[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
PUBLIC SAFETY INTEROPERABILITY: LOOK WHO'S TALKING NOW
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,
EMERGING THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 20, 2004
__________
Serial No. 108-257
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
98-118 WASHINGTON : 2005
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan Maryland
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio Columbia
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas JIM COOPER, Tennessee
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio ------
KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
(Independent)
Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director
David Marin, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel
Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International
Relations
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
DAN BURTON, Indiana DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio TOM LANTOS, California
RON LEWIS, Kentucky BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Maryland
KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
DIANE E. WATSON, California
Ex Officio
TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Lawrence J. Halloran, Staff Director and Counsel
Robert A. Briggs, Clerk
Andrew Su, Minority Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on July 20, 2004.................................... 1
Statement of:
Jenkins, William O., Jr., Director, Homeland Security and
Justice Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office;
David G. Boyd, Director, SAFECOM Program Office, Science
and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland
Security; John B. Muleta, esq., Chief, Wireless
Telecommunications Bureau, Federal Communications
Commission; Stephen T. Devine, chairperson, Missouri State
Interoperability Executive Committee, patrol frequency
coordinator, communications division, Missouri State
Highway Patrol General Headquarters; and Glen S. Nash,
senior telecommunications engineer, State of California,
Department of General Services............................. 10
Thomas, Hanford C., Director, statewide wireless network
project, New York State Office for Technology; William J.
Gardner, supervisor, Suffolk County Police Department,
Technical Services Section, Suffolk County, Long Island,
NY; and Professor Glenn P. Corbett, John Jay College of
Criminal Justice........................................... 110
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Boyd, David G., Director, SAFECOM Program Office, Science and
Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security,
prepared statement of...................................... 44
Corbett, Professor Glenn P.m, John Jay College of Criminal
Justice, prepared statement of............................. 143
Devine, Stephen T., chairperson, Missouri State
Interoperability Executive Committee, patrol frequency
coordinator, communications division, Missouri State
Highway Patrol General Headquarters, prepared statement of. 77
Gardner, William J., supervisor, Suffolk County Police
Department, Technical Services Section, Suffolk County,
Long Island, NY, prepared statement of..................... 135
Jenkins, William O., Jr., Director, Homeland Security and
Justice Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office,
prepared statement of...................................... 13
Kucinich, Hon. Dennis J., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Ohio, prepared statement of................... 153
Muleta, John B., esq., Chief, Wireless Telecommunications
Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, prepared
statement of............................................... 60
Nash, Glen S., senior telecommunications engineer, State of
California, Department of General Services, prepared
statement of............................................... 86
Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Connecticut, prepared statement of............ 3
Thomas, Hanford C., Director, statewide wireless network
project, New York State Office for Technology, prepared
statement of............................................... 114
PUBLIC SAFETY INTEROPERABILITY: LOOK WHO'S TALKING NOW
----------
TUESDAY, JULY 20, 2004
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats
and International Relations,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 11 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher
Shays (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Shays, Kucinich, Turner, Maloney,
Ruppersberger, Tierney, and Watson.
Staff present: Lawrence Halloran, staff director and
counsel; R. Nicholas Palarino, senior policy advisor; Robert A.
Briggs, clerk; Grace Washbourne, full committee professional
staff member; Andrew Su, minority professional staff member;
and Cecelia Morton, minority office manager.
Mr. Shays. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on
National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations
hearing entitled, ``Public Safety Interoperability: Look Who's
Talking Now,'' is called to order.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 exposed
dangerous gaps and failures in essential communication systems.
Cell phone networks collapsed. First responders using
incompatible radios could not relay vital information. The New
York Stock Exchange shut down, but the Federal Reserve System
and the Nation's banking network continued to operate.
