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Self-Test Questions
Safety performance measurement
A compliance-based safety environment
A performance-based safety environment
Safety indicators and safety targets.
Module 6. State Flight Safety Program
Lecture 13. State Safety Program (SSP).
STATE SAFETY PROGRAMME (SSP)
Annexes 1, 6, 8, 11, 13 and 14 include the requirement for States to establish a State safety programme (SSP), in order to achieve an acceptable level of safety in civil aviation. An SSP is a management system for the management of safety by the State.
An SSP is defined as an integrated set of regulations and activities aimed at improving safety. It includes specific safety activities that must be performed by the State, and regulations and directives promulgated by the State to support fulfilment of its responsibilities concerning safe and efficient delivery of aviation activities in the State.
In order to assist States in the establishment of their SSP, ICAO has developed a framework that includes both the components and elements of an SSP. The framework consists of four components and eleven elements and is introduced in full in Chapter 11. The responsibilities encompassed by the SSP are not new. It is a reasonable expectation that most States are already discharging most of these responsibilities. What is new is the notion of the SSP itself, proposing one way of organizing the safety responsibilities and accountabilities of a State in a principled and structured manner, and measuring the effectiveness with which safety responsibilities are discharged and safety accountabilities are fulfilled by the State. The organization of the safety responsibilities and accountabilities of a State observing certain principles and following a standard structure allows regulations and activities aimed at improving safety to be documented, explicit and traceable. While the long-term, strategic objective of an SSP is the improvement of safety in the State, the organization of an SSP aims at two short-term, tactical objectives: efficient and effective delivery of safety responsibilities and accountabilities by the State, and efficient auditing of safety responsibilities and accountabilities by the State.
The importance of the second objective, efficient auditing of safety responsibilities and accountabilities by the State, should not be underestimated. At the present time, the ICAO Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP) audits States’ safety responsibilities in a comprehensive manner, yet following a basic architecture proposed by the Annexes to the Convention on International Civil Aviation. The critical elements that a State’s safety oversight function must monitor have been defined, and USOAP audits verify the status of implementation of elements and functions, on a compliance/non-compliance basis. It is envisioned that once the notion of the SSP has achieved maturity and is deployed throughout States, USOAP will audit the SSP in a holistic manner, rather than the elements of the safety oversight function, through an approach based on a continuous monitoring concept.
The notion of the SSP also aims at a third and medium-term objective: the transition from a predominantly prescriptive regulatory environment to an integrated regulatory environment combining prescriptive and performance- based regulatory approaches. In this transition, the notion of ALoS of an SSP and of the safety performance of an SMS, building upon the safety assurance component of both an SSP and an SMS and discussed later in this chapter, is fundamental. This transition, however, must start by clearly establishing the role of the State’s safety oversight function within the SSP, and their mutual relationship. A brief discussion follows.
A State’s safety oversight function is part of an SSP and a fundamental component of its safety assurance component. The objectives of the State’s safety oversight function, as traditionally practised, are satisfied through administrative controls (inspections, audits and surveys) carried out by civil aviation authorities regularly, and do not necessarily constitute safety risk controls, as discussed in Chapter 5 and in Section 6.8. The SSP is necessary to turn the outcomes of safety oversight into safety risk controls. For example, a State’s safety oversight function presently verifies that a State has a system of regulations, but neither requires a safety risk analysis to produce such regulations, nor monitors the effectiveness of regulations as safety risk controls. The SSP, on the other hand, considers regulations as safety risk controls and requires, through its safety risk management component, that the process of rulemaking be done using principles of safety risk management (identify hazards, assess the safety risks of the consequences of the hazards, and develop regulations that provide acceptable mitigation/control of the consequences of the hazards). In a second stage, the SSP monitors, through its safety assurance component, the effectiveness and efficiency of regulations as safety risk controls.
Clear articulation of the difference between regulations as administrative controls and regulations as safety risk controls underlies the shift from prescriptive regulation to performance-based regulation. The SSP, as proposed in the framework discussed in Chapter 11, is a first enabling step in such a shift. Furthermore, the integration into the SSP, as appropriate, of the principles underlying the role of the critical elements of a State’s safety oversight function will yield a more robust and effective SSP.
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