Q & A - Cru-X LDR Memorandum of Understanding

1) Who is covered by the new Cru-X MOU?

The MOU covers air traffic controllers, traffic management coordinators, and the NOTAMS group represented by NATCA. The other NATCA bargaining units, including the NATCA staff specialists at the field facilities and the regional offices and the NATCA engineers, will be covered by separate agreements.

2) What is FAA Order 2700.37 and why does ABA-1 have to certify the IPPS interface?

Section 9. of the Agency’s Labor Distribution Reporting (LDR) Order (FAA Order 2700.37) has strict requirements in order to ensure data integrity, data retention and Privacy Act protections. The LDR order requires the Assistant Administrator for Financial Services (ABA-1) to certify the “front end labor collection system” prior to transmitting LDR data. ABA-1 will certify this interface prior to any facility transmitting LDR data. That certification letter shall be appended to the CRU-X/LDR MOU.

3) Why are we using CRU Support and LDR Lite?

Air Traffic decided to use CRU-X as their interface for LDR reporting. The new MOU requires changes to the CRU-Ops module which is not ready for National deployment at this time. As a result, under section 2 of the Parties CRU-X MOU we have agreed to use CRU Support and LDR Lite as an interim system until such time the requirements of the MOU are met.

4) What does it mean when we say in the MOU “Cru-X is not intended to change existing personnel policies, practices and matters affecting working conditions not expressly contained in this MOU”?

Cru-X is a suite of tools designed to automate existing practices and procedures. Any modifications or changes to the Parties practices and/or policy will be handled through the processes specified with the Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA) and the applicable agency orders. Said negotiations will occur only at the National level.

5) Section 4 of the MOU specifies numerous data points that will be included within the CruSupport database. Are all these data points currently included?

Most of the data points specified are already in the CruSupport database. The “Retirement Eligibility Date” and “Retirement Mandatory Date” are the only ones that are not currently in the database and they will be added in the next release. The intent is to utilize CRU Support to provide a single source of data for all Bargaining Unit Employees. Providing this information to NATCA at the end of each pay period allows us to move from a paper system and allows us to create National Seniority list as well as tracking movement between bargaining units, facilities and developmental levels. This data will also automate a paper process today and provide for planning for future retirements.

6) What does it mean when it says that “employees retain the right to review all their personnel information contained within CruSupport in accordance with the Parties’ CBA”?

CruSupport has several levels of data access assignable by the facility to ensure that employees are able to use those sections of the software required to do their jobs. At a minimum, though, each facility employee is assigned “user rights” automatically by the software. This level of access allows each employee to view, but not modify, his or her own records. This requirement to allow employees to use the software to view their records is what is being addressed here.

7) What do all these changes to the CruOps Duty Board mean? How is CruOps going to automatically sign people on and sign people off?

The CruOps program currently requires that a schedule be entered for each employee within the air traffic operations environment. Under the previous versions of the software, an employee reporting for duty would go to a CruOps sign-in/sign-out computer, find their name in the list of employees scheduled to work that day, bring up a sign-in form within the program and sign themselves in for work. The software would then display them on the “Available List” of the Duty Board, indicating that they were available for duty but not yet working a position. When the employee signed on to a position, they would be moved from the “Available List” to the “On Duty” list. At the end of their shift, they would go to the CruOps sign-in/sign-out computer, bring up a sign-out form within the program and sign themselves out. The supervisor on duty is responsible for ensuring and certifying the accuracy of the sign-in/sign-out information.

Under the provisions of the new MOU, several of these steps will be either eliminated or will be modified.

· The requirement to sign-in and sign-out will be eliminated. Instead, employees will be assigned a shift and the program will automatically show them being on duty at the beginning of their assigned shift (appropriate FAA orders and directives will be modified to reflect the changes).

· The “Available List” will be eliminated from the Duty Board. It will be replaced with an “On Duty” list. This will display a list of all air traffic operations employees within that area who, based on their assigned shift, are on duty. When the scheduled start time of an employees shift occurs, that employee will automatically be displayed in the “On Duty” list.