Why? Because standardization, technical interconnectivity
and redundancy at banks protected that critical communication
infrastructure. Almost 3 years later, the critical
telecommunications networks first responders bank on every day
to save lives remain fragmented and vulnerable. Despite
significant expenditures and some progress, public safety and
emergency response communications still lack the bandwidth and
connectivity needed to sustain essential capabilities in a
major crisis.
So today we revisit the status of Federal efforts to
improve first responder interoperability. As we will hear in
testimony, forging links between more than 44,000 State and
local agencies and over 100 Federal programs and offices poses
daunting challenges. The lack of interoperability accurately
reflects a lack of intergovernmental consensus on the urgency,
feasibility and affordability of communication upgrades.
Uncoordinated planning and funding cycles seem to keep the
consensus beyond reach. Disjointed Federal grant programs do
little to guide State and local programs toward effective short
or long term solutions, and the push for interoperability
further complicates the already intense competition between
public and commercial users for choice radio frequency spectrum
bands.
A recent decision by the Federal Communications Commission
to clear interference from the 800 megahertz public safety
bands should help improve the performance of critical systems.
But crowded spectrum is only one aspect of the problem. Another
serious impediment is the lack of standardized information on
the capabilities of current systems. Without broadly accepted
technology and performance standards against which to measure
progress, it is difficult to determine where we are, and all
but impossible to know if we're getting anywhere.
After our hearing on these issues last November, we asked
the Government Accountability Office, newly named but still
GAO, to examine current Federal efforts to foster
interoperability. The report issued today finds
intergovernmental corroboration lacking and calls for
standards, benchmarks and funding discipline to focus the
currently rudderless process.
All the technical and regulatory jargon should not be
allowed to obscure the central fact that lives are at stake.
Selfless work on these issues by Monica Gabrielle, Sally
Regenhard, Beverly Eckert, Mary Fetchet and so many other
September 11 family members reminds us of our solemn obligation
to speak with one urgent voice to avoid future tragedies.
We appreciate the time, expertise and dedication of all our
witnesses who bring to us a very important discussion, and we
look forward to each and every one of their testimony.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8118.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8118.002
Mr. Shays. At this time, the Chair would recognize the
gentlelady, the very effective lady from New York, Carolyn
Maloney.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you very much, Chairman Shays, and for
your continued work on public safety and interoperability
specifically. Your commitment to our Nation's first responders
is evident, not only by the number of hearings, the report you
requested on this subject, but also the legislation that you
sponsored with me in May, the 9/11 Can You Hear Me Now Act,
H.R. 4386.
Today we will have the opportunity to discuss the current
state of interoperability in New York's metropolitan area, and
we will have the opportunity to hear from Dr. Glenn Corbett,
who is a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in
New York City and a constituent that I'm proud to represent.
He, along with the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, provided some of
the technical assistance in developing the 9/11 Can You Hear Me
Now legislation.
I introduced the legislation and the Act because the
current state of first responder communications in New York
City is not anywhere near what it needs to be. While there have
been a number of improvements since September 11, nearly 3
years later the New York City Fire Department still lacks the
basic infrastructure to communicate effectively and true
interoperability simply does not exist.
At the same time, we all know that New York continues to be
a top terrorist target, and the protection of New York City
must be a national responsibility. The lack of a fully
functional communication system for the New York Fire
Department is not only a threat to our firefighters' and New
York residents' lives, but to all who visit the city.
The legislation that Chairman Shays and I introduced would
mandate the Department of Homeland Security to provide a fully
functional communication system to the New York Fire Department
within 1 year of its passage. This communication system would
include four components: radios, dispatch system, critical
information dispatch system and a supplemental communications
device for individual firefighters. This communications system
would be required to work in all buildings and in all parts of
the city, something that unbelievably does not happen now, and
tragically did not happen on September 11.
The proposed legislation requires coordination with the
city of New York and their planned upgrades of the emergency
September 11 system and any interoperability initiatives with
other public safety communications systems. If this system in
New York was developed, it could be a model for large cities
across the country, cities that are frequently mentioned as
under the greatest threat of a terrorist attack.
