16.10.2013

 

Safety Oversight Facilitated Integration Application-SOFIA

The Civil Aviation Agency of the Republic of Macedonia and the European Aviation Safety Agency – EASA signed a Multilateral Non-Exclusive Licensing Agreement for access, use and modification for the facilitation of safety oversight, through the introduction of a web based application. The software package SOFIA – EASA in fact is a data base application specially developed by EASA in coordination with SGI Aviation, as a management tool for data and oversight and it is used by the regional organizations for safety oversight, data processing and creation of statistical reports. The software package is intended to assist the organizations and the civil aviation authorities in order to facilitate the management of the overall oversight safety and procedure processes in all the aspects and areas of the civil aviation based on the ICAO Annex 1, Annex 6, Annex 7 and Annex 8.

The SOFIA software enables investigation, processing of the inspection results, managing of the work, notification and audit, as well as local adaptation of the national and regional requests.

On the 38th Session of the International Civil Aviation Organization – ICAO Assembly, the EASA representatives presented the SOFIA software laying down the basic strategy and vision for usage of this software by the civil aviation authorities. This Assembly by the number of participating countries, one hundred eighty four (184), reached a historic record figure so far.

Based on the signed Agreement, during the period between 19th – 21st March 2013 the first meeting was held at the Civil Aviation Agency premises between the representatives of the CAA team and the representatives from the European Aviation Safety Agency – EASA  team composed of          Mr. Lynch Wendell, Mr. Carlos Tortosa and Mr. Luc Beaudion.

After the first working meeting the Civil Aviation Agency received a positive report form EASA regarding its engagement, participation and cooperation towards the successful implementation of the software. The following steps were the SOFIA software test period at the Agency after that followed by a number of video conferences enabling to the Agency to construct a base for the next working mission, which was installation of the software at the CAA premises.

Based on the progress in respect of the cooperation between the Agency management and the EASA representatives a second working meeting was held during the 14-15 October 2013. In the accordance with the framework of the Agreement  between the Civil Aviation Agency as the user and EASA as the administrator the time framework regarding the development progress was successfully concluded. The second working meeting was held between the representatives from the Civil Aviation Agency comprised of the representatives from the project managers for the implementation and administration of the software, as well as the inspectors as direct users of the software, and the EASA representatives consisted of Mr. Luc Beaudion and Mr. Frank Ditmarsch. For the purpose of the implementation of the SOFIA Project, EASA was cooperating with the SGI Aviation.

The team representatives coming directly from the management of the SGI Aviation were completely proving their commitment to the SOFIA Project. At this working meeting the SOFIA system was installed at the Agency server and therefore the Agency become part of the community of states users of the software in their everyday civil aviation operations. Through this operational manner the Agency become a part of the strategies for modernization, quality and uniformity of tasks performance to which European and world civil aviation community are aiming. The implemented software was presented to the Civil Aviation Agency Director General Dejan Mojsoski Ph.D. elaborating all the benefits from the successful concluded working meeting.

With the successful implementation of this software package, the Civil Aviation Agency will easily perform inspections, the information flow will be faster and will have positive effect to the daily tasks performance.

The commitment of the EASA team to deliver the Project for implementation of the SOFIA software package resulted with a success.

Due to the successful communication and cooperation between the EASA and the Agency in respect of concluding of the project, the Civil Aviation Agency Director General and the team of participating in the Project would like to express their gratitude and satisfaction having the opportunity to work on this Project and thus to contribute to the standardization of the Civil Aviation Agency with the European Aviation Safety Agency – EASA and the European Union aviation standards.