An organizational study into the concept of “automation policy” in a safety critical socio-technical system.

Although automation has been introduced in all areas of public life, what seems to be missing is a reflection at the organizational or societal level about a policy of automation. By this we intend appropriate declarations made at the level of rationale, future plans and strategies to achieve intended goals and most importantly how those achievements will impact on various aspects of societal life, from legal responsibilities to moral and socio economic issues. Implicit in this is what is expected of both the human and technical system actors. In some public spheres these issues are becoming quite controversial because automation opens up possibilities of profound structural re-organization; however, we lack a discussion across and within different work domains to help us review methods or even methodological principles needed to gather and organize knowledge towards the construction of automation policies. This paper uses the UK Air Navigation Service Provider in the Air Traffic Management Domain known as NATS, as a case study to illustrate an example of an organization currently undertaking critical self-reflection about automation policy or the lack of such, along with the illustration of some unresolved deep concerns raised by the development, introduction, and continued use of automation.Peer reviewe

Inter-organisational safety debate : The case of an alarm system from the air traffic control domain

The management of safety critical operations cannot only be left to the initiative of those individuals directly in contact with the production processes. Society as a whole has a role to play. This work seeks to explore the interface between societal components having a direct active role in those “safety debate”. The reference domain is air traffic management and the interface is among air traffic controllers and pilot – as directly involved in the management of the air traffic, and two Agencies, one responsible for safety investigation after an accident, NTSB, and the other, FAA responsible for regulating, upgrading and training of the workforce. Recent debates in safety management highlight that safe practice is a control problem: the result of effective hierarchical transmissions of safety constraints and the making of the boundaries of acceptable performance visible. In this work we analyze how safety constraints related to an alarm system are represented, transmitted and interpreted by several parties all committed to safety of operations in air traffic management. It has emerged a “miscalibration” pattern where the tendency to ignore the alarm was initially addressed at higher hierarchical levels in relation to alarm design, and only in 2006 was addressed in relation to the core issue of nuisance or false alerts (FA).Peer reviewe