Beyond doing whatever it takes to prevent future attacks,
one of our greatest fears is that we will not have taken the
lessons from September 11 and be prepared for the future. We
know that there were terrible communications failures on
September 11. According to an independent report by McKinsey
and Co., it may have cost upwards of 100 firefighters their
lives on September 11, and obviously many other independent
residents and workers that were in the buildings.
I can tell you that when I arrived at the Ground Zero
central command on September 11 and asked what it was that was
needed, they said, get us radios, we don't have any radios that
work. Bill Young, at my request, and others, flew down radios
that could work on the work site the next day.
The time to act is now. We need to do absolutely everything
to ensure that we invest in the infrastructure and technology
necessary for our first responders to communicate during every
disaster. And that is why I'm also a co-sponsor of H.R. 440,
The CONNECT First Responders Act. This legislation will
significantly enhance the Federal Government's effort to
achieve this critical objective by creating, first of all, and
fully authorizing, the Office of Wireless Public Safety
Interoperability Communications within the Department of
Homeland Security. And giving this office the authority and
annual budget to work with Federal, State, and local
stakeholder to develop and implement a national strategy to
achieve interoperability.
Second, establishing a new grant program dedicated to
achieving communications interoperability nationwide. We need
both of these acts to be passed and brought into law, because
we need to do absolutely everything to protect our citizens
from any future attack. It is obviously 101 to say that we need
to have a radio system that works. We did not have one on
September 11. We still do not have one.
I hope we hear some answers today from our distinguished
panelists. Thank you all for being here, and thank you, Mr.
Corbett, for coming, too.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentlelady.
At this time the Chair would recognize Mr. Turner.
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you
for holding this hearing, and for your continued effort to make
certain that our country's response to the terrorist threat is
appropriate. The need for communication interoperability took
center stage following the terror attacks in New York and
Washington, DC. That event showcased the difficulty of first
responders even in the same community to communicate with one
another.
The inability to communicate becomes an even larger issue
as you look at Federal and State agencies working together.
This subcommittee, under the chairman's leadership, held a
field hearing in Stamford, CT, where Mrs. Maloney was present.
And there it was clear that the issue for agencies to talk to
one another was very important in the issue of responding to a
terrorist threat. My community, Dayton, OH, held a weapons of
mass destruction attack exercise prior to September 11th. And
there the inability to communicate was identified as a major
hurdle in providing a coordinated response.
The Federal Government has a very important role to play in
ensuring that communication interoperability exists among
Federal, State and local agencies. However, it is important
that the Federal Government does not operate in a vacuum,
ignoring the lessons and advice of local first responders.
Local and State governments should be active participants in
any effort to ensure seamless communication.
And we thank the chairman for his continued effort in not
only looking for a solution but continuing to focus on this
process as we move forward.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I too thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your
leadership in the critical homeland security priority. Both
Republican and Democratic leadership of this committee have
committed to keeping this issue on the congressional radar
screen. I think it is entirely necessary and appropriate.
Until now, my background has been local leadership. Along
with many of my colleagues on this committee and throughout the
House, I am concerned about the needs of local first
responders, our front line soldiers in the war on terrorism. We
learned many expensive lessons on that tragic September day
almost 3 years ago. One of the most correctable was the need
for first responders to be able to communicate.
Terrorist attacks and all other hazards requiring police
and firefighters to respond do not know county, city, State or
even regional boundaries. So when an event occurs and people
run into danger to save innocent lives, they should be able to
talk to one another. It doesn't get any more basic than that.
This revelation is not new. Yet we are almost 3 years later
in trying to decide how this should work. There are three
fundamentals to determine regarding interoperability: what are
localities doing now; what sort of national standards should we
set to transcend inherent jurisdictions and boundaries; and how
will we pay for this technology. We need a national status
report that shows us what is happening at the local level.
