Update from JPDO’s IPSA Divsion

As of Oct. 2, 2009, the JPDO’s Interagency Portfolio and System Analysis (IPSA) Division has completed the vetting and review process of its Portfolio Analysis Report, including briefings to partner agencies (FAA, NASA, the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense,  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy).  The feedback and comments received from the Federal partner agencies, through the medium of the Joint Planning Environment (JPE), have been addressed and incorporated into the report.  As the next step, the JPDO will be presenting the report to the Senior Staff Advisor for NextGen coordination at the Department of Transportation (DOT), who will review the report and its results along with the Office of the Chief Financial Officer at DOT.  After this review, the report will be submitted in its final form to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), coinciding with OMB’s independent review of agency budgets and passback.

IPSA has also been involved in the FY11 NextGen Interagency Budget Process.  On Sept. 23, 2009, the Senior Staff Advisor for NextGen coordination at DOT sent a memorandum to the Senior Policy Committee and JPDO Board Members requesting an FY11, NextGen cross-cut budget submission from partner agencies.  Agencies were required to submit their budget data to the JPDO by Sept. 28. The JPDO compiled all of the responses in a consolidated NextGen budget table and supporting forms,  and transmitted that information to DOT. Next, DOT will submit this information to OMB.

IPSA’s Trip to Boeing Offices in Seattle

From September 8 to September 11, part of JPDO’s Interagency Portfolio and Systems Analysis (IPSA) Division team visited the Boeing offices in Seattle, Washington. The team met with the Benefits Analysis group and with senior Technical Fellows at Boeing to discuss future scenario planning, key decisions, and an overall decision-tree framework for encapsulating the NextGen vision by 2025, particularly from a manufacturing and industry standpoint.

Kathleen O’Brien, senior Technical Fellow, briefed the group on Boeing’s progress on the ADS-B program and retrofit challenges, followed by an extensive briefing on Strategy and Policy by Robert Peterson, senior Technical Fellow and Geopolitical Analyst at Boeing. In the ensuing, often insightful discussions that followed, both Boeing and IPSA agreed on the importance of conducting rigorous policy and portfolio analyses, involving all stakeholders affected by the NextGen program, and developing a multi-stakeholder decision-tree prototype that would serve to highlight the major policy and budget commitments that government and industry stakeholders would need to make in the near-term in order to achieve the desired set of NextGen capabilities in the long-term. While recognizing that the final NextGen system can be varied based on a specified performance level (set by its metrics and goals), there seemed to be consensus on building a decision-tree construct as an overlay to the IWP to lay out the realistic paths that government agencies, airlines, airports, and manufacturers like Boeing would need to embark on to achieve the integrated vision of NextGen in the long-term. The team also discussed the need to further improve our industry stakeholders in becoming stewards and owners of the NextGen concept to implementation over the next 15-20 years (as exemplified by RTCA TF5 for the next 3-5 years).

Finally, with an emphasis on alignment and collaboration, the team discussed IPSA’s ongoing work in developing future NextGen modeling scenarios (including the use of secondary airports, accelerating fleet turnover, upgauging aircraft, and the development of a suite of low-fidelity, high access “screening tools”).

FY09 JPDO Portfolio Analysis OMB Submission

JPDO’s Interagency Portfolio and System Analysis Division (IPSA) is scheduled to submit its Pre-Decisional FY09 Portfolio Analysis package
to OMB in September.  The package contains extensive analysis on the benefits, costs, and risks of one initial alternative of NextGen from the Integrated Work Plan (IWP).  It also contains papers on the development of NextGen metrics and cost analysis of secondary alternatives developed to highlight the complete “trade space” of NextGen portfolio alternatives for 2025.

JPDO has just completed a series of briefings that provided the methodology and results of the analysis to partner agencies. Based on a memorandum dated July 20, the JPDO Board designated points of contact (POCs) within their agencies to serve as reviewers for the portfolio analysis package.  These POCs were then briefed by IPSA at JPDO offices (Office of Science and Technology Policy and Department of Transportation — August 11; NOAA — August 17; FAA Aviation Safety — August 20; FAA Office of Environment and Energy — August 25; NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate — August 27; Department of Homeland Security — August 31; Department of Defense Lead Service Office — September 1; FAA NextGen Chief Scientist and FAA Policy — September 3) and provided access to the package through the Joint Planning Environment.  Comments on the portfolio analysis documents are due September 4, 2009.

