Development of the GPS-enhancing Wide Area Augmentation System took six years longer and cost $1.5 billion more than it should have, the GAO said, largely due to ineffective coordination among various offices of the FAA that were working on the program. Also, when the FAA accelerated its schedule for implementing the Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System for air traffic control, it didn't leave time to consult with end users and ended up with a badly designed interface. That added a half-billion dollars and three years to the project, and 122 fewer systems now will be deployed than in the original plan. Also, contracts for implementing controller-datalink communications were mishandled, hiking costs by 59 percent. The one program that the GAO reviewed that it found went pretty well was the ASDE-X airport surveillance system. The FAA included stakeholders early and throughout the approval process and the managers of the project had strong technical expertise, the GAO said.
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Development of the GPS-enhancing 
