Fully Interoperable Communications a Distant Goal

“The notion that 3 years after 2001 we could have interoperability is bizarre,” Boyd said: “Anybody who imagines that could have been accomplished in 3 years knows nothing about this subject or this field.” SAFECOM is the federal umbrella program designed to help local, tribal, state and federal public safety agencies improve public safety response through better wireless communications.

Boyd noted that decades ago, when he was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant, the military decided its communications should become interoperable. That’s a relatively small job - with 4 branches and funding overseen by a single committee in the House and Senate, he said. “I retired from the Army after a full career, a little over 12 years ago, and the Defense Dept. is now almost interoperable,” he said. The public safety community “has 60,000 agencies and every single one of these agencies is sovereign. Every chief of police sees himself as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in his community and every fire chief disagrees.”

“We need to look at some side issues that aren’t technical but do impact communications, which include the linguistic side of interoperability,” said Donald Lund, assoc. prof. at the U. of N.H.: “That includes the use of different codes, the use of different descriptors for resources. We have no standardized resource nomenclature.” For instance, almost everyone in N.H. may use the word “ambulance” while one town calls it a “rescue.”

Lund said even though responders can technically communicate they may not. Sometimes the issue is one of discipline: “People are talking over each other or stepping on each other because they don’t listen before the push the talk switch.” Response agencies also need to plan properly to make certain they don’t lose battery power. “My last concern is something I call the illusion of communications,” he said: “It’s the illusion that a message that has been transmitted has been received and understood. Frequently, yes, you get you message out, but it’s not understood.”

Agency egos and turf battles often work against interoperable communications, said William Jenkins, dir.- Homeland Security & Justice issues at GAO: “If there is not an agreement on how you're going to operate it doesn’t matter what the technology is.” Jurisdictional issues and lack of agreement loom large. “What the key problem has been and continues to be is the inability of people to put aside egos and address this on a regional basis, not on a stovepipe basis,” he said: “From our perspective that is the key fundamental barrier to be able to achieve interoperable communications. It’s not the technology so much, it’s people and processes.”

Boyd said training on new equipment is also critical. “We've got communities whose exercises amounted to putting radio systems in fields and saying, ‘Can you hear? Is it okay? The signal good?’ Not serious exercises you go through to identify things like if I call for a haz-mat team do I know what I'm going to get. Am I to get a pickup truck with 2 guys with kitty litter or am I going to get a haz-mat squad?”

“There is no silver bullet,” said Sal DiRaimo, principal engineer with the N.Y. Technology Enterprise Corp.: “It isn’t about the engineering. Interoperability isn’t something that’s lurking behind the next patent… or great innovation.” - Howard Buskirk