Joint Planning & Development Office strategic decision and policy model

Abstract

NextGen was enacted in 2003 by President Bush and Congress under VISION 100 - Century of Aviation Reauthorization Act (P.L. 108-176). In this initiative, the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) is responsible for managing a public/private partnership to bring NextGen online by 2025.11 The goal of NextGen is to significantly increase the safety, security, capacity, efficiency, and environmental compatibility of air transportation operations, and by doing so, to improve the overall economic well-being of the country. These benefits can be achieved through a combination of new procedures and advances in the technology deployed to manage passenger, air cargo, and air traffic operations. The JPDO is the central organization that coordinates the specialized efforts of the Departments of Transportation, Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce, FAA, NASA, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. NextGen is a complex system of systems that requires significant research, development and implementation of multiple technologies, change of human roles, processes and policies. To achieve the 2025 vision and realize the benefits of NextGen, the systems and processes of today must be rigorously and systematically transformed through the sustained, coordinated and integrated efforts of many stakeholders. Within the JPDO two divisions worked together to develop an initial analysis framework that evaluated key strategic decision and policy challenges associated with the Operational Improvements in the NextGen Enterprise Architecture. These divisions: the Systems Modeling and Analysis Division (SMAD) and the Policy Division (PD) then used the analysis framework to build a policy/decision model to plug into the SMAD National Air Space Simulation Environment in order to assess the potentially strategic organizational risks associated with the NextGen implementation plan. This paper documents how the JPDO High Density Case Study developed the policy/decision model, the significant implications of the current organizational risks and plans for future model and analysis development to address those risks.