· The current On Duty window in the Duty Board will be renamed the “On Position” list. Moving an employee onto this list, however, will not remove them from the “On Duty” list. The “On Duty” list will always be a complete list of everyone in the area who is, according to their assigned schedule, currently on duty.

· At the end of an employee’s assigned shift, they will automatically be removed from the “On Duty” list.

· Because many of the employees in air traffic facilities work flex schedules, and to allow for leave, credit hours, overtime and other changes which routinely occur that effect scheduled start and stop times, the software must accommodate the need to allow employees to modify their schedule in accordance with agency and facility policy. CruOps will handle this by using the existing manual sign-in/sign-out forms within the software. If an employee arrives prior to scheduled start of their shift and is going to flex in early (or earn previously approved overtime, credit hours etc.), they will go to a sign-in/sign-out computer, find their name in the list of employees scheduled to work that day, bring up a sign-in form within the program and sign themselves in. Changes to the scheduled time must be approved by the person performing watch supervision before those changes are considered “official” and become part of the employees T&A record.

· The supervisors will continue to be responsible for ensuring that the information recorded by the system is true and accurate and, as such, they are required to take positive action to verify the whereabouts of the employees scheduled for duty. The new version of the software will give them enhanced tools to accomplish this. First of all, the new “On Duty” list, because it always displays a complete list of all employees currently scheduled for duty, makes it easier for supervisors to determine who is supposed to be on duty. Second, the software has been modified to give the supervisor/CIC the ability to manually “flag” an employee in the On Duty list if their whereabouts is not positively known.

8) The MOU states that a schedule program will be incorporated. When will that happen?

The agency will work in collaboration with the Union to identify the requirements for a full-feature schedule program and to incorporate it within the CruOps module. Until that is completed, CruOps currently has the ability to import data from several other stand-alone schedule programs in use around the country. For technical support questions and import procedures, contact your regional Cru-X focals.

9) What is “RDO”?

“RDO” is a schedule program developed by Cleveland ARTCC.

It is the intention of the Parties to develop a schedule import process or processes to automate the function of automatically importing the work schedules and subsequent amendments into the CRU-X program. Until one or more schedule programs are incorporated into CRU-X, facilities may elect to use the “RDO” program or other locally adapted processes.

10) What does it mean when it says that BUE’s shall be shown as performing their primary duty for all time except that shown in the “Other Duties” list?

According to the LDR order (FAAO 2700.37), employees will track and report their time for LDR purposes using agency authorized project and activity codes. Normal break times, including lunch for people receiving paid lunches, are not tracked or recorded separately with LDR but are incorporated into the projects being worked. For air traffic controller BUE’s, the project code used for all of their activities is AT100. The activity used to report their normal assignment of working in the operations area is “ATC Duties”. So, for a controller assigned to work an eight-hour shift in operations controlling aircraft, the LDR entry for their shift would be 8 hours of “ATC Duties”. If, however, that controller was assigned to some other duty (such as Article 17 duties or Article 48 duties), that time would be shown separately for LDR purposes. In the example above, if the employee worked in the operations area from 8AM-2PM and then worked Article 17 duties from 2PM-4PM, their LDR entries for the day would show 6 hours “ATC Duties” and 2 hours “Article 17 Duties”.

Regional CRU-X/LDR Focals and Local CRU-X/LDR SMEs shall record time spent on CRU-X/LDR as Article 17 time.

11) What does it mean when it says that supervisors and CIC’s only have access to the information required for performing required duties?

Within the CruOps program, CIC’s are given the same access to the Duty Board that a supervisor has since, by definition, they are performing the same watch supervision tasks as a supervisor. This supervisory access is limited to the CruOps module, however, and does not extend to other Cru-X modules such as CruSupport since CICs have no need or requirement to view personnel records other than their own. Similarly, supervisors only are able to access that information they require to do their assigned tasks. All provisions of the Privacy Act are respected and implemented by the program.

12) What items need to be addressed at facility level?

