Drone Rule Digitisation

Drone rule digitisation aims to improve access and awareness of non-safety drone laws across Australia, including rules in place addressing security or environmental concerns.

This focus on data and digital governance is the foundation for an iterative, cooperative and consistent approach to drone rules in Australia, extending from improving digitisation and awareness, to rule impact analysis and cooperation on enforcement strategies.

It can be difficult to understand the different non-safety drone laws in place for different locations, applied by different agencies and across jurisdictions. To help drone user and community awareness of such laws, this collaborative national project is digitising rules for publication as:

• an online map, to be published on drones.gov.au
• open data for use by governments, industry, and research, supporting greater outcomes for awareness of rules
• an API (application programming interface) for use by software service providers, enabling seamless digital communication of non-safety laws as part of their broader drone flight planning systems.

A key principle is that laws should be easily accessible and easy to understand. This means reducing barriers to access (including costs) transparent sourcing and updating, and publishing laws in the most appropriate way for the intended audience. In this case – relating to a rapidly growing digital drone sector – such laws need to be digital.

The department is currently working with government and industry stakeholders to develop a prototype map, dataset and API, which are anticipated for release in late 2023.

Building on the development of a nationally consistent approach to drone rule digitisation, the project is also looking at completing cooperative evaluation of non-safety drone rules. This will involve collaboration across jurisdictions to conduct impact analyses, assessing how different rules achieve their regulatory objectives, and exploring options for improvement and/or greater consistency across jurisdictions.

Digitisation and impact analysis will in turn inform cooperation on enforcement challenges and opportunities to address concerns around enforcement of existing non-safety laws.

Anchored in digital cooperation and working with the sector on security and environmental or other non-safety concerns, the project will then look to embed the digital cooperation as part of a national strategy on non-safety drone rules, encouraging awareness among users and the community, and effectiveness and consistency in rule implementation.

For more information on the project, please contact drones@infrastructure.gov.au.