Progress requires a clear and accurate picture of what is
happening in each State, how local elected and local first
responders have been involved in the development of State plans
and how much of that effort has focused on the big issues of
interoperability.
At a time when we have incredible spending levels to fight
the war on terrorism abroad, as I believe we should, I think we
need an equal commitment to prioritize Homeland Security needs.
Our first responders, our hometown troops, need our help, and I
look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the
aisle to move this issue forward.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Tierney.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to join
my colleagues here in acknowledging the extent of this
particular problem and knowing that since the events of
September 11th, we have exposed what's been a longstanding and
complex problem with our public safety agencies.
Even the 9/11 Commission's recent report indicates that
many lives possibly could have been saved had we had the system
in place. It goes back, of course, to the Oklahoma City
bombing, where after that study showed that the first
responders had to use runners to carry messages from one
command center to another because the responding agencies used
different emergency radio channels, different frequencies and
different radio systems.
In order to achieve communications interoperability, which
is probably the highest priority issue for our public safety
community, we have to a lot more than we are currently doing
right now. The April report from GAO reported that project
SAFECOM had made very little progress. The most recent report
indicates that there is still a great distance to go. It cited
a lack of consistent executive commitment and support and an
inadequate level of interagency collaboration.
So 8 years after the final report and detailed
recommendations to improve interoperability from the Federal
Government's Public Safety Wireless Advisory Committee, and
over 2 years after the initiation of Project SAFECOM, it
doesn't seem that we've made much progress on this front.
Secretary Ridge has stated that there are immediate steps the
Departments can take while we focus on long range integrated
solutions. We agree with that.
The Department of Homeland Security should be providing
dedicated annual funding for both short term and long term
enhancements to State and local interoperable communications
systems. The administration has to address the disjointed
Federal approach to interoperability by clearly assigning
principal responsibility for communications interoperability to
one office in the Federal Government.
Along with Mrs. Maloney and others, we've introduced
Connecting the Operations of National Networks of Emergency
Communications Technologies for First Responders Act, the so-
called CONNECT for First Responders Act, that should address
most of these issues. The act would replace the ineffective
interagency group, at least as the GAO says it is, known as
Project SAFECOM, that currently oversees the Federal
interoperability efforts with a unified office within the
Department of Homeland Security. It would provide this office
with a dedicated annual budget, charge it with working with
Federal, State and local stakeholder to develop and implement a
national strategy to achieve interoperability. That should
provide us, at least head us in the right direction.
Without a robust, consistent budget and the necessary
authority, I think our efforts are going to continue to fail in
this area. So this legislation would substantially increase the
role of the new office in accelerating and implementing
nationwide interoperable communications. It would authorize $50
million for fiscal year 2005 for the administration of the
office. That would be more than double the $22 million that the
administration has requested for SAFECOM in fiscal year 2005.
The bill would establish a new Department of Homeland
Security grant program dedicated to achieving communication
interoperability nationwide, funding both immediate and long
term solutions for our communications needs. Like the
Assistance to Firefighters grant program, the bill authorizes
the Secretary to make direct grants to local governments and
public safety agencies, but also authorizes grants to State
governments.
I for one, and I think others joining me, continue to be
disappointed that this administration insists on adding an
extra level of bureaucracy by putting these matters through the
States instead of down to the local communities. The Fire Act,
the COPS grant with the grants directly to the local
communities in my estimation has worked far more effectively
than the process that we now see, working on Department of
Homeland Security grants.
We know that achieving nationwide interoperability will
require a significant financial commitment to all levels of
government. Previous estimates for upgrading communications
systems nationwide have ranged as high as $18 billion.
Recently, the private sector estimated that approximately $350
million is necessary to implement a comprehensive patching
system throughout the country.
