From left: Participants Chris Terry, Daniel Veloce and Jame Wadsworth.

“What’s your weakest link? What is keeping you awake at night?” asked PTI Executive Director Alan R. Shark of participants in the APCO International Technology Roundtable in Washington, D.C., on May 19. Three answers echoed around the room: people, training and security.

Because the focus in most comm centers is on doing more with less these days and “you can’t cut 10% of the services you provide, the only way to cut 10% of the budget is through automation,” said Chris Terry, systems administrator for Lincoln County (W.Va.) 9-1-1 Communications.

“Data and knowledge are not the same thing,” said Shark, who facilitated the event. “We collect data; we catalog data. Knowledge is based on experience, often trapped inside someone’s head and lost when they leave an organization.”

According to Dorothy Spears-Dean, public safety communications coordinator at Virginia Information Technologies Agency, Chester, Va.,  that puts the focus squarely on the need for recruitment and retention strategies, and training.

“What scares me to death is opening up our network to viruses,” said James Wadsworth, manager of the Fairfax County (Va.) Radio Services Center.

From left: Participant Kim Scovill, Elwalid Sidahmed, Robert Pavlak, Bob Gojanovich of TCS and Steve Wisely of APCO International

“We need to worry about security,” said Terry. “There are plenty of people out there who will bring you down just for fun. … The firewall has to be ironclad.”

Sponsored by TCS and Harris RF, the Roundtable brought together participants from all around the D.C. area. Presentations from TCS’s Robert K. Gojanovich, ENP, on Next Generation 9-1-1 and Chris Sarantos on Harris’s P25 conventional, multisite and simulcast solutions kicked off the event. Shark followed up with a presentation on seven trends that are affecting public safety through technology. The participants then drove the discussion to the areas most important to their own agencies.

“IP technology is going to totally revolutionize our budget cycle,” said Wadsworth. The typical computer replacement cycle of three years isn’t realistic, he said, when the computers are running 24/7 and never turned off.

Conversation continued during the breaks and lunch. From left: Participants Chris Terry, Daniel Veloce and Jame Wadsworth.

Managing expectations—both of the public and an agency’s employees—was another topic for discussion. “The expectation is that any failure will be fixed immediately,” said Wadsworth. Several participants said how unrealistic that expectation is given travel distances to remote towers and antenna sites and the reliance on distant companies for replacement parts.

APCO doesn’t select the topics covered at Technology Roundtables. Participants discuss what’s most important to them at the time, and share best practices with their peers. How agencies anticipate incorporating texting and video into their activities—and pay for it—was another hot topic in last week’s discussion, as were the D Block, the deployment of a National Public Safety Broadband Network, IT governance, social media and energy efficiency.

About the Author
Keri Losavio is the editor of Public Safety Communications, the official magazine of APCO International Inc. Contact her via e-mail.