From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Watchdog Report: Environmental Satellites and a New
Report Format for GAO

Audio interview by GAO staff with David Powner, Director, Information
Technology

Associated Report Number: GAO-10-799

Released on: October 1, 2010

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[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and
information from the Government Accountability Office. It's October 1,
2010. The next generation of geostationary operational environmental
satellites known as GOES-R is being prepared for launch in 2015. Once in
orbit it will join other similar satellites that monitor weather
patterns and provide meteorological data. A group led by Dave Powner,
Director in GAO's Information Technology team, recently examined the
acquisition and planning process for the GOES-R series. GAO's Jeremy
Cluchey sat down with Dave to learn more.
[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] What function do these environmental satellites
serve?

[ Dave Powner: ] Geostationary environmental satellites provide key
meteorological data that are essential to weather forecasting and
warnings for the United States.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] This next generation of satellites is known as the
GOES-R series. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

[ Dave Powner: ] So, how this works is the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration always has two operational satellites that
provide coverage; one on the Eastern Continental United States another
on the Western Continental United States; and then there's always one
that's in orbit as a backup; so that way if something would happen
operationally with one of the two, we would have full coverage of the
entire United States. And in addition these satellites provide a nice
picture of what's going on over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans so that
we can see incoming storms. Hurricane tropical storms seem to be a major
part of our weather forecasting and warning operations, and so we want
to make sure that we get a clear view of those incoming storms.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] In this report what did GAO find as the deployment
status of this latest generation of satellites?

[ Dave Powner: ] So overall it's a $7 billion acquisition and the first
satellite is to launch in 2015; the second in 2017, and provide coverage
through 2028. What we found was that most of the components are on track
and schedule. Now there are two instruments--both the imager and the
lightening map are experiencing some technical problems, and there's
some cost increases associated with those. We've had recommendations
associated with those instruments over the years, and we're continuing
to keep an eye on that cost growth.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] You mentioned recommendations. What are some of the
recommendations GAO is making in this latest report?

[ Dave Powner: ] Well the key recommendation we're making is to have a
continuity plan so that it ensures that there is continuous data being
received in the United States for these geostationary satellites. We
will have two operational satellites if the first GOES-R satellite
launches in 2015; but there's a possibility that we will not have a
backup in orbit. Now that is very essential because as we talk about
continuity of data, you want two operational satellites and one in-orbit
backup because something could go wrong while these birds are currently
in flight. What we found was that National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration--they have a high-level plan, if in fact one of those
birds would go down, to operate with a single satellite and then to use
some of the international satellites as a backup. But we did not see a
detailed continuity plan in place. And why this is important is because
if you have a single satellite, we need key coverage over the ocean; so
with a single satellite you wouldn't have as much coverage over the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and that's very essential when you track
incoming tropical storms and hurricanes from a weather warning point of
view. In addition, there are also some key changes that will need to be
made to the ground stations with operating some of the international
satellites, so there are software changes that will have to be made to
receive that international data and process it here in the United
States; so it's essential that there's continuity plans. It kind of
works through all those various aspects from a coverage point of view
and also from the reliance on international satellites.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] One other noteworthy aspect of this new report is
the format in which it’s being issued. Can you talk a little bit about
what benefits this new format offers to visitors of gao.gov?

[ Dave Powner: ] Well with this report you'll be able to get it in our
traditional PDF format where it comes as a single file; but you also
will be able to access what we're calling an E-Report. And what that is,
is it's a Web-based version of GAO reports. It allows you to easily
navigate the report to the desired content so for instance if you're
interested in our highlight summary page, you can easily click on that
and pull that information up. If you're interested in the
recommendations from the report, you could access that without going
through an entire PDF file. What this allows our readers and clients and
customers to do is to not only easily access our reports based on the
desired content, but it also positions GAO to be in a position where we
could utilize mobile devices much more effectively to get our message
out and on reports.

[ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO's Web site at gao.gov, and be
sure to tune in to the next edition of GAO's Watchdog Report for more
from the congressional watchdog, the Government Accountability Office.

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