’s fiscal year 2008 workforce with that of the federal government and the civilian labor force.

As the table shows, the percentages of NTSB’s fiscal year 2008 workforce that were women and minorities were lower than those of the federal government. Under the Office of Personnel Management’s regulations implementing the Federal Equal Opportunity Recruitment Program, agencies are required to determine where representation levels for covered groups are lower than for the civilian labor force and take steps to address those differences.

Additionally, as of fiscal year 2008, 9 percent of NSTB’s managers and supervisors are minorities and 24 percent are women (see fig. 2). Furthermore, according to NTSB, none of NTSB’s current 15-member career Senior Executive Service (SES) staff were members of minority groups, and only 2 of them were women. As we have previously reported, diversity in SES, which generally represents the most experienced segment of the federal workforce, can strengthen an organization by bringing a wider variety of perspectives and approaches to policy development and decision making.

NTSB has undertaken several initiatives to create a stronger, more diverse pool of candidates for external positions. These initiatives include the establishment of a Management Candidate Program that has attracted a diverse pool of minority and female candidates at the GS 13/14 level. NTSB’s Executive Development Program focuses on identifying candidates for current and future SES positions at the agency. Despite these efforts, NTSB has not been able to appreciably change its diversity profile for minority group members and women.

NTSB’s current workforce demographics may present the agency with an opportunity to increase the diversity of its workforce and management. According to NTSB, in 3 years, more than 50 percent of its current supervisors and managers will be eligible to retire, as will over 25 percent of its general workforce. Furthermore, 53 percent of its investigators and 71 percent of those filling critical leadership positions are at least 50 years of age. Although actual retirement rates may be lower than retirement eligibility rates, especially in the present economic environment, consideration of retirement eligibility is important to workforce planning.

NTSB Has Made Its Selection of Accident Investigations More Efficient, but Reporting Can Be Improved

We previously made four recommendations to NTSB to improve the efficiency of its activities related to investigating accidents, such as selecting accidents to investigate and tracking the status of its recommendations, and increasing its use of safety studies (see fig. 3).

NTSB is required by statute to investigate all civil aviation accidents and selected accidents in other modes—highway, marine, railroad, pipeline, and hazardous materials. Since our April 2008 report, NTSB has fully implemented our recommendation to develop transparent policies containing risk-based criteria for selecting which accidents to investigate. The recently completed highway policy assigns priority to accidents based on the number of fatalities, whether the accident conditions are on NTSB’s “Watch List” or whether the accidents might have significant safety issues, among other factors (see fig. 4). For marine accidents, NTSB has a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Coast Guard that includes criteria for selecting which accidents to investigate. In addition, NTSB has now developed an internal policy on selecting marine accidents for investigation. This policy enhances the MOU by providing criteria to assess whether to launch an investigation when the Coast Guard, not NTSB, would have the lead. In April 2008, we reported that NTSB had also developed a transparent, risk-based policy explaining which aviation, rail, pipeline, and hazardous materials accidents to investigate.

The remaining three recommendations have not yet been fully implemented. However, NTSB has initiated actions that could lead to closure of the recommendations. NTSB is deploying an agencywide electronic information system based on Microsoft SharePoint that will streamline and increase NTSB’s use of technology in closing out its recommendations and in developing reports. When fully implemented, this system should serve to close these two recommendations.

NTSB has also made significant progress in implementing our recommendation to increase its use of safety studies, which are multiyear efforts that result in recommendations. They are intended to improve transportation safety by effecting changes to policies, programs, and activities of agencies that regulate transportation safety. While we, the Department of Transportation, and nongovernmental groups, like universities, also conduct research designed to improve transportation safety, NTSB is mandated to carry out special studies and investigations about transportation safety, including studies about how to avoid personal injury. Although NTSB has not completed any safety studies since we made our recommendation in 2006, it has three studies in progress, one of which is in final draft, and it has established a goal of developing two safety study proposals and submitting them to its board for approval each year. NTSB officials told us that because the agency has a small number of staff, it has difficulty producing large studies in addition to processing many other reports and data inquiries. NTSB officials told us they would like to broaden the term “safety studies” to include not only the current studies of multiple accidents, but the research done for the other smaller safety-related reports and data inquiries. Such a term, they said, would better characterize the scope of their efforts to report safety information to the public. NTSB also developed new guidelines to address its completion of safety studies. Congressional reauthorization is an ideal time to obtain stakeholder input on whether a change in terminology like this would meet NTSB’s legislative requirement.

