Wicked Copters and Air Support Queensland were given a sneak peek of CASA’s new online remote pilot licence application process when they participated in the ‘beta’ release of the system in late March 2019.

The two remotely piloted aircraft operator certificate training organisations, based in Brisbane, were asked to help with final testing of the system before it was released to all such training organisations on 1 April 2019.

Both schools were able to create an account, submit licence applications for multiple students and make their payments online. The new process allowed these actions to take only minutes, whereas the previous, manual process could take up to 20 days.

The new system allows training schools to process the remote pilot licence application while the student is with them so that the student leaves with their licence rather than having to wait for it to arrive by post.

Both schools commented that this was a great step forward for CASA and that the new process not only was much simpler, but also had been built with the users of the system in mind.

The testing by the two schools over two days also enabled CASA to pick up issues that had not been identified during user acceptance testing and address them before going live to a broader audience.

This was a significant milestone for CASA’s Service Delivery Transformation program, which will contribute to CASA becoming a more efficient and effective organisation.

The process started in 2018 with the Service Delivery Transformation design team identifying the existing manual process and developing a design for the new process. Involving the people who will be using the system and collaborating across CASA were integral factors in the success of the refined application process.