Public Safety Changes Occurring Before Katrina Report, Sources Say
The response systems criticized in last week’s Senate Katrina report are already changing, according to sources around the Hill. The report of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, broadly critical of the govt.’s handling of the hurricane, said “systems on which officials relied on to support their response efforts failed,” preventing proper federal-state coordination of first responders and relief efforts. In some cases, the report said, PSAPs went down completely without routing calls to a new call center.
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The report calls for abolishing FEMA and reorganizing its resources into the National Preparedness & Response Authority (NPRA). The report calls for network enhancements like increased interoperability and improved critical infrastructure. It suggested making public safety grant money contingent on the new networks being fully interoperable under SAFECOM standards.
The purpose of DHS’s SAFECOM is to aid interoperability, said a DHS source. The group is starting “any day” a national survey on baseline interoperability that will consider 5 critical areas, he said: (1) Governance and decision making. (2) Operating procedures. (3) Technology in place. (4) Training. (5) Use of interoperability communications technology. DHS is working closely with NIST, he said, on “Project 25” radio communications standards compliance. “You can’t expect everyone in the country to just be interoperable” at once, he said.
Congress is moving on public safety needs on many fronts, not just the report, said Dana Lichtenberg, telecom aide to Rep. Gordon (D-Tenn.). The COPE franchising bill that just got out of a House committee has specific VoIP E- 911 provisions for helping PSAPs move to IP-based systems, she said. It includes language for a National 911 Implementation & Coordination Office, a small bipartisan office that would track PSAP improvements and provide a report to Congress on the status of interoperability upgrades. She said the Senate has taken the lead on pushing for the office, working through the bipartisan, bicameral 911 Caucus, whose co-chmn., Sens. Burns (R- Mont.) and Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Reps. Shimkus (R-Ill.) and Eshoo (D-Cal.), are “actually way out ahead of the Administration here.”
Lichtenberg said interoperability questions are “another motivation for moving to IP.” She said most of the criticisms of first-responder systems in the report would be resolved with an upgrade to IP systems, adding that the IP trials being conducted have 1/4-1/3 of the cost of traditional 911 networks and the benefits of automatic rerouting -- crucial when a PSAP goes down -- plus network congruence and allowing all PSAPs to communicate with one another, also important in detecting patterns that might surface in a bio-hazard attack or similar threat.
Much of the funding earmarked for public safety interop upgrades hasn’t been spent, said a Senate Budget Committee source, because public safety groups couldn’t agree until recently on strategies and standards. The source said states and localities are now in position to start using more of the $1 billion set aside in the 2005 budget for a grant program for public safety agencies to acquire, deploy, and train for the use of interoperable systems. The CJS appropriations bill also includes $2 billion in basic state grants that can be used by state and local govts. for network upgrades however they see fit.
The report is fine, but so much more can be done, said Morgan O'Brien, Cyren Call chmn., whose company filed with the FCC to free 30 MHz more spectrum for public safety use that would be held under a private trust to manage commercial leasing and use (CD April 28 p6). The U.S. needs to ask itself what features and functionality it wants to put in the hands of first responders, he said, not think about superimposing “some process” where operation protocols only apply to special events. “In the absence of a single network that meets all first responder needs,” he said, govt. starts having to “patch together” different technologies and spectrum bands. “You're making big compromises if you go that way.”