01/28/03 - It's been longer than normal since my last update and I apologize for that. I have been involved with family and friends over the Holidays, trying to get some "fresh air" away from FAA Headquarters and the OASIS Program. So now the batteries are recharged and it's time to dive back in. Of course I haven't been totally idle during my time off...I can never withdraw that completely. So here's what's been happening since my last update...

My bigger headaches in OASIS tend to all stem from the same source (as do most headaches in government I'm sure) and that is money. I got two pieces of information that caused us great concern with regards to the money OASIS is (isn't) getting in the future.

The first I've already told you about. The OASIS budget request for FY2004 has been cut by 1.89 million dollars. This is not out of line with cuts taken by other programs, and is in fact less of a cut than a lot of programs took. However, the concern was language that OMB included with their passback that indicated due to the uncertainties around the A-76 they wanted no further deployment of OASIS systems in FY2004. The cut we could deal with. No further deployments is a major issue for us though. What we already knew is that ATS did not support this language (they may have written a rebuttal, but I haven't seen it). We told AOPA about this but I never got feedback on any action they may have taken. The latest information I have came to me from the OASIS program office (The money people). They have said that their interpretation of the OMB language is such that they plan no stoppage of the deployment of OASIS in FY2004. As far as I know that's a pretty liberal interpretation of what I though was pretty clear language, and I have communicated that. The program office will be presenting all this to FAA Management at the Major Acquisition Review scheduled for February 6. Their intent is to make sure they have the support of upper level management in this interpretation so they can proceed forward. I will be at the review to make sure we get what we need out of it. A clear understanding that deployment will continue in FY2004.

However, the cut does have an impact on deployment. Due to the cut the current plan is to deploy to 12 sites in FY2004 rather than the original 24. While a slowdown in deployment sucks in general, it does have some positives for us also. It gives us a bit of wiggle room to make sure we can complete the primary development and problem solutions by the 25th site as is required by our MOU. This also reduces the impact on early sites due to reduced need for National Training Cadre instructors. By the time we do go to two sites per month we will have a broad enough base of sites we can draw experienced instructors from that it will lessen the impact to facilities they have to be drawn from. At two sites per month with a 90 day training time we would need coverage for nine sites at a time. So there is a bit of a silver lining to this cloud for us.

The other budget-related news I got was that the Functional Working Group (FWG) had met. Their purpose as far as I can tell is to work with OMB to project budgetary needs out to the relatively distant future. I heard about this by hearing that the program office had been directed to do an impact statement answering the OASIS budget projection for FY2006...in that projection the FWG cut OASIS by 11.1 million dollars. Their stated reason for doing so was that the current 61 AFSS's would be consolidated to 3 AFSS's by then, making the budgetary needs for the program much smaller. Needless to say I went ballistic when I got this. I wanted to know who had made such a determination of the outcome of the A-76 prior to it even being underway significantly, and I pointed out that this appeared to be a predetermined decision by the FAA on what the outcome of the A-76 would be. I pointed out that this appeared to me to be a violation of the rules of A-76 and that I saw this as something that could be used as evidence against the FAA if we needed to go to court. Wally talked to Steve Brown who said he had heard nothing about this, and I talked about it to Charlie Keegan (ARA-1, head of research and acquisitions) who told me he did not support it and that he is very aware of the A-76 process and understands the long time frames that will be necessary to complete it. He also told me he doesn't support making changes to any programs based on speculation about A-76. The upshot of this is that I learned this morning that Jim Scott, the new Manager of ARU-300 (Home of OASIS and where I work) asked the FWG Lead about this and he apparently threw his hands in the air saying that they had heard from a lot of people on this and that it had been thrown out and the projection returned to what it had been previously. In thinking on this further I believe I figured out where they got their number, as flawed as it is. Since Alaska is exempt from the A-76 it means that there are three AFSS's that are not included. I believe the assumption they were working from is that Flight Service would be contracted out so that there would only be the three Alaskan AFSS's left. Of course we know there's all kinds of flaws in this reasoning, but it is attractive to management that are trying to find ways to project lower budgets in the future so they can meet overall reduced budget numbers. OASIS was a nice juicy target that could be easily victimized. I think they were completely unprepared for our response and our willingness to pursue this at levels above their heads for resolution.

Unfortunately Headquarters is every bit as much a rumor mill as the field. The one huge difference is that while rumors spread around the field and make controllers' lives miserable, that's pretty much all the impact they have. Rumors at Headquarters can be misused to have very real impacts to things that affect our ability to do our job as well as it can be done. This is where I cultivate my ulcer crop, and with A-76 I'm working on a bumper crop. Case in point is the decision above...the information I got couldn't/wouldn't attribute a source of the information that there would only be three AFSS's. But even though it couldn't be attributed, it could certainly be used against us. Sometimes I have to question the basic capacity for rational thought here, and then I pray that it's not in any way contagious, because I like to actually use my brain occasionally.

In the nearer term the lack of a budget is becoming a critical issue for OASIS. To this point the program office has been doing their magic with the money to keep OASIS going, but a key component is money from the Ops budget. That's the money that pays for the equipment and support of the equipment that has already been deployed. Under a Continuing Resolution there is no budget as such and therefore no Ops budget. So the program office has been shuffling money to continue to pay for their obligations, but that money is just about gone. If we don't get a budget soon (like in the next 30 days or so) OASIS will face cuts in other areas to fund the missing Ops portion. This could be a slowdown or stoppage of FY2003 OASIS deployment, console deployment, OASIS development, etc. A real impact to the program that would likely cause a ripple into the future.

Training continues at STL, training has begun at RAL, and will be getting underway at ABQ soon. New software is operational at SEA and AND and I haven't heard any screaming (yet). So we continue to chug forward in spite of all the little (big and huge) road bumps that get scattered in front of us. We did have a problem with two FDC NOTAMs not showing up in the new software in AND. That investigation is still ongoing, but signs point toward it being a WMSCR problem, not ours. Yet another reason we need to be getting NOTAM data direct from CNS, bypassing WMSCR. I just wish we could bypass WMSCR entirely. But I think it would take a genie-level miracle for that to happen and I just used my last wish up yesterday on the fame and fortune thing (any time now I expect to be making these...make that I expect my personal assistant to be making these reports from my private island in the Caribbean...if only the real world was as nice as the one I live in inside my head...).

Fraternally,
Jeff Barnes