Officials on the user board for Portland’s (Ore.) Bureau of Emergency Communications (BOEC) are reviewing a list of 436 complaints about the agency’s computer-aided dispatch (CAD) software that were collected in its first month of operation, including 76 considered “severe” or “high” priority. The new system by Versaterm was activated on April 17th and cost $14.5 million. It helps dispatchers handle incident and track units for 12 different agencies, including Portland police and fire. The list of complaints covers comm center operations, dispatcher training, the CAD software itself, and the mobile data system. It classifies 130 of the complaints as fixed, and categorizes the rest as either a software issue, configuration problem, related to dispatcher training, or related to a technology issue. The cause of at least 80 issues are still being identified, the report notes. Another 130 complaints were classified as being the way the system is supposed to work. Read more about the situation here.
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BOEC dispatches for 9 agencies–5 police and 4 fire: Police: Portland, Gresham, Fairview, Troutdale, Multnomah Sheriff. Fire: Portland, Gresham, Corbett (rural), Sauvie Island (rural).
Also, the problems aren’t that bad. Check earlier articles–what left out of this most recent one rehashing the same complaints from a month ago is that the initial complaints stem from higher maintenance fees that the smaller agencies are having to pay.
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