Chief Negotiator Bill Dolan has sent an update to the RegCos for distribution on the bargaining session last week. The work rule TAUs are posted on our web page and the Parties appear to be close to an agreement on the remaining pay rules. Their next meeting is scheduled for the first part of May.

The management Chief Negotiator and I are waiting on confirmation of a meeting with FMCS Director Richard Barnes. This is a preliminary conference to discuss the upcoming hearing on our pay impasse. My guess is that the hearing itself will now be held sometime in May.

I'm continuing to work the staffing issues with AT-1 Bill Peacock (who will be a speaker at our national meeting later this month). Our next meeting is April 11 and I plan to discuss that staffing standard, shortages and agency hiring procedures.

You may hear about a hiring freeze in ATS. We've been advised that this freeze does not apply to us since operational personnel are excluded. I'll follow-up on this to avoid any misunderstandings.

Latest on the ATO: on hold until the Administrator receives approval from OST to bring aboard an "acting" Chief Operating Officer (COO). If that doesn't happen then we can't move forward until the permanent COO is hired, probably sometime after the end of the Administrator's term (August 5).

Regardless of the pay impasse, staffing and equipment issues congressional relations and educating our representatives to our issues is an ongoing process. I've discussed our issues with staffers from three offices (Bono, Clinton, Solis) this week and I'm scheduling personal meetings with those congressional representatives. I plan to meet with Don Young sometime during the next two weeks to keep him updated on our progress on the pay impasse.

SO Regional Director Dave Hoover and I attended a membership meeting at PIE AFSS last week. As always, I appreciated the opportunity to discuss our issues and get feedback and suggestions. My thanks to FacRep Richard Anderson for his invitation and hospitality.

Wally Pike

The following is an OASIS Update from OASIS National Representative Jeff Barnes.

04/04/02 - This week I attended my first meeting of the group that will determine whether DUATS will be integrated into OASIS or will remain as it is today with vendors providing the service (Scott Malon, our ATP liaison, covered the kickoff meeting for me). Our position of course is that
integration is not only desirable, but is essential for future enhancements to the service we provide to the pilots. Unfortunately right now we are pretty much alone in that opinion.

AOPA does not want the integration. Their position is that competing vendors ensure continued upgrading of services to the pilots. An integrated DUATS does not have competition to drive development, and it would be solely under the control of the FAA, an organization with a history of not upgrading equipment once it has been deployed. This viewpoint is certainly understandable, but our OASIS MOU will put an agreement into place that would substantially mitigate the risk of stagnation in OASIS.

First is that OASIS will always have its own separate budgetary line item in the FAA budget throughout its life cycle. It will never disappear into the noise of the general FAA budget to languish, forgotten because it's "just a Flight Service system."

Second is that the FAA agrees that they will not reprogram any money from the OASIS budget without agreement from NAATS. This means that if some other program is overspending they can't move money over to it from OASIS without our cooperation.

The MOU hasn't been signed yet, but it will be prior to AND AFSS beginning live operations on OASIS. However, these two items have already been agreed to by the Agency. When the MOU does get signed you will get copies in your facilities to read for yourself, and we will also provide more rationale for you.

In actuality I see that this presents an opportunity for NAATS and AOPA to work together as we never have before. It will be in both our interests to see that Congress provides a continuing funding stream for improvements to OASIS through its life in Flight Service. Also, improvements to DUATS will generally mean improvements to the controllers also, so we all benefit.

There is one other key benefit. That is the interactive briefing. We have all thought about being able to perform an interactive briefing with our customers at one time or another. It has been a goal since the days of Model 2. In order to develop a true interactive briefing DUATS will HAVE to be integrated with OASIS. That is the only way to ensure that pilot and controller are looking at exactly the same thing and that the controller will be able to control the briefing for both. I cannot foresee any way this could be accomplished with vendors due to different proprietary systems, software, and data presentations, and two or more vendors would be even worse.

While this kind of interactivity is not going to be available to us immediately, without integration it will never be available, and I think this would be a disservice to the pilot, and backward thinking rather than planning for the future. It's our job to think beyond the present and accommodate possibility in our planning for the future. Stagnation in our job is our enemy.

03/21/02 - The OASIS Human Factors Team is meeting in RAL AFSS this week. We have been giving demos to the facility personnel and people from other AFSS's in the area who have been able to come. The demos have gone very well, and I want to thank the people of RAL AFSS for their hospitality, as I would like to thank the people of the other AFSS's we have met at for theirs. Our next meeting will be in early May in STL if they can support it, and then June in BTV. The positive response we are getting now from demos has led us to decide that the OASIS should be demoed at all AFSS's. We will be working to make sure that every facility gets a visit, if not by the whole Human Factors Team for their meeting with demos, then by a human Factors Team member who will come for a couple days to run demos for the facility. As we firm up our plans we will coordinate with FacReps and Directors and managers to ensure we come at an appropriate time.

As you know, OASIS is facing a 5 million dollar budget cut in the OMB budget request to Congress for FY2003. We are fighting this through testimony along with the FAA, Harris, and AOPA. However, the Program Office for OASIS is planning the program's FY2003 activities around the cut. It is going to slow things down in both deployment and development unfortunately. You can expect to see only one site deployed per month in FY2003. There will be no funding beyond the first 12 sites until the program gets FY2004 money. At this point, even if the 5 million is restored we would not likely see anymore sites installed, although we would see extra development and less of a lag getting to the 13th site. The reason for this is that the OASIS program was baselined for the acquisition of OASIS only. Since then we have added the console purchase, which is funded by the OASIS program, but which was not part of the last baseline budget of the program. In addition, the changes dictated to OASIS by the Human Factors Team have been substantially more than was originally budgeted for by the program. OASIS has funded these activities creatively, but it's all coming due now. This will necessitate that the program be rebaselined this summer to increase the funding requests through the remainder of the program to cover extra costs of consoles and development. However, that rebaselining will not be reflected in the OASIS budget request until FY2004 assuming it's accepted by the Joint Resources Council (JRC - a group made up of high level FAA executives that decide on acquisition program funding and timelines).

So the upshot of all this is that we can expect to see only 12 sites installed in FY2003. There is a bit of a silver lining to this though. It gives us some time to make sure our training is right and that our cadre training concept is a good one and that the trainers are comfortable with the material before we get into a more intense installation schedule. This also gives us some extra breathing space in system development. The Human Factors Team doesn't want you to end up looking at a wall of monitors four feet high in front of you. We want to minimize the pieces of glass you have to look at to do your job. This means that we want to integrate as much as we can into OASIS. So SUA/ISE will initially come to you in a stand-alone system, but we plan to integrate that functionality into OASIS so we can do away with the extra piece of equipment, also thereby making the function available at all positions. We want to do the same with other systems that we hear are being developed for Fight Service. However, development takes time, and this delay will give us extra time to get some of these functions incorporated into OASIS before it's deployed, so we don't have to hope for Pre-Planned Product Improvement (P3I) money to get put into OASIS.

Just because the installations have been cut in half in FY2003 doesn't necessarily mean that the final installations will be pushed back. Part of the installation plan has always been to move to 3 sites per month at some point. That can be started sooner in the waterfall to ensure the final
installations don't slip. 

Fraternally,
Jeff Barnes