The admin account in CruOps allows the facility to set certain facility specific parameters within the software. These settings determine whether entries will turn yellow, red or green based on the length of time an employee has been on position. Whether these colors are utilized and the times associated with each, must be negotiated at the facility level. Additionally, the location of computers to be utilized by the bargaining unit for access to Cru-X in the operational/non-operational areas must be negotiated at the facility level. The agreements reached will be appended to the National MOU as a local MOU.

13) What are these workstations specified in Section 12 of the MOU?

As stated in number 6, above, employees need to be able to use the software to view their own records. In order to accomplish this, the agency agrees that computers will be available for BUEs to use for this purpose outside the operations areas. As budgetary considerations allow, the agency will provide the agreed upon number of workstations. In the meantime, the facility must make arrangements for BUE’s’ to use existing computers for this purpose. These computers shall meet the minimum specifications determined by the ATS Chief Information Officer, AAF-60.

14) Can Radar Replay be used for Quality Assurance purposes?

No. Radar Replay is a function included with the CruBrief module and is intended as a training tool only. It has not been certified as a QA tool and cannot be used for anything other than a training tool.

15) What about old computers utilizing CRU-X?

The Agency is conducting a review of all hardware that currently has any CRU-X module installed. CRU-X may not be installed on any computer that does not meet the specifications determined by the ATS Chief Information Officer, AAF-60. Additionally, CRU-X will not be implemented in any facility until they can implement CRU-X on their dedicated servers being deployed by ATX-400.

16) What is this “more formal client/server architecture”?

The agency is currently developing an Oracle version of the Cru-X program. That Oracle version is currently being used at FAA Headquarters and will be distributed to the Regional Offices for their use prior to LDR implementation. It will then be “waterfalled” to the AT facilities around the country.

17) Now that the MOU is signed can we implement CRU-X or update CRU-X modules?

No. The CRU-X/LDR MOU requires the beta testing of software by test site facilities. These test sites will be identified and will serve as the beta testing sites for any new releases of any CRU-X modules. Facilities that have already implemented all or part of the Cru-X software on existing software will continue to use Cru-X at its current level. No updates to any of the Cru-X modules or programs shall be installed until dedicated servers are provided to those facilities and future updates are released at the National Level after beta testing has been satisfactorily accomplished. Additionally, any CRU-X computer must meet the requirements of the MOU and AAF-60.

18) How will these beta tests work?

Two test sites in each Region will be identified by the NATCA Regional Vice President and the FAA Regional Division Manager. Under the new process any changes to the CRU-X software will then be released only to these beta facilities. These test sites will install and use the software and will provide feedback through the Regional Focals to ATX-400 and the NATCA Cru-X National Representative. That feedback will then be used to determine whether the software is ready for release beyond the two test sites in each Region.

19) What are “Regional Focal points and Local SMEs” discussed in the MOU?

When the agency first began to field the Cru-X software, the Agency selected one individual from each region to act as the support focal for the region. Additionally, within many regions, NATCA also designated an individual to be the NATCA Cru-X focal for the region. This article formalizes that process. The Agency shall identify nine (9) Regional Focal points (one from each Region) and NATCA shall designate nine (9) Regional Focal points (one from each Region) additionally both Parties shall designate Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) for each facility to forward their input to the Regional Focals. These duties shall be recorded as Article 17. The facility SMEs will work together with management to address and resolve any Cru-X issues that arise. Any issues that cannot be handled locally will be elevated through the regional focals and the regional NATCA reps.

The list of National, Regional and Local focals shall be appended to this MOU. Both Parties reserve their right to change their designees.

20) What training is going to be provided for Cru-X?

The Agency is currently developing certified Cru-X training through ATX-100 and the FAA Academy in accordance with input from the National Learning Council. The training will be in the form of computer-based instruction (CBI) modules for each of the Cru-X modules. Each training module will be approximately 2 hours long. Any training shall be developed and delivered prior to any Bargaining Unit Employee using CRU-X. The National Representative and the Regional Representatives shall receive this training as soon as it is available.

The CruSupport CBI has been completed and is currently being distributed to all facilities. The CruOps module is under development and will be completed within the next few weeks. The other CBI modules will follow.