DHS projects aimed at communications upgrade

The Homeland Security Department is preparing to deploy initiatives in the next several months aimed at making sure state and local public-safety agencies have communications equipment that works across jurisdictions.

The department's SAFECOM program plans to release an updated list of technology for communications equipment in April and then conduct the first national survey to gauge the interoperability of the equipment, David Boyd, director of the Office for Interoperability and Compatibility, said during a press briefing Thursday.

"There isn't any single place you can go to and [find out] how interoperable is the nation," Boyd said. "There's no database to do that, and there has not, in fact, been a scientific national study to do that. The purpose of the baseline survey is to collect that data."

The survey also will gauge how local and state governments are using the SAFECOM statement of requirements version 1.0, which was issued in 2004 and lists technology that should be procured in order to build compatible systems.

Boyd said his office will survey about 37,000 agencies and issue a first report this summer.

After the survey, the program office will release a "public-safety architecture framework" for interoperability, Boyd said. The purpose is to help communities develop common technical strategies for their equipment.

The framework will give communities processes and tools for planning, assist and identify areas where agencies are not interoperable, help justify investments, and help communities identify the best existing commercial equipment.

Boyd said technology vendors should use the framework to meet the needs of safety agencies. "The technology producers need to be building things that the community not only needs but can use, and needs to work with the community to try to help address those needs," he said.

The program office also is working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology to create a compliance assessment test. "That's a way of seeing how well things really comply with the provisions of the standards that come out," Boyd said.

"At the end of the day, the most important thing we need in the near term is interoperability that will support the kind of emergencies we're running into right now," he added. "Most of that isn't really based on technology. ... At the end of the day, it's a matter of changing how we think about things. It's communities showing leadership, building collaborative plans and figuring out how they're going to do things in the future so they work."