Once IPSA incorporates partner agency feedback and recommendations, the JPDO plans to submit the portfolio analysis package to OMB as part of the FY11 federal budget requirements.

JPDO Holds June Working Group Co-Chairs Meeting

The June meeting of the Working Group Co-Chairs was held last week.  Yuri Gawdiak, JPDO’s Interagency Portfolio and System Analysis (IPSA) Division Director, presented an overview of IPSA’s approach to business case modeling and their plan for scenarios (combination of  aircraft, system capabilities, policies, and business models) that will be modeled in the next round of analysis.  Yuri solicited input from the Working Groups for comments on the planned scenario runs, or input on other scenario runs that would be useful to one or more Working Groups.  Also discussed at the meeting was the Global Harmonization Strategic Plan that is out to the Working Groups for initial review.  Angela Harris and Mike Marsili (both from the Global Harmonization Working Group) discussed the purpose, structure, and main points from the document and the schedule for finalization.

JPDO Chief Architect Jay Merkle discussed the plan for updating the Concept of Operations in 2009.  This year’s activity will mainly be incorporating the NextGen capability framework, editorial clean-ups, and improved graphics.  Jay indicated that based on the many studies and efforts underway this year (far-term ICNS study; far-term UAS capabilities for NextGen integration definition; AOC/FOC concept development; etc.), next year will likely see updates to content.  JPDO Working Group Integration Manager Maureen Keegan reviewed the approach and schedule for developing FY10/11 Working Group Plans, with a major workshop coming up on July 15.  Finally, Col, Doug Wreath discussed the management of work between the Net-Centric Operations Division and Working Groups.  For those with KSN access, presentations can be found here, under “20090610 Meeting.”

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

The JPDO Co-Funds a Task Augmentation with NASA’s Subsonic Fixed Wing Project

The JPDO’s Interagency Portfolio and Systems Analysis Division (IPSA) has co-funded a task augmentation with NASA’s Subsonic Fixed Wing Project titled: Creation of a Strategic Planning & Prioritization Process with Georgia Institute of Technology. To fully evaluate the impacts of the NextGen Enterprise Architecture, IPSA is required to run lifecycle benefit and cost analysis out to the year 2050. This long-range timeframe creates an unprecedented requirement to not only evaluate R&D technology benefits directly affecting Air Traffic Management, but also to evaluate technology transfer benefits from NextGen R&D. In addition, to insure that NextGen will be competitive in its target timeframe, an analysis of future technology trends that are both complementary and competing is required. This task will establish a process for collecting and identifying relevant technology trends that could affect the NextGen implementations, and provide an evaluation and impact framework to assess those consequences.

Yuri Gawdiak
JPDO Director, Interagency Portfolio and Systems Analysis Division

NASA Studies Integration of Advanced Vehicles into NextGen

Two industry teams under contract to NASA — one led by Raytheon and one led by Sensis — are performing detailed studies on the integration of advanced vehicles into the far-term NextGen system.  The intent is to create an approach and capability for ongoing evaluations of integrating vehicles with various performance characteristics and business cases into NextGen.  Analysis informs both potential vehicle requirements as well as the operational improvement and enabler needs of the larger NextGen system in which they will operate.  These studies also help fill a need that the JPDO has to extend the benefits and portfolio modeling performed by the Interagency Portfolio and System Analysis (IPSA) Division to include advanced fleet scenarios.   Both teams briefed their progress at the JPDO Working Group Co-Chairs meeting today.  For those with KSN access, the briefings can be found here, under the category: 20090311 Meeting.

Bob Pearce
JPDO Deputy Director

IPSA and NASA Address Technology Transfer Implications

The Interagency Portfolio and Systems Analysis Division (IPSA) is working on a task with NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate to address technology transfer implications for the long range NextGen investments.  Due to the long lifecycle range analysis that’s required for NextGen (up to the year 2050), technology evolution effects are potentially more significant than in typical programs.  The task will help project complementary technology effects, collateral ones, and competitive ones.  The effects will be evaluated not only on system performance of future technologies, but what they may do to future passenger demand and market operations that would affect NextGen.

Yuri Gawdiak
JPDO Director of Interagency Portfolio and Systems Analysis Division