Shuffle the Deck Again
Yawnnnn....
FAA’s Air Traffic Chief Pledges Execution of Capital Programs
”The largest commitment involves the $2.1 billion En Route Automation Modernization (Eram) program to replace the computer system connecting 20 FAA air route traffic control centers. According to the DOT IG, the program is running four years late and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget.
“This isn’t necessarily a failure of money. This is a failure of management,” U.S. Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said during a hearing on October 5. Grizzle said developers must introduce 200,000 additional lines of software code to the system and complete 18 more en route centers before anyone can consider Eram operationally ready.”
Here’s a crazy idea. Take the last 100 computer programmers Lockheed has hired -- the kids just out of college -- send them out to academy in Oklahoma City and try to make them controllers. Those that make it through, send them to the various Centers and try to make them controllers. Let them work traffic for 2 years and them give them back to Lockheed. They’ll be there in time to work on ERAM.
Or you could reverse that idea -- like they did last time. Take 100 controllers and let Lockheed make them into programmers.
You could do both at the same time. Well, except for the fact that the FAA is short of controllers. (That’s what happens when you let ideologues run your bureaucracy.) Let me restate it. The U.S. Government could afford to do both -- at the same time. And it would be a pittance compared to what it will wind up costing us in the end.
Meanwhile, enjoy watching history repeat itself. No matter how many times they shuffle the deck, they’re still playing with the same cards.
Don Brown
October 21, 2011
Comments
What Congressman Mica fails to mention is that is a failure of the Bush Administration's management.
They didn't NEED our input.
Here's what the government needs to do to get LockMart to get it right. Don't pay them one more dime. LockMart has gone over budget in both time and money. Tell them they need to deliver on this contract or they will be held in breach. If they do breach the contract make the penalty harsh by holding up their other contracts and banning them from any future contracts.
LockMart understands their "purse strings" more than anything else.
If someone went four years and umpty squat dollars over contract in the vaunted "private sector" it would become a monumental lawsuit by now.
But here's a twist on that idea to make it more effective: You don't want kids fresh out of college. You want people with 3-5 years in the field. We learn nothing in college about collaborative work, project management, assembling requirements, defect tracking, testing, documentation, or customer deployment. If you get us straight out of school, we can't fully appreciate why you're making us controllers, we won't be alert for the subtleties of the job that we'll need when we move back from the scope to the dev PC.
If you would've caught me on my way out of Qualcomm in 2001, I would've jumped at it, and I would have been the right guy for the task. If you'd caught me five years earlier, just out of Illinois' EE department, I would not have been ready--but I would have thought I was anyways!
But it's all academic, isn't it? God forbid legislators or large defense contractors should EVER be that forward-thinking! :)