As many of you know, the Air Transport Association just completed their
annual CRM conference. The audience at the ATA meeting was approximately
90% CRM developers (a majority of whom are members of this online CRM
developers group). At this conference the FAA's Chief Scientist and
Technical Advisor for Human Factors, Dr. Maureen , made a request for help
that I think this Industry Developer's group is ideally suited to address.
One of Dr. Pettitt's many responsibilities includes overseeing the human
factors research for the FAA. Recent Federal legislation requires Federal
agencies like Dr. Pettitt's to improve their accountability, productivity,
and effectiveness. The following are the boundaries of this improvement
effort were outlined to her by a separate government research roundtable:
* Measurement of research programs is essential and achievable.
* Measures should "be developed proactively by research organizations in
consultation with their customers and stakeholders"
* The "cause-effective relationship between research outputs and their
resultant outcomes should be described in terms of logical causality."
Dr. Pettitt stated:
We need your help to:
1. Identify and/or develop more appropriate performance indicators
2. Provide evidence of improved aggregate performance as a result of the
research
3. Provide evidence of your use and satisfaction with the products of our
research
FAA Human Factors research has helped the user community tremendously over
the past years. Like all big government programs, however, there are
opportunities to maximize or redirect resources that are not meeting the
customers needs. Dr. Pettitt's attendance as this "end-user" conference is
a testament to the importance the FAA has placed on meeting customer needs
and developing measurable performance data beyond isolated testimonials.
I would like to ask the members of this online developer's community to
spend a few moment thinking about the three needs that Dr. Pettitt stated
then share these ideas online. As a primer, you may want to take a look at
the powerpoint slides I produced for an Ohio State Presentation titled
"Ponder then Produce: Translating Research into Practice". You can review
these slides at:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/vince_mancuso/index.htm
After you, the customer, has responded online, we will either invite the
FAA to review these comments online or we will compile them in hardcopy for
their review. Your comments will help make the current R&D system even
better than it already is...
Thank you,
Dr. Vince Mancuso