The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has recommended that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) provide public and industry stakeholders in the unmanned aircraft systems market with additional data about its efforts to help the latter better align their activities with FAA plans for implementing a drone traffic management system.
FAA should also come up with performance goals and measures for its implementation of the UAS traffic management system or UTM, GAO said in a report published Thursday.
According to the report, FAA is working with NASA and other stakeholders to advance UTM development. FAA is now working on an implementation plan for UTM after completing a pilot program in November.
GAO made the recommendations after interviewing UAS industry and public stakeholders, who said that “they face planning challenges because FAA provides limited information on timing and substance of next steps, such as areas of UTM technology that FAA will focus on during testing,” the report reads.
