^{Date Published: 09 Mar 2011 2:42pm}

Since FY2009-2010, the Attorney-General’s Department has undertaken the CAP project; To develop an Australian Government standard for the Common Alerting Protocol and have recently announced positive progress made. In their recent brief, AGD have outlined the current aim to finalise the development of CAP-AP requirements in order to move forward to the next key milestone in April to develop the CAP-AP standards document. Matthew Smith (NSWRFS) has been providing AFAC representation on the consultation group of the Common Alerting Protocol and continues to uphold AFAC standards in the process.

Since FY2009-2010, the Attorney-General’s Department has undertaken the CAP project; To develop an Australian Government standard for the Common Alerting Protocol and have recently announced positive progress made. In their recent brief, AGD have outlined the current aim to finalise the development of CAP-AP requirements in order to move forward to the next key milestone in April to develop the CAP-AP standards document. Matthew Smith (NSWRFS) has been providing AFAC representation on the consultation group of the Common Alerting Protocol and continues to uphold AFAC standards in the process.

Purpose of the CAP-AP Standard

The purpose of developing the CAP-AP standard is to facilitate the adoption of the international Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) standard within Australia.

What is CAP

The CAP is an open data standard that is developed and maintained by OASIS, a USA-based open standards organisation. CAP is a simple content standard that facilitates the construction and exchange of all-hazard emergency alert and warning messages between various alerting technologies, systems and networks. CAP enables a single warning message to be prepared for dissemination simultaneously over a wide variety of warning systems that understand and can process CAP-formatted messages.

Why is CAP-AP necessary?

There is currently no common CAP standard applying within the Australian environment. There are earlier versions of CAP in use within various Australian jurisdictions and Commonwealth agencies that are responsible for distributing emergency warning messages to the Australian community; however, these existing implementations are independent of the common national approach that is being proposed through the introduction of the CAP-AP standard.

Benefits of CAP-AP

CAP-AP will provide various benefits to Australia:

• Consolidation of disparate uses within Australia of earlier versions of the OASIS CAP.

• Provide an endorsed Government standard to jurisdictions and government Agencies that will guide future implementations of CAP during upgrades to alert and warning system technologies.

• Establishes a requirement upon future users of CAP-AP in Australia to implement a consistent standard of CAP terminology and message structure.

• Provides a single focal point for all jurisdictions and government agencies to jointly development future versions of the CAP-AP standard, and to contribute Australian issues to the revision of the international CAP standard.

• Provides a common standard and interoperability matrix that all Australian jurisdictions can utilise when interoperating with regional neighbours.

We wish the AGD and committees involved best wishes in the completion of the next vital stage of this project!