We are, of course, talking about the February 15, 2017 release of the DOT OIG's report entitled "While FAA Took Steps Intended to Improve Its Controller Hiring Process, The Agency Did Not Effectively Implement Its New Policies" (Report No. AV2017028). We are certainly hoping for more involvement by the DOT OIG on matters relating to the hiring and training of air traffic controllers that goes beyond the hiring process. To any DOT OIG specialists or supervisors reading this, there is plenty more to investigate. We thank them for their time on this report and hope to see more just like it.
You always know when an OIG report is going to be a juicy when its title takes up 5 lines on the cover page. Let's crack this baby open and see what's inside.
The Task at Hand
Given the wider purview of issues covered on this website, it is important to note that there were merely two objectives the DOT OIG worked to identify in this report:
"...our audit objectives were to determine (1) FAA’s justification for adopting the new hiring process and (2) changes that have occurred since the new process was implemented."
The OIG report does a good job summarizing the issues with the 2014 hiring process changes.
"FAA’s new hiring process, implemented in February 2014, included several significant changes. In particular, FAA reduced the role of the CTI program, eliminated the use of a Centralized Selection Panel, and revised the AT-SAT test. FAA also introduced a Biographical Assessment, which was intended to predict controller performance by asking candidates a series of questions about typical behaviors or experiences."
The OIG claims not to have enough data to determine an actual outcome of these policies, but they did include this gem in the opening statement:
"Due to the lengthy process for hiring and training a controller, it is too soon to determine whether FAA’s new policies improved its ability to hire applicants who are more likely to successfully become certified controllers."
We'll get back to this statement soon.
FAA Significantly Changes Its Hiring Process Without an Effective Implementation Strategy
Yes, this is an actual section title in the DOT OIG report. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that the removal of hiring functions from ATO headquarters in Oklahoma City to the Office of Human Resources headquarters in Washington, D.C. -- while still keeping some hiring functions in the Oklahoma City office -- created a few snafus. Of course, it should also come as no surprise that the FAA is incapable of tackling any big projects, even internal ones that directly affect a short-staffed controller workforce.
"FAA did not have an effective implementation or communication strategy when announcing the new process in 2013 and has not yet implemented a tracking system to effectively track the flow of candidates through the entire hiring process."
In other words, we've got a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals telling the FAA ATO how to hire people without having any means to track employees as they go through the hiring process. The hiring process has multiple segments, and what this is basically saying is that the FAA can't tell anyone how many people are in a particular segment at any time because they lack the capability to do so.
"In addition, FAA did not meet its hiring goals in fiscal years 2014 or 2015, and the Agency will not be able to determine whether these changes will result in the selection of applicants most likely to succeed for some time."
Let's just go ahead and assume that if the FAA can't track an applicant through its various convoluted stages in the hiring process, it won't be able to track the success of its newly-developed hiring program. These types of things require statistics that the agency has never had. Meanwhile, air traffic control towers and centers are facing the lowest number of controllers they've seen since the strike in 1980.
FAA Introduced a Biographical Assessment as a Pre-Employment Screening Tool
"In February 2014, FAA implemented the Biographical Assessment with its first all-sources job announcement. FAA subsequently revised the assessment for its second all-sources job announcement in March 2015, after testing the assessment on over 1,700 certified professional controllers."
It is truly disappointing that the DOT OIG did not independently assess the validity of the biographical assessment, as they explain did not happen in the footnotes on p. 8. However, the wording they used in the sentence above demonstrates the lunacy of the B.A. implementation. The test was revised after testing it on 1,700 CPCs? This introduces questions of validity of the first test in 2014. Who validated that?
"FAA officials stated that testing on current controllers was conducted to improve the correlation of the questions to controller job performance."
Adorable. It's almost as if that should have been done the year prior, too. Unfortunately the DOT OIG specialists didn't ask questions about that, insofar as we can tell from the report.
FAA Did Not Have an Effective Roll-Out Strategy or Plan for Implementing the New Hiring Process
This section is so rich that we have to post 50% of its contents for the purpose of commentary to follow.
"FAA did not have a documented plan to implement its new controller hiring process. After announcing the new process in December 2013, FAA began implementing it in February 2014, a little over a month later. FAA officials stated that the Agency implemented the new process relatively quickly because the FAA Training Academy had been closed for several months due to sequestration, lending urgency to the need to hire new controllers. According to officials in FAA’s Office of Human Resources, there was an inventory of over 2,000 applicants waiting to be processed, and, instead of relying on the old hiring process, the Executive Steering Committee made the decision to implement the new hiring process with the first announcement in February 2014."
In the entire history of DOT OIG reports about the FAA, this is perhaps the most perplexing paragraph ever published. A few points:
- How is it possible that there was no documentation as to how this was supposed to roll out? To be clear, the FAA removed functions from Oklahoma City, transferred them to Washington, D.C., eliminated "panels" where managers from towers and centers would convene to select applicants (called centralized selection panels in this report), and made a number of other major changes -- and had no written plan for any of it?