The bill would authorize $5 billion over 5 years for the
grant program, starting at $500 million for fiscal year 2005
and increasing funding by $250 million per year. The reason we
increase the authorization level each year in the bill is in
order to first facilitate the immediate acquisition of short
term communications equipment to link existing communications
infrastructure and second, to initiate the development of
comprehensive interoperable communication plans prior to more
extensive equipment purchase in the latter years of the
program.
Purchasing and implementing new technologies, such as
patching or switching systems, will only provide us with a
short term solution to a critical problem. Ultimately, we would
like to see all communication systems sharing open
architectures and standard technologies, so that different
radio systems made by different manufacturers can communicate
on demand. The bill indicates our belief that we can achieve
this goal in cooperation, not competition, with the private
sector radio systems manufacturers.
I'd like to close with one last concern, and that is that
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we've had a number of individuals
connected with MIT and other institutions up there who actually
have an open system on the internet with security provided that
the military has been using now for some time as a pilot
program. That program was offered to the Department of Homeland
Security for pilot programs and I can't tell you exactly what
the delay was in that, but it took months and months before we
could get anybody's attention.
My fear is that there was more of an attitude of looking to
see if a larger contract worth far many more dollars could be
given to a larger contractor than to go with a system that in
order to have been performing well with the military would cost
far less and be implemented in a more expeditious manner. So I
hope that the Department of Homeland Security is really looking
to do this the right way, do it as economically and soundly as
possible, and not let the political or the prior connections
with other companies get in the way of getting this job done as
soon as possible and in the best way possible.
I yield back.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Mr. Turner [assuming Chair]. I ask unanimous consent that
all members of the subcommittee be permitted to place any
opening statement in the record, and that the record remain
open for 3 days for that purpose. Without objection, so
ordered.
Further, I ask unanimous consent that all witnesses be
permitted to include their written statements in the record.
And without objection, so ordered.
Today, I would like to introduce our first panel of
witnesses. We have Mr. William Jenkins, Jr., Director, Homeland
Security and Justice Issues, U.S. Government Accountability
Office. We have Dr. David Boyd, Program Manager, SAFECOM, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security; Mr. John Muleta, Chief,
Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, Federal Communications
Commission; Mr. Stephen Devine, patrol frequency coordinator,
Communications Division, Missouri State Highway Patrol General
Headquarters; and Mr. Glen Nash, Telecommunications Division,
California Department of General Services.
Gentlemen, we do swear in our witnesses for this
subcommittee. Would you please stand and raise your right
hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Turner. Note for the record that the witnesses
responded in the affirmative.
Before we proceed, we have a comment from our chairman.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to say
that we really have an outstanding panel before us. As I was
walking in, I want to just emphasize the fact that we're very
fortunate to have all five of you here. Obviously having the
Government Accountability Office here, the GAO here to set the
stage is helpful. To have both the Department of Homeland
Security and the Federal Communications Commission folks in the
same room talking together is vital.
I particularly want to say to Stephen Devine and Glen Nash,
I know as State officials, that you have become national
experts on this issue. You've devoted a number of years to
trying to work this out. So while you're from Missouri and
while you're from California, you really are carrying the
weight for all the States. We wanted to get the best and we
were told the two of you are. So we thank you both for being
here.
Mr. Turner. Thank you.
Gentlemen, we're going to ask, because of the size of the
panel, that each of you try to limit your comments to the 5
minutes that are allocated. You can see the lights in front of
you that will be counting down for you. We will begin with Mr.
Jenkins.
STATEMENTS OF WILLIAM O. JENKINS, JR., DIRECTOR, HOMELAND
SECURITY AND JUSTICE ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY
OFFICE; DAVID G. BOYD, DIRECTOR, SAFECOM PROGRAM OFFICE,
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DIRECTORATE, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND
SECURITY; JOHN B. MULETA, ESQ., CHIEF, WIRELESS
TELECOMMUNICATIONS BUREAU, FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION;
STEPHEN T. DEVINE, CHAIRPERSON, MISSOURI STATE INTEROPERABILITY
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, PATROL FREQUENCY COORDINATOR,
COMMUNICATIONS DIVISION, MISSOURI STATE HIGHWAY PATROL GENERAL
HEADQUARTERS; AND GLEN S. NASH, SENIOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS
ENGINEER, STATE OF CALIFORNIA, DEPARTMENT OF GENERAL SERVICES
Mr. Jenkins. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee,
I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to discuss our
work on wireless interoperable communications for first
responders.
