November 17, 2003

Ms. Marion Blakey
FAA Administrator, AOA-1
800 Independence Ave., SW
Washington, D.C. 20591

Dear Administrator Blakey:

As you know, the National Association of Air Traffic Specialists (NAATS) is the exclusive representative of the more than 2,000 Flight Service Station (FSS) air traffic controllers in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The purpose of this open letter is not to stop the A76 process that is being conducted upon the FSS workforce as that will obviously be decided in a different forum. Rather, this letter is to bring to your attention several concerns in how the A76 process is currently being mismanaged by the FAA Office of Competitive Sourcing Acquisitions (ACA).

All of these concerns regard arbitrary and ill-considered decisions made by ACA. Specifically these concerns are the timeframes for the process; participation in the performance work statement (PWS) by NAATS; and the continued misinformation being foisted upon FSS and the general public.

As of this date no public announcement has been made. NAATS was informed by Associate Administrator for Research & Acquisitions (ARA)-1 Charlie Keegan that 15 months is necessary, in his opinion, from public announcement until contract award. Yet ACA continues to maintain that the process will be completed by December, 2004. In fact, a waiver has already been granted that allows 18 months for this process. Assuming the public announcement is made in December, the contract award should actually occur in June, 2005.

The net affect of forcing this decision earlier is to disadvantage the Most Efficient Organization (MEO) in its bid; there does not appear to be any other reason for the ACA decision. The MEO problems with the shorter timeframe have been documented in a July letter from ATS-2. It should be noted that ATS-2 is the Agency Tender Official (ATO) and, as such, is responsible for the MEO bid and also represents the agency during source selection. Unfortunately these concerns have fallen on deaf ears.

ACA-1 Joann Kansier has also made decisions that unnecessarily and unwisely restrict NAATS participation in the PWS. NAATS is not allowed to help write the requirements document or the quality assurance surveillance plan. Instead we have been relegated to "commenting" on these after they have been written. NAATS is the only source for technical expertise and, obviously, it is better to have the subject matter experts help write these documents rather than merely commenting on a contractor�s work. This distinction has been lost on both ACA and ARA, however. Both have acknowledged that there are neither legal nor regulatory restrictions on our participation.
Rather, NAATS has been arbitrarily excluded by the decisions that ACA has made because of her "authority". This continuing refusal to allow full participation by the employees� representatives is inconsistent with the intent of the A76 circular, OMB guidance and is a disservice to both FSS and the flying public.

Unfortunately ARA-1 has chosen to look the other way and NAATS has been forced to file a national grievance, the initial step of a legal proceeding. Therefore the PWS should not proceed further until these matters are resolved.

ACA misinformation or "spin" usually takes four familiar forms.

1. First, the fact that we are air traffic controllers, by statute and not FAA fiat, is ignored or discounted.

2. The budgetary cost of FSS is put at $500M+/year. ACA justifies this by including regional office and airways facilities costs -- neither of which are part of the study. In fact, FSS costs are less than $300M/year.

3. During this process the ACA stated cost of an individual briefing by FSS controllers has inexplicably escalated from $13/contact to $27/contact. In fact, no one knows the true cost as no methodology has ever been implemented that would accurately produce a figure. Approximately 85% of FSS duties are not even documented. It would be just as accurate to say a briefing costs $.50/contact.

4. Probably the most insulting and disingenuous spin is to tell the FSS controllers that the process timeline is being compressed so that it "won�t hang over their heads and keep them in suspense". I doubt that anyone in the FAA, much less FSS, believes that.

If the FAA wants to conduct an A76 study on this workforce it should be able to justify it without resorting to misstatements of fact.

There are other problems. ACA/ARA has stated that (1) the FAA is not bound by federal acquisition regulations; but (2) that they are bound by the A76 circular; but (3) this is not an A76 study but rather an acquisition; but (4) it will mirror the A76 requirements. However, they are not prepared to explain what these contradictory statements mean. This circular logic only makes sense if the goal is to stimulate protests and lawsuits.

All of this could have been avoided if the FAA had done the 12-24 months of preplanning in accordance with OMB guidance. Unfortunately there is no evidence of any preplanning prior to starting this study and ACA is reluctant to admit mistakes in their learning process.

I appeal to you to change the direction of this process and to make a positive statement to the more than 2,700 FSS employees.

The least that is owed to these loyal employees and the aviation public is to conduct the process in a fair and equitable manner and not to rush to a bad product. The MEO should be allowed sufficient time to submit a competitive proposal and NAATS should be allowed to fully participate in the PWS in accordance with law and government-wide regulation.

We have been trying to schedule a meeting with you to address these matters since August 13. I remain willing to discuss these or any other issues with you at any time.


Sincerely,



Walter W. Pike
President