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.