In November 2003 testimony before this subcommittee, we
outlined three challenges in achieving interoperable
communications that remain the principal challenges today. They
are, one, clearly defining and identifying the problem; two,
establishing performance goals, requirements and standards; and
three, defining governmental roles in addressing the problem.
This morning I'd like to highlight some key points from our
report being released today that focuses on these challenges
and the extent to which Federal grants support interoperable
communications improvements. First, with regard to problem
definition, the current status of interoperable communications
capabilities nationwide, including the scope and severity of
any shortcomings, has not yet been determined. To assess those
capabilities, a set of requirements is needed that can be used
to assess what is compared to what should be.
In April 2004, SAFECOM issued a document designed to serve
as a set of requirements. SAFECOM expects to complete a
baseline assessment of current interoperable capabilities by
July 2005, but is still refining its methodology for developing
that baseline.
Second, with regard to intergovernmental roles, Federal,
State and local governments all have important roles in
assessing interoperability requirements, identifying gaps in
the current ability to meet those requirements and developing
and implementing comprehensive plans for closing those gaps.
The Federal Government can provide the leadership, focus and
long-term commitment needed. It can take leadership in
developing a national architecture for interoperability, a
national data base for interoperable frequencies, a national
standard nomenclature for those frequencies and supporting
State efforts to develop and implement Statewide interoperable
communication plans.
SAFECOM was established as the Federal umbrella program for
coordinating all Federal initiatives and projects on public
safety interoperable communications. According to SAFECOM,
there are more than 100 Federal agencies and programs involved
in public safety issues. SAFECOM's ability to provide the
needed Federal leadership and coordination has been hampered by
its dependence upon other Federal agencies for funding and
cooperation. DHS has recently created the Office of
Interoperability and Compatibility to be fully established by
November 2004, and which will include SAFECOM. But the office's
structure, funding and authority are still being developed.
With broad input from local governments and first
responders, States can serve as the focal points for statewide
interoperability planning and implementation. The FCC has
recognized the States' importance by providing the States
authority to administer the interoperability channels within
the 700 megahertz spectrum. Some States are working to develop
statewide plans, but there is no established structure or
funding for supporting such efforts. Nor is there any guidance
for States on what should be included in such plans.
And of course, such plans would need to encompass cross-
State interoperability issues. New York, Philadelphia and
Cincinnati are examples of metropolitan areas that cross State
boundaries and where cross-State communications must be
encompassed in any regional or State interoperability plan.
Third, the fragmented Federal grant structure for first
responders does not effectively support statewide
interoperability planning. SAFECOM has developed recommended
grant guidance for all Federal grants whose moneys could be
used to improve interoperability. The guidance has been
incorporated in part in some grants, but SAFECOM cannot require
that consistent guidance be included in all Federal grants for
first responders.
Moreover, the structure of some grants does not support
long-term planning efforts, because for example, the grants do
not require any interoperable communications plan prior to
receiving funds. Or, the grants may also include a 1 or 2 year
performance period that may encourage a focus on equipment
purchases rather than comprehensive planning to guide those
purchases.
Finally, Federal and State governments lack a coordinated
grant review process to ensure that funds allocated to local
governments are used for communication projects that complement
each other and add to overall statewide and national
interoperable capacity. One result is that grants could be
approved for bordering jurisdictions that propose conflicting
interoperable solutions. We recognize that SAFECOM has made
progress in bringing leadership and focus to the Federal
