Marine Corps issues RFQ for new aviation 'hotline'

The Marine Corps published a request for quotes for an anonymous hotline designed for aviators to report unsafe conditions during missions, according to a July 9 Federal Business Opportunities notice.

Called the Aviation Safety Awareness Program, the service has already been experimenting with prototypes of the "hotline," Lt. Gen. Steven Rudder, deputy commandant for aviation, told reporters last month.

The RFQ elaborates on the software behind the new system, stating it must integrate with the Navy's existing system which has averaged 11,000 reports per month and received more than 1 million reports since its inception.

The program's goal is to encourage "voluntary reporting of safety issues and events that would otherwise go unreported," the notice states. Information reported will be "totally de-identified upon data entry" with the aim of gathering information to fix problems while not assigning blame.

The software must be able to "immediately gather critical or time-sensitive safety/operational information using questions that can be entered directly into the ASAP data collection tool by the Marine Corps’ ASAP administrator without contract programming assistance," the notice states.

Further, the software must have a "search capability that reduces the delays normally associated with 'man-in-the-loop' analysis," the notice states.