NTSB Has Increased Use of the Training Center

We made two recommendations for NTSB to increase its own and other agencies’ use of the Training Center and to decrease the center’s overall operating deficit (see fig. 5). The agency increased use of the center’s classroom space from 10 percent in fiscal year 2006 to 80 percent in fiscal year 2009. According to NTSB, it has sublease agreements with agencies of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to rent approximately three- quarters of the classroom space located on the first and second floors. The warehouse portion of the Training Center houses reconstructed wreckage from TWA Flight 800, damaged aircraft, and other wreckage. The Training Center provides core training for NTSB investigators and trains others from the transportation community to improve their practice of accident investigation. Furthermore, NTSB has hired a Management Support Specialist whose job duties include maximizing the Training Center’s use and marketing its use to other agencies or organizations. The agency’s actions to increase the center’s use also helped increase total Training Center revenues from about $635,000 in fiscal year 2005 to about $1,771,000 in fiscal year 2009. By reducing the center’s leasing expenses— for example, by subleasing classrooms and office space at the center to other agencies—NTSB reduced the Training Center’s annual deficit from about $3.9 million to about $1.9 million over the same time period.

NTSB has made significant progress in achieving the intent of our recommendation to maximize the delivery of its core investigator curriculum at the Training Center by increasing the number of NTSB- related courses taught at the Training Center (fig. 6). For example in 2008, 49 of the 68 courses offered at the Training Center were solely for NTSB employees.

NTSB has fully implemented our recommendation to increase use of the Training Center. NTSB subleased all available office space at its Training Center to the Federal Air Marshal Service (a DHS agency) at an annual fee of $479,000. NTSB also increased use of the Training Center’s classroom space and thereby increased the revenues it receives from course fees and rents for classroom and conference space. From fiscal year 2006 through fiscal year 2009, NTSB increased other agencies’ and its own use of classroom space from 10 to 80 percent, and increased revenues by over $1.1 million. For example, according to NTSB it has a sublease agreement with DHS to rent approximately one-third of the classroom space. NTSB considered moving certain staff from headquarters to the Training Center, but halted these considerations after subleasing all of the Training Center’s available office space. NTSB decreased personnel expenses related to the Training Center from about $980,000 in fiscal year 2005 to $507,000 in fiscal year 2009 by reducing the center’s full-time equivalent positions from 8.5 to 3.0 over the same period. As a result of these efforts, from fiscal year 2005 through fiscal year 2009, Training Center revenues increased 179 percent while the center’s overall deficit decreased by 51 percent. (Table 2 shows direct expenses and revenues for the Training Center in fiscal years 2004 through 2009.) However, the salaries and other personnel-related expenses associated with NTSB investigators and managers teaching at the Training Center, which would be appropriate to include in the Training Center’s costs, are not included. NTSB officials told us that they believe the investigators and managers teaching at the Training Center would be teaching at another location even if the Training Center did not exist. Once NTSB has fully implemented its cost accounting system, it should be able to track and report these expenses.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be happy to respond to any questions you or other Members of the Subcommittee may have at this time.

Contacts and Acknowledgments

For further information on this testimony, please contact Gerald L. Dillingham, Ph.D. at (202) 512-2834 or by e-mail at dillinghamg@gao.gov or Gregory C. Wilshusen at (202) 512-6244 or wilshuseng@gao.gov. Individuals making key contributions to this testimony include Keith Cunningham, Assistant Director; Lauren Calhoun; Peter Del Toro; George Depaoli; Elizabeth Eisenstadt; Fred Evans; Steven Lozano; Mary Marshall; Kiki Theodoropoulos; Charles Vrable; Jack Warner; and Sarah Wood.

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