Whatever the context, this is a very true statement. And I hate it from the bottom of my heart.
Why?
Because in the area closest to my heart, air traffic management, it has been used over the years as the (rather lame) excuse for not harmonizing things, be it implementation dates, system functionality or the working position user interface. The results were inevitably increased costs, missed project deadlines, unachieved goals or goals achieved that were different from what the ATM community needed.
When the concept of a Single European Sky first surfaced, even its name was refreshing as it suggested a departure from the old buzzword and a bright new future where things would finally work to the same gauge everywhere. What a naïve thought…
At the ATM Global conference in Amsterdam recently, the top guy of DSNA, the French air navigation service provider, talking about the Functional Airspace Blocks (FAB), informed his audience that no single FAB would fit all and that FABs were bringing European diversity to SESAR.
It was rather disappointing to hear him use this well worn excuse for Europe’s inability once again to set up a truly single sky! One would have hoped for a more modern (digital?) excuse but that was probably expecting too much…
I got another jolt last night when the SWIM thread on LinkedIn directed my attention to new information on SWIM posted on the SESAR web site. There I found another echo of this hated claim.
It went like this:
“Given the transversal nature of SWIM, which is to go across all ATM systems, data domains, and business trajectory phases (planning, execution, post-execution) and the wide range of ATM stakeholders, it is not expected that one solution and certainly not one single technology will fit all.”
The write up is very good otherwise and obviously this is a different incarnation of the issue. The problem here is not so much with the claim itself but with something that is missing from the sentence. When you are talking about System Wide Information Management (SWIM) it is essential that the difference between SWIM the concept and SWIM the underlying technology is made absolutely clear. On the conceptual level it is not acceptable to say that one size does not fit all. SWIM must be the same everywhere or else it will not work. On the level of the various options and technologies available to realize the concept, it will indeed be up to the implementers to select the best options which will then work together seamlessly on a world-wide basis.
So my problem with the SESAR text was just that this difference between the concept and the technologies was not made abundantly clear with a clear indication that the “one size does not fit all” caveat does not apply to the concept itself.
Why should something this obvious be said time and again? If nothing else, to avoid some high brass coming to ATM Global 2012 proudly boasting that they were bringing European diversity to SWIM.
I did make a comment on this in the LinkedIn thread and to their credit, the authors of the thread came back within a day saying that they fully agreed and that some new text due in the coming weeks should take care of this omission.
I am pleased. Not because they agreed with me but because I see that they will protect SWIM from diversity.
