An important initiative of the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator in 2018 is the delivery of the ONRSR Portal. The portal is a secure digital channel that, in time, will facilitate the easy and reliable online exchange of all accreditation, regulatory activity and regulatory reporting data between ONRSR and all regulated parties.

The portal will complement ONRSR’s face-to-face interactions with rail transport operators. Its development represents a step change in the way our organisations will exchange and access information when working together to ensure both the industry and the Australian public are afforded all the benefits of Rail Safety National Law.

To ensure we deliver a product of the highest quality the portal is being developed in phases:

• Phase 1 commenced with the ONRSR Portal becoming available to a cross section of 20 rail transport operators from Monday, 23 April 2018 as a pilot designed to test the portal functionality for:

  • reporting of individual notifiable occurrences
  • submission of monthly returns (track and train kilometres and drug and alcohol testing numbers)
  • operator management of their users of the portal.

  By invitation from ONRSR, the number of users in this pilot will be increased to around 40 operators during June 2018. This phase of release will provide an operational feedback environment during which ONRSR will fine tune the portal prior to making it available to all accredited operators in the new financial year.

  Information for ONRSR Portal phase 1 & 2 users is available here.

• Phase 2, which is scheduled for implementation from September 2018, will see the aforementioned functionality extended to include the ability to undertake batch reporting of notifiable occurrences and submit notifications of change.
  
  During this phase all accredited operators will be progressively provided access to the ONRSR Portal.

• Phase 3+ is still being scoped but the intention is to incrementally introduce additional functionality for other areas of regulatory interaction requiring the exchange of information.

Right now the portal will not change the type of information that needs to be reported or provided to ONRSR but it will change the manner in which this information is provided. Once released to all operators, the portal will be ONRSR’s preferred method for the exchange of information.

Further information on the ONRSR Portal can be obtained by contacting Derek Heneker, Project Director, on (08) 8406 1590 or via contact@onrsr.com.au.

Last updated: 3 September 2018