Electronic CV

The IAFTP electronicCV (eCV)

It has long been recognized that there should be a way to securely document every pilot’s identity, training, experience, and certifications— a pilot’s personal curriculum vitae. It simply has never happened. However, if growth projections for air transport over the next 20 years are correct, the need for such a pilot CV will become more critical as employers turn increasingly to the worldwide pool of applicant pilots in order to achieve their staffing goals.

That thought causes many airline recruiters concern because assessing a candidate pilot’s background and experience even today is incredibly challenging. Contacting previous employers is problematic because many candidates have flown for operators based around the globe. Even when reached, the information former employers might provide is often of limited help, especially when mergers and bankruptcies make the retrieval of individual records a time consuming, costly, or even impossible effort.

Introducing a pilot’s CV

A personal electronic CV (curriculum vitae), myPilot/eCV, will be offered as a benefit to all IAFTP individual members as part of their annual membership. It will be the property of the individual, not an organization. IAFTP will issue and maintain the credential but the personal information available either on the card or through a secure Internet link shall only be accessible with the physical authorization of the individual, facilitated by the credential’s unique security features. If desired, the credential can also be issued in an ID badge format, myPilot/ID, customized for a training provider’s local access control requirements while still retaining its personal electronic CV capability. Most importantly, all information contained in this personal training and experience record will be validated by a third party.

How myPilot/eCV will work

This vision starts at the threshold every pilot must cross no matter where he or she lives – the decision to learn to fly. We’ll call our fledgling pilot, Jean.

Jean goes to a flight training facility and makes application for a student pilot license. This requires positive verification of identity and enrolling a personal biometric for identification purposes. The entire process is accomplished at a standard personal computer workstation securely linked to the IAFTP personal pilot training records database, myPilot/RECORDS.

Jean’s electronicCV is issued either in a horizontal card or hanging badge format based upon the security preferences of the flight training provider. Jean now has a personal electronic document that not only provides positive identification, but can also record key training, proficiency, and experience milestones – specific training activities, flight checks, type and number of hours flown, medical information, ratings and certifications, employers etc.

The myPilot/RECORDS database will also interact with the IAFTP best training practices database, globalPilot/BTP, to classify any training beyond minimum licensing requirements that Jean may receive.

Each time Jean attends a course, obtains a new rating, completes a physical, takes a check-ride, Jean’s personal pilot credential is updated. This process creates a chronological, unalterable personal record of Jean’s entire flying career.

Let’s examine how this compares to today’s process. First, much of this information is already being stored somewhere. It simply is not stored in a convenient, usable form for the pilot, the employer, or regulators; nor are these data necessarily stored in one place. Even the FAA’s response to HR 5900 will not come close to meeting the record-keeping needs of our global industry.

Of course there are training providers who provide training documentation for their customers (usually operators, not individual pilots). However, in many ways, this is exactly the same situation as having your personal medical records in one doctor’s office and needing them in another doctor’s office in another city or country. How many times has each of us tried to recreate our medical history when we have changed doctors or, for that matter, tried to provide “acceptable and verifiable” documentation of our flying experience when we changed employers or training providers?

Someone might ask: “What happens if Jean’s personal pilot credential is lost or stolen?” If it’s stolen, it is worthless. The data will be encrypted, protected from unauthorized access, and made unalterable. In addition, Jean will need to positively verify identity by providing a personal biometric whenever the credential is used. Of course, the data will be securely backed up on the myPilot/RECORDS database in case of loss.

In these ways, the myPilot/eCV issued and maintained by IAFTP will be the world’s most secure and functional personal electronic CV—a true record of a pilot’s entire career.

Patent Pending

A Secure System to Collect, Authenticate, and Use Personal Data Stored on a Cloud Database

Abstract: A system for collecting, storing, authenticating, and managing personal information, such as identity data, skill data, qualification data, certification data, for individuals and/or organizations. The system surely collects identity, skill, qualification, and certification data and enables the generation of a personal identification credential that can be used to securely authenticate the identity of an individual and, thereafter, retrieve skill, qualification, certification data, and/or other personal information for the individual. The system also enables an individual with an issued personal identification credential to surely update personal information, such as skills, qualifications, and certifications data for storage in a secure cloud database system.

eCV Personal Identification Credential

The eCV system provides a method for personal identification ensuring that when data is collected, authenticated, or used, the individual’s identity can be positively verified through the use of eye-readable and/or machine-readable biometric identification features securely contained in or on a personal identification credential.

Personal identification data will be collected locally in an ICAO-compliant format and the credential produced at the Oberthur Technologies facility in Exton, Pennsylvania (USA), which is a card manufacturing super-site capable of producing 200M+ cards per year. This center is MasterCard, Visa and American Express certified and holds ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 14001:2004 certificates. The credential, itself, will be compliant with ICAO MRTD 9303d which contains the specifications for machine-readable passports, visas and ID cards (“travel documents”) used in crossing borders.

In order to ensure positive electronic authentication of the credential in office as well as mobile systems (such as desktop computers, flight simulators, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones), the eCV system will include unique authentication features developed by SecureKey Technologies. These features will facilitate the positive identification of the cardholder through biometrics and ensure that any request for access to the pilot’s personal information, either in the eCV system or on other public databases, has been initiated and approved by the individual cardholder.

PII Security

The International Association of Flight Training Professionals (IAFTP) is committed to maintaining the security, confidentiality, and integrity of the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of our members that resides in our electronic curriculum vitae (eCV) database.

IAFTP takes the following steps to secure the information we collect:

We utilize a cloud computing vendor that protects their servers with the most advanced hardware and software firewalls available, has strict limits on physical access to those servers, and provides a high level of hardware redundancy to prevent data loss and downtime.
Our website uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) for all transactions.
All users of our website are required to have strong passwords.
All users must first be logged into our website using valid credentials, and are transparently re-verified every time they attempt to access any eCV data.
Our access control system is highly granular in order to insure that each user has access to only the information necessary to accomplish their mission.
We regularly backup our data to an offsite location, and we encrypt that backup data.
We keep no printed copies of any eCV data.
On the client side of our system we strengthen online authentication with a tamper-and-copy-resistant smart card, which provides a “what you have” factor of authentication to augment the “what you know” password. This allows secure access through desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets.
We periodically test our security procedures to ensure personnel and technical compliance.
We hold our contractors and other third-party providers to the same high standards that we use to ensure the security, confidentiality, and integrity of personal information they may have access to in the course of their work completed on behalf of IAFTP.

Priority Participation

Any company (e.g. flight training organization, operator, etc.) wishing to secure a priority position for eCV system implementation may purchase a 10-year paid-in-full IAFTP corporate membership (at the current rate of US$2,500 per year). The company will also need to guarantee a minimum number of new IAFTP Individual Members (at the current rate of US$75 per pilot per year) during each of those ten years beginning with the first year of eCV issuance through the company. The annual guarantee of new members will be the average of the prior three years of student enrollments (or new hires, if operator) by the company. Should the company not have been in business for three years, the minimum annual guarantee shall be the projected enrollment (or new hires) for each year until an actual three-year average can be determined. Please Note: Under this introductory promotion, there will be no charge for any equipment required to collect an applicant’s biometric data. In addition, there will be no need to purchase special equipment or software for data input/retrieval. For more information, Contact Us and select “electronic CV” as the subject.