Austroads project NT1803, Development of Product Acceptance Techniques for Road Network Devices (Austroads 2015a), developed a national harmonised Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) product type approval process. The current NS2049 project and report develops a detailed governance framework for operationalising the national ITS product approval process. Two working papers and various workshops have been delivered to review both domestic and international best practice case studies and to gain consensus amongst Australian state road agencies (SRAs) on the most suitable operational model and governance. To ensure consistency, the NS2049 working group decided to use the term national ITS product type approval process (NIPTAP) in this report to replace the product acceptance process used in Austroads (2015a). It was also suggested that once the NIPTAP is established, the existing jurisdictional type approval processes could be renamed as ‘product acceptance’ or similar, in order to avoid confusion. In the NIPTAP governance framework, a national ITS type approval committee (NITAC) would be established to keep the SRAs’ authority to review the testing reports and to approve or accept the final results. A single nationwide type approval certificate with acceptance conditions would be issued for successful ITS products. The NIPTAP would be administrated from a central office in ARRB or Austroads, with the product assessment outsourced to prequalified third parties. The type approval process workflow and results would be managed and maintained through a web register, which would also provide centralised access management and an information sharing mechanism for both SRAs and industry stakeholders. The harmonisation of ITS specifications is currently investigated under the NS2022 project. It is recommended that Austroads review and integrate learnings from both NS2049 and NS2022, and in particular, consider managing the governance and development of the harmonised ITS specifications by the same web register. A template of the harmonised key performance indicators (KPIs) of candidate ITS products is also required before the implementation of the national process. It is recommended that the governance framework developed in the report be endorsed by all Australian SRAs, and Austroads to provide further funding for industry consultations, establishment of the initial NITAC, and development of a standard KPI template and a pilot web register. (Author/publisher)
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