PER-003: David Okafor — Jurisdictional Administrator

Andi Lamprecht ·2026-05-11· 9 min read· Draft

Draft UERQ-PLANS-60 Authority Application

“It’s not enough to tell me where you’re flying; you have to prove who you are and that you have a valid reason to be in my airspace. My job is to set the digital gate so only verified operators get through.”

1. Identity

2. Professional Context

Responsibilities

• Defines and maintains the jurisdictional rulebook: the set of automated and manual approval conditions that govern which flights are authorized in the county’s airspace.
• Coordinates with neighboring jurisdictions on boundary overlaps, precedence disputes, and shared airspace governance.
• Investigates airspace incidents and policy violations; adjusts rules based on findings.
• Represents the county in interagency UAS governance meetings with state DOT, FAA regional office, and airport operators.

Team & Reporting

• Reports to the County Director of Transportation.
• Direct reports: 2 Rule Analysts (define and test rules), 1 GIS Specialist (manage jurisdiction boundary data), 1 Legal Liaison (ensure rules align with local ordinances).
• Coordinates regularly with airport authority counterparts, law enforcement aviation units, and the state’s UAS integration office.

Operational Environment

• Primary: Government office with dual-monitor workstation. Standard county IT infrastructure.
• Secondary: County Emergency Operations Center (EOC) during declared emergencies or major events requiring TFR coordination.
• Occasional remote access from home for after-hours incident response, using county-issued laptop with VPN.

Technical Proficiency

• Comfortable with web-based applications, GIS viewers, and map-based interfaces.
• Cannot write code or define rules in a query language: expects a guided, visual rule-building interface.
• Familiar with GeoJSON as a concept but relies on the GIS Specialist for boundary data preparation.
• Uses email, Slack, and county document management systems daily.
• Has used LAANC and FAA DroneZone in a review/coordination capacity.

Decision Authority

• Can independently create, modify, and activate standing approval and denial rules for routine operational categories.
• Must escalate to County Director for: new blanket denials affecting emergency services and changes to jurisdiction boundary definitions.
• Cannot override other authority rules: can only add supplemental restrictions that pertain to his authority’s policies.

Regulatory Context

• County operates under delegated authority from the state DOT, which holds the root authority in the ATOMx tenant.
• The county requires compliance with local privacy ordinance (no surveillance flights over residential areas without permit).
• Subject to state audit of authorization decisions annually.

3. Goals

Life Goals

• Be recognized as the architect of a drone governance model that other jurisdictions adopt as a template.
• Advance to a state-level UAS policy leadership role within five years.
• Build a reputation for balancing innovation enablement with public safety: not being seen as either a rubber stamp or a blocker.

Experience Goals

• Feel confident that the rules he defines are actually being enforced by the system — not just documented.
• Feel in control of his jurisdiction without needing to review every individual request manually.
• Not be surprised by flights operating in his airspace that somehow bypassed his rules.
• Find the rule-creation process logical, testable, and reversible — not like programming or guessing.

End Goals

• Define and publish a complete set of airspace rules for his jurisdiction within one business day of receiving a policy directive.
• Verify that a new rule works correctly by testing it against sample scenarios before activating it in production.
• Know immediately when a rule conflict is detected with an overlapping jurisdiction’s rules.
• Generate a monthly governance report showing all authorizations processed, approval/denial rates by reason category, and average processing time.

4. Frustrations & Pain Points

Current Pain Points

• No standardized digital identity format to request from operators: every verification request requires a different manual process, making it impossible to write a universal verification rule.
• Lack of a testable rule environment: when he changes a rule, he has no way to preview how it would have affected last month’s requests before going live.
• Jurisdiction boundary management is manual and error-prone: boundary data lives in GIS shapefiles emailed between offices, with no version control or conflict detection.
• Cannot see what overlapping jurisdictions have configured: discovers overlaps and conflicts only when operators complain about contradictory decisions.

Workarounds

• Maintains a personal spreadsheet mapping operator organizations to their known verification status because the current system has no attribute-based filtering.
• Calls overlapping jurisdiction counterparts by phone when boundary questions arise: there is no system-supported coordination.
• Has created an informal “pre-approved operators” list that his analysts reference during manual review, because the system doesn’t support standing approvals.
• Asks his GIS Specialist to manually check each new boundary definition against existing boundaries using desktop GIS software before uploading.

Unmet Needs

• A self-service rule-building interface that lets him define conditions visually, test them against historical data, and activate them with confidence.
• Automated jurisdiction overlap conflict detection and a structured resolution workflow with other authorities.
• Visibility into what rules other jurisdictions have configured (with appropriate access controls) to enable proactive coordination.
• A rule versioning and rollback capability so he can revert a misconfigured rule without emergency intervention.

5. Safety & Operational Context

Safety-Critical Decisions

• Defining blanket denial zones around sensitive facilities (military installations, critical infrastructure). An incorrect boundary could leave a gap in protection or block legitimate emergency access. [UERQ-SYS-1595]
• Suspending authorization processing for a date range during major events. If done incorrectly, legitimate emergency services flights (high priority) get blocked. [UERQ-SYS-1420]
• Configuring the conflict resolution strategy for multi-authority overlaps: most-restrictive-wins vs. super-authority tiebreaker has direct safety implications for disputed airspace. [UERQ-SYS-1597, UERQ-SYS-1598, UERQ-SYS-1599]
• Delegating authority to sub-authorities: an improperly scoped delegation could grant approval authority to an entity lacking the competence or jurisdiction to exercise it. [UERQ-SYS-1454, UERQ-SYS-1584]

Time Pressure

Information Needs During Stress

Failure Tolerance

• System outage during active rules: David needs to know whether his rules are still being enforced. Per UERQ-SYS-1531 (US mode), previously approved authorizations remain valid during outage. David needs to understand and trust this behavior.
• Rules Engine degradation: If the Rules Engine cannot evaluate rules, the FAS must fail closed [UERQ-SYS-1514]: David needs confirmation that no flights are being approved without rule evaluation.

Consequence of Error

Training & Certification

• No FAA pilot certificate required (David is not an operator).
• County requires completion of ATOMx Authority Administrator certification course before independent rule creation.
• Annual recurrency training on emergency airspace management procedures.
• Familiar with LAANC concepts, FAA UAS facility maps, and airspace classification.
• Expects the system to provide contextual help and rule validation guidance: David is a policy expert, not a software expert.

6. Key Scenarios

Scenarios are documented as individual pages under the Key Scenarios section.

7. System Interaction Profile

Session Pattern

Data Volume

• Jurisdiction covers approximately 1,200 square miles with ~150 active rules.
• Manages boundary data for 45 defined zones (airport proximity, military, critical infrastructure, residential privacy).
• Needs access to 365 days of historical authorization data for trend analysis and rule effectiveness evaluation.

Notification Needs

Collaboration Needs

• Needs to coordinate with neighboring jurisdiction counterparts on boundary disputes (currently out-of-band; system should support visibility, not mediation).
• Needs to delegate review tasks to his Rule Analysts and track their decisions.
• Needs to escalate unresolvable conflicts to the state DOT root authority.
• Needs to share jurisdiction status (active restrictions, emergency rules) with the county EOC during incidents.
• Does NOT interact with operators directly through the system.

8. Traceability

9. Revision History