NRIC Committee Pushes More Use of Data for Emergency Communications

Brown, chmn. of an NRIC focus group on future emergency communications, told the council highly useful data generally are kept “in walled gardens,” not shared for security reasons. Data networks used by banks, retailers and others could be extremely useful to police if there were a way to connect securely to them, she said. Law enforcement could work more effectively and safely if officers had access to data recorded by security cameras before responding to a bank robbery, she said. Were emergency responders more data savvy, a civilian could to take a cellphone picture of someone stealing a car and send it to the emergency response center, she said.

“Standards are very important to where we think this is going,” Brown said, outlining a report by her focus group. To assure secure interoperability with other data networks “there has to be a system in place with policies and protocols,” she said. Responders should have secure, redundant IP networks, akin to what banks use to send data worldwide, Brown said. “That’s a huge issue… We don’t propose building more silos. We need to beef up security [but also] think about broadband connections.”

The biggest barrier to such data networks, Brown said: “There’s no one in charge.” This is the first time public safety groups have been asked about this matter, “so we worked very hard to give you our best ideas,” she said. She said additional barriers include: (1) The “stovepipe tradition” of separate treatment for communications technologies and networks. (2) “Lack of focus on data” by public service officials who “think radio is enough.” (3) Lack of sharing among public and private networks. (4) No funding earmarked for such networks.

Also needed to improve emergency responses, Brown said, are more spectrum, “including large contiguous chunks,” intensive standards development and exploration of how new technologies can fit in. “While VoIP has been a royal pain for 911 [personnel], it could be used well for emergency situations and we need to explore that,” she said.

NRIC Chmn. Timothy Donahue, who’s Sprint Nextel CEO, asked Brown how emergency responders view collaborating with commercial carriers or using private dedicated networks to gain data connectivity. Brown said both should be considered, particularly since redundancy is important. Some public safety entities use commercial carriers because they can’t afford to build private networks, she said. On the other hand, “there still are a lot of things we need to be careful about” in setting up a data network, Brown said.

NRIC is an FCC advisory body composed of industry leaders. The council heard reports from focus groups working on recommended “best practices” for emergency communications. Bob Oenning, a public safety official in Wash. state, said public safety organizations should be included in future NRIC activities. “We like being here. We're considering doing our own best practices for public safety” because the NRIC process appears workable, he said.

NRIC members also heard a follow-up report from Bill Hancock, chief security officer for Savvis Communications, who chaired a focus group developing best practices to deal with cyber security concerns of communications businesses. Hancock said cyber security topics to be studied next should include VoIP, wireless and messaging security. “Security people are addicted to messaging, which is very important to use but very insecure,” Hancock said. He said he liked VoIP but “when it fails you can’t call for help… VoIP is an application. The security’s radically different. Trying to get a firewall to sort it out is not a trivial exercise.” Among concerns cited by his focus group: (1) Funding. (2) Hesitancy of companies to document best practices. Firms prefer confidentiality because they fear revealing their cyber security plans could aid “bad guys,” he said.