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Internal Audit Criticizes NASA for Handling of Air Safety Survey

Air Safety Week, April 14, 2008

NASA shut down its infamous (National Aviation Operations Monitoring Service (NAOMS) survey project without ever properly evaluating its results, losing a chance for valuable insight into air safety issues, the space agency's inspector general has concluded.

The watchdog office said NASA should analyze the results of its interviews with some 30,000 pilots, but top-level NASA officials continue to reject that idea.

NASA will evaluate the methodology that its staff used in the $11.3 million project, but going further to actually report on the findings isn't worthwhile, says the agency's associate administrator for aeronautics research, Jaiwon Shin.

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The interviews ran from 2001 to 2004. The program came to light when NASA last fall rejected an Associated Press freedom of information request for NAOMS data, stating that disclosing the information could have a negative effect on airline profits and public confidence in the airlines.

That rationale, later rejected by NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, was rebuked because it looked like the space agency was suppressing information to protect the airline industry. Congress launched an investigation, and NASA's own inspector general began its audit. An apologetic Griffin agreed to release the data to the public and aviation groups for peer review, but said analyzing the data was useless.

NAOMS included survey data from pilots and others who could provide insights into the performance and safety of the National Aviation System. NASA's Ames Research Center contracted with Battelle Memorial Institute to develop NAOMS.

On December 31, 2007, the redacted NAOMS survey data were posted on NASA's web site. "Although the web site contains some previously unreleased information, the web site does not adequately articulate the purpose of the NAOMS Project and its relationship and contribution to the larger ASMM Project," the NASA IG stated.

"NAOMS working groups failed to achieve their objectives of validating the survey data and gaining consensus among aviation safety stakeholders about what NAOMS survey data should be released.

"Additionally, we found that NASA had not adequately described the designed and intended uses of NAOMS data. Specifically, as of February 2008, NASA had not published an analysis of the NAOMS data nor adequately publicized the details of the NAOMS Project.

"The Government may have missed an opportunity to foster a deeper understanding of the aviation safety environment from 2001 through 2004 because its working groups were unable to reach a consensus on the validity or value of the NAOMS data, the IG report continued.

The associate administrator concurred with the IG recommendation to determine whether NAOMS accomplished its intended purpose of producing data from which aviation safety trends might be identified.

But the associate administrator rejected the IG's recommendation to publish a detailed report analyzing the NAOMS research, to include findings and conclusions gained from the survey data.

"There I little confidence that the project can produce a thorough and accurate report... There is diminishing value in the NAOMS data for assessing the state of the current aviation safety environment...We question the relevance to the community of analyzing data that is several years old," the senior NASA official added.

Government Industry

Internal Audit Criticizes NASA for Handling of Air Safety Survey

Air Safety Week, April 14, 2008

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