Interoperability: Didn’t Arise Overnight, Not Solved Quickly

According to an on-going study by the federal General Accounting Office (GAO), the fundamental barrier to successfully addressing the challenges of public safety interoperability has been the lack of effective, collaborative, interdisciplinary and intergovernmental planning.

In testimony before a U.S. House of Representatives committee, William Jenkins, Jr., director of the GAO’s Homeland Security and Justice Issues agency, told the Representatives that his agency doesn’t yet have recommendations, but has identified “several major challenges” that all levels of governments must address to better communicate.

The GAO is looking into public safety interoperability at the request of Tom Davis (D-Virg.), chair of the House Government Reform Committee.

Jenkins said that effectively addressing the challenges of interoperability, “requires collaboration of all first responders and all levels of government. Failure to do so risks spending funds ineffectively and creating new problems in our attempt to resolve existing ones.”

He told the committee members that interoperability problems existed for “many years” before the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks, and that the federal government has been concerned about public safety spectrum issues for over 15 years.

“The interoperability issues that the nation faces today did not arise overnight,” Jenkins said, “and they will not be successfully addressed overnight.”

The first challenge, Jenkins said, is to clearly identify and define the problem. “It is important to recognize that interoperable communications is not an end in itself,” he said, “but it is rather one component for achieving an important goal--the ability to respond effectively to and mitigate incidents that require the coordinated actions of first responders.”

The second challenge is whether and how to establish national interoperability performance goals and standards and balance them with the flexibility needed to address differences in state, regional and local needs and conditions.

And the third challenge is defining the roles of federal, state, and local governments and other entities in defining the problem, implementing any national goals and standards, and assessing alternative means of achieving those goals and standards.

“The fundamental barrier to successfully addressing these challenges has been the lack of effective, collaborative, interdisciplinary and intergovernmental planning,” Jenkins said. No one first responder group or governmental agency can successfully fix the interoperability problems that face our nation, he said. “It will require the partnership, leadership, and coordinated planning of everyone involved.”

The GAO’s work is on-going, Jenkins explains. To date, they’ve contacted state and local officials in several states, attended professional meetings, and opened discussion with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other key federal agencies.

Jenkins explained that, “It is important to recognize that interoperable communications is not merely a technological issue or an end in itself. It is rather a key means of achieving a desirable objective—the effective response to and mitigation of events or incidents that require the coordinated actions of emergency responders.”

Interoperable communications is also but one component of an effective incident command planning and operations structure, he said. “Determining the most appropriate means of achieving interoperable communications must flow from an effective planning and operations structure that identifies who is in charge and who must be able to communicate what information to whom under what circumstances.”

Defining the range of interoperability capacity needed requires identifying the types of events for which interoperable communications would be needed, the participants involved in responding to those events, and an operational definition of who is charge and who would need to communicate what types of information (e.g., voice, data, or both) with whom under what circumstances.

“These are not easy tasks,” Jenkins said, “and they require both a multi-disciplinary and multi-jurisdictional perspective.” But these are necessary tasks for assessing the current problems that exist in meeting interoperable communication needs and alternative means of achieving identified interoperable communications needs.

More importantly, Jenkins told the committee members, “Interoperability is not a static issue—it is an issue that is affected by changes in technology and the changing events and threats for which first responders must be prepared.” Thus, he said, “There is no single, long-term solution; the issue is one that must be periodically reassessed as needs and technology change.”

Evolving Definition

The issues and problems in defining “interoperability” are not static, Jenkins told the committee members. “They evolve over time in a fluid and ever-changing environment of evolving threats and events for which we need to be prepared to respond, new operational requirements, new spectrum bands for public safety use, and new technology,” he said.

Public safety officials generally recognize that interoperable communications is the ability to talk with whom they want, when they want, when authorized, but not the ability to talk with everyone all the time. However, Jenkins added, “There is no standard definition of communications interoperability. Nor is there a ‘one size fits all’ requirement for who needs to talk to whom.”

Traditionally, first responders have been considered to be fire, police and emergency medical service personnel. But the recent national security focus has expanded the number of agencies to include public health departments, hospitals and other medical providers, and offices of emergency management.

Another issue, Jenkins said, is the broad range of scenarios in which interoperable communications are required. It can include mutual-aid responses or routine day-to-day coordination between two local agencies, extended task force operations involving members of different agencies coming together to work on a common problem, or a major event that requires response from a variety of local, state, and federal agencies.

Jenkins recalled the progress of technology, and how it’s affected interoperability, including the development of trunking radio technology, and the need for broadband wireless links.

The second challenge for interoperability is establishing national goals and requirements, Jenkins said, of which there are now none. Jenkins aid the U.S. Department of Justice told him the agency is working with the federal SAFECOM project to develop a statement of requirements that should be ready for release by May 1, 2004.

He said that to guide the creation of interoperable communications, there must be an explicit and commonly understood and agreed-to blueprint, or architecture, for effectively and efficiently guiding modernization efforts.

“There is no single ‘silver bullet’ solution to interoperability needs,” Jenkins said. “Our ongoing work indicates that communications interoperability problems facing any given locality or state tend to be situation specific, with no universally applicable solution.”

He pointed to a White Paper prepared by the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO), and the final report of the PSWAC, both which pointed out the varying requirements of local agencies.

Evolving Roles

“The federal role in addressing the interoperability of public safety wireless communications continues to evolve,” Jenkins testified. He said that SAFECOM has developed guidance for federal grants supporting public safety communications and interoperability, designed to provide an outline of who is eligible for the grants, purposes for which grant funds can be used and eligibility specifications for applicants.

Besides SAFECOM, there are other federal programs tackling some part of interoperability, including the DOJ’s AGILE program, which is studying interoperability options and advising state and local law enforcement, fire fighters, and emergency technicians.

Likewise, the role that state and local governments in interoperability is evolving. Jenkins said their role is being defined as they address problems they recognize in their communications systems and by the FCC and the NTIA.

He noted programs in Missouri, Florida and Washington state designed to include all levels of government on the issues of interoperability. He also noted a multi-state program involving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio and Michigan that is promoting interstate communications.

Federal actions to support state efforts on wireless interoperability issues are still evolving. On the one hand, Jenkins said, the PSWN program has supported state efforts to improve multistate and individual statewide planning and coordination through a number of projects that emphasize a regional approach. However, he said, two agencies of the federal government–the FCC and the NTIA–set rules and regulations for state and local governments and federal government wireless systems respectively.

Jenkins concluded that the fundamental barrier to successful interoperability is the absence of effective coordinated planning and collaboration. “Police and fire departments often have different concepts and doctrines on how to operate an incident command post and use interoperable communications,” he told the Congressional committee. Similarly, first responders may use different terminology to describe the same thing, which can lead to communications problems even where the participating public safety agencies share common communications equipment and spectrum.

“No one first responder group, jurisdiction, or level of government can successfully address the challenges posed by the current state of interoperable communications,” Jenkins said. “Effectively addressing these challenges requires the partnership, leadership, and collaboration of all first responder disciplines, jurisdictions, and levels of government—local, state, federal, and tribal.

“In the absence of that partnership and collaboration, we risk spending funds ineffectively and creating new problems in our attempt to resolve existing ones.”

Appeared November 2003, DISPATCH Monthly Magazine / www.911Dispatch.com