A More Dynamic Approach
By James Williams, FAA Safety Briefing Magazine
As the year winds to a close, it’s usually a time of reflection. I look back 18 years to when I first joined the FAA. There was a significant change in the air (no pun intended) that didn’t impact me but was going to be a big deal for my colleagues in the Flight Standards Service. The guidance handbooks for our aviation safety inspectors (ASI) were being combined. This was a major change in service of a larger goal and a more streamlined guidance structure. They say the one constant is change, and I agree. The story never ends; only the characters change. And that leads us to today.
The same drive to centralize and streamline didn’t end when that project was completed. That desire not only yields a better experience for end users (including the public) but also decreases costs by reducing the systems that need to be updated and maintained. We now have a descendent of that project, the Dynamic Regulatory System (DRS) at drs.faa.gov.
Advantage Dynamism
If DRS was only a modernized system for FAA workforce guidance it wouldn’t be worth much beyond a brief mention, but it’s a lot more. DRS is a hub of information that solves a problem I didn’t even know I had until I came to the FAA. I thought I had a much better understanding of rules and regulations than I did. I felt like I’d read the regs, so I knew what I needed to know about those things. I’ve come to feel, though, that there’s nothing more intellectually dangerous than being about halfway prepared while thinking you’re completely ready. DRS is a nearly never-ending story of regulations, guidance, policy, and a host of other documents all neatly packed into one website. It’s a resource I never would have dreamed of back during training days when we would endlessly debate the finer points of the legal side of flying. I promise it was more interesting than it sounds. As they say, DRS fixes this.
DRS combines more than 52 document types from more than a dozen different repositories into a single searchable application. You can search a topic across all those document types or just the type you select. You can also search both current documents and historical ones if you are interested in seeing how the FAA’s guidance has changed. Document types include Airworthiness Directives (AD), Advisory Circulars (AC), FAA Orders, Information for Operators (InFO), legal interpretations, Safety Alerts for Operators (SAFO), Special Airworthiness Information Bulletins (SAIB), Supplemental Type Certificates (STC), Type Certificate Data Sheets (TCDS), and more.
You can browse or search. Browsing allows you to look through document types or categories and use filters to narrow the results, while the search function will bring up every instance of that term including in the text of documents. Think of it like the difference between using the table of contents (browse) versus the index (search) of a book. The table of contents will tell you where the chapter on a subject is while the index will tell anywhere that subject is mentioned in the whole book. Generally, the search function will return a far larger number of results than the browse function. So, it’s better to use search when you’re looking at general concepts and browse when you have a more specific document or objective in mind. If you do find a set of results that look promising, or you want to share them, you can save them by hitting the “save selected search results list” button. The button will generate a spreadsheet download that contains the list of results along with hyperlinks to the full document along with some additional information about each entry. The upper limit for saved results is 1,000 entries so you may need to refine your search for some topics.
DRS represents a major improvement to your access to important aviation safety information. While many of these databases were already available, they were sometimes hard to find. Now, more information is more easily accessible to more people. While it’s true that the only constant is change, this change is a good one.
James Williams is FAA Safety Briefing’s associate editor and photo editor. He is also a pilot and ground instructor.