- The second and third sentences are absolutely priceless. To be clear, the FAA blames its need for hiring changes on a closed FAA Academy, and with TWO THOUSAND applicants lined up and ready to go, they say they needed to change the process to address urgency issues with hiring new controllers -- an urgency that could have been addressed by hiring the two thousand who were waiting for a job!Not to mention that THESE CHANGES PURGED THOSE 2,000 APPLICANTS FROM THE HIRING POOL! THIS IS ABJECT LUNACY!Are we living in a parallel universe, or did we really just read this in an INSPECTOR GENERAL REPORT with NO FOLLOW UP WHATSOEVER!?Congress: Call up these morons in the Executive Steering Committee and bring them in to testify on the record about their actions. This is ridiculous.From the footnotes: "The Executive Steering Committee was established by the FAA Administrator to provide oversight for the new hiring process and responsible for implementing recommendations identified in the Barrier Analysis. The Committee included the Deputy Administrator and the Head of Human Resources."The Steering Committee was comprised of the following people:
FAA Administrator: Michael Huerta. Still there.
FAA Deputy Administrator: Michael Whitaker. No longer in that position. FAA Head of Human Resources: Carolyn Bostick. No longer in that position. (Neither is Rickie Cannon, who took over after Bostick left.)
FAA Head of Air Traffic Organization: Teri Bristol. Still there.
FAA Head of Civil Rights: Maimie Mallory. Still there.
FAA Head of Chief Counsel: Reginald Golven. No longer in that position. - This report makes it sound as though the Steering Committee was unaware that the FAA had, in fact, hired air traffic controllers prior to 2014, as though someone in the Steering Committee woke up one morning and said "Hey, I have a great idea. Let's come up with a way to hire air traffic controllers."
Anyway, let's continue through the report.
"7 months after the first vacancy announcement in February 2014, only about 10 percent of the applicants selected had progressed to the Academy, while over 90 percent remained somewhere within the hiring process. According to FAA, this was due in part to the difficulty of advancing applicants through the hiring process. For example, many applicants did not promptly complete their medical or security screenings, delaying FAA’s ability to bring them onboard. As a result of the delay in processing candidates under the new hiring process, the Academy had to cancel 34 air traffic basic classes, and 614 seats were left unfilled in 2015."
If that's not embarrassing, then we don't know what is. Here we have a massive shortage of air traffic controllers and the FAA Academy is cancelling THIRTY-FOUR classes and failing to fill SIX HUNDRED FOURTEEN seats which accounts for 5% of the total current number of U.S. air traffic controllers. Again, we find ourselves believing we are living in a parallel universe. This makes no sense. Where is the accountability?
"However, FAA still lacks metrics on the time it should take an applicant to advance through the hiring process, and some applicants that received tentative offer letters never initiate the medical or security processes required to become a controller."
In other words, "We're pretty sure people are applying to this job for the hell of it without any serious intention of becoming an air traffic controller." Hmm...wonder why that is.
"In addition, there is no process in place for withdrawing offer letters for applicants who do not comply with the clearance requirements for medical and security. This means applicants remain in the hiring pipeline even though FAA does not know whether they remain viable candidates for the position."
Sounds like a great new process. We're getting more and more impressed the more we read this report.
"FAA officials stated that the Agency is planning to develop a technical solution that integrates each stakeholder’s existing tracking systems or create a new one to track candidates throughout the entire hiring process and entrance on duty at the Academy or facility. However, FAA has not yet established a timeline for completing the effort. In the meantime, these offices provide a biweekly report of the status of applicants to the Executive Steering Committee."
When in doubt, use the word "stakeholder" to calm everyone's nerves.
FAA Fell Short of Hiring Goals for the First 2 Years Under the New Hiring Process
"FAA did not meet its hiring goals in the first 2 years following the implementation of the new hiring process. In fiscal year 2014, FAA missed its hiring goal controllers by 174 controllers (14 percent), and in fiscal year 2015 fell short by 427 (24 percent), as shown in figure 1."
Impressive.
"FAA told us this was due to several hiring and training challenges, which included restoring hiring activities following sequestration, reopening the Academy, and addressing concerns with the hiring process."
What moron provided answers about these issues to the DOT OIG? Why were these answers even remotely acceptable?
To be clear, the FAA missed its hiring goals by hundreds of controllers over the two years they implemented the changes -- after purging 2,000 willing candidates from the hiring pool -- and blame "addressing concerns with the hiring process" as one of the reasons for missing the goals? How many people does it take to address concerns about the hiring process? Does it take the whole Office of Human Resources to address those concerns? We understand there was no written plan for any of the changes (see above), but come on. What kind of pussyfooting is going on here?
Also, "restoring hiring activities following sequestration" is not a valid excuse for missing hiring targets by 14% and 24% in two consecutive years. The existing hiring activities were not restored; the whole process was changed. And newsflash: THE WHOLE PROCESS SUCKS.
Finally, "reopening the Academy" has nothing to do with these missed hiring targets either. The Academy is run by the FAA Office of Finance and Management. The missed hiring targets are a problem within the Office of Human Resources. End of discussion.
"To its credit, as of August 2016, FAA expected to meet its hiring goals for the current year."
The FAA expected to meet its hiring goals for 2014 and 2015, too; otherwise it wouldn't have implemented changes to the hiring process. There was no need to throw them a bone after all of this misconduct.
Commentary on the FAA's response to the DOT OIG report will be posted later this week.
Comments
Comments are moderated and will not appear until approved. No account or login is required — you may use any name. If provided, your email address is used only for reply notifications and is never displayed publicly.