The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) regulates all aspects of civil aviation in South Africa. We license pilots, flight engineers, maintenance engineers, and air traffic controllers. We approve the operation of airports as well as air traffic and navigation services, and look after the country's aviation security - not by doing it but by ensuring that the necessary standards are in place, and are audited by all the security organisations.

We're responsible for the airspace infrastructure within the country, and for issuing aircraft operator certificates. We also approve maintenance organizations and all aviation training schools. We have a total staff complement of about 410.

Two years ago the CAA had a problem. We were first audited by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (IC AO), and then by the American Federal Aviation Authority (FAA). The CAA had been preparing for the IC AO audit for about 18 months and didn't do too badly compared to many other countries.

However, the FAA audit was a pass-fail audit and South Africa was given 45 days to rectify a large number of deficiencies. If it failed to do so, if would be downgraded to Category 2 status, which meant that South African Airways operations in the United States would be frozen; it would not be allowed to change its schedules, aircraft, or routing. More importantly it would have lost the ability to conduct its code share with United Airlines, which is vital to the success of the Northern American operation. Running up to 2010, that would have been a serious setback.

The Minister of Transport, Jeff Radebe, realised that something had to be done, and put together a task team which examined the various deficiencies identified in the course of the audit. In December 2007 I was appointed to the combined position of commissioner and chief executive officer, previously held by two separate individuals, with the mandate to get us through the FAA re-audit which would take place on 19 December. That gave me nine days to finalise the preparations.

We passed the re-audit against quite long odds.

But the FAA also stated that it would return in six months to check whether we had made good on our promises. In July 2008 we passed a full re-audit with flying colours. To achieve this we had to adopt a new approach. We had to identify our shortcomings, and change our mindset.

The CAA is a Schedule 3 entity in terms of the Public Finance Management Act, and falls under the Department of Transport. Many staff members who came from the old Department of Transport - and even those appointed later - had a civil service mentality, which hampered efforts to create a more effective organisation.

So my first task was to convince senior staff to become proactive, and lead by example. I did that by showing them that it was easier to help solve the industry's problems rather than just saying no.

An example of this is dealing with applications for exemptions from certain regulations. Now we try to work out ways of ensuring safety in other ways instead of dogmatically turning down the applications.

Industry likes this, partly because it saves them money, and people in the CAA have realised that this is better than simply saying no. This enthusiasm has spread throughout the organisation and we encourage it to this day.

In the course of revising our bureaucratic approach, an external organisation systematically mapped all our business processes, flow-charted them properly, analysed them, and ensured that we had systems in place that would enable us to cut down on bureaucratic procedures and improve our efficiency.

Another crucial factor was to stamp out corruption, and we did this by not accepting any hint of corruption whatsoever. Wherever we found it, we called in the police. We now work very closely with the Commercial Crimes Unit, and we have prosecuted a number of people both within and outside the organisation. In the process, we've sent out a very clear message.

We've done a lot to equip our staff for the change in mindset. We've sent people, including management, on coaching courses on how to deal with the public. This had an immediate effect. Suddenly our staff knew how to be friendly, deflect anger and complaints, and deal with the problems that the industry and the public were highlighting. We had a very strong customer service department; it just wasn't empowered to deal with problems at the rockface.

And so we empowered the senior manager of that section to handle problems, deal directly with general managers, and ensure that problems were dealt with directly. This meant devolving some authority.

Devolving authority creates risks. We go back and reinforce the boundaries from time to time, so that members of staff know where their authority begins and ends, so that they don't expose us to liability and litigation.

Organisations typically spend about three per cent of their personnel budgets on training. We spend 6,5 per cent, not only because we are a very technical organisation but because we believe that, given the right training, people become empowered, and know how to deal with particular problems.

Previously, our inspectors would ask inappropriate questions because they hadn't been properly coached about interpreting and enforcing our regulations.

Industry complained that inspectors didn't know what they were doing, which harmed our credibility.

So we took everybody back in and enrolled the help of international experts, including retired pilots, technicians and engineers. We taught them how to be inspectors, and put them into the field with the youngsters to create a mentoring situation. We also contracted international experts to assist us in areas in which we were deficient, in developing technical materials, approving regulations, on-the-job training, and establishing an effective enforcement team.

I'm very happy to say that the fatal accident rate in general aviation so far this year is 50 per cent lower than last year. We are currently one of the most compliant countries in the world, probably in the top 10 out of 200. And we still have some way to go.

Capt Colin Jordaan is Commissioner of civil aviation and CEO, Civil Aviation Authority

This is an extract from the Centre for Development and Enterprise publication: "South Africa's Public Service: Learning from success", CDE Round Table, Number 13, November 2009. The full report held on the seminar held in September 2009 can be accessed here (PDF).

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