FAA accelerates application process

Recent events have forced the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA, faa.gov) to search for qualified candidates to work as air marshals. And because the FAA wants to find, screen and hire marshals as quickly as possible, it has launched an automated solution for the application process that consists of software from Cardiff, Adobe and Oracle, according to a recent news release from Cardiff Software.

To meet security deadlines and speed the processing of applications, FAA decision makers decided to implement advanced forms processing technology. Cardiff reports that it worked with the FAA to fine-tune the solution, which will be capable of processing more than 4,000 applications or 48,000 pages per day. Before converting to the online application process in mid-November, the FAA received about 81,000 paper applications totaling 973,000 pages.

“We needed to balance the urgency of our security concerns with the cost of processing tens of thousands of paper applications,” says Susan Bounds, manager of the FAA’s Aviation Careers Division. “Our system had to make it easy to apply, yet make it possible to collect the pages of personal information required to process applications.”

Prospective air marshals can access and print an Adobe PDF application at jobs.faa.gov, according to Cardiff. Once completed, the 12-page application is mailed to the Aviation Careers Division at an FAA center in Oklahoma. Data on all processed applications is said to seamlessly pass to an Oracle database within the FAA, where it is available immediately to officials who do the hiring.

“We applaud the FAA on its ability to apply know-how and technology to quickly respond to our country’s needs and to get its mission accomplished,” says Dennis Clerke, co-founder, CEO and president of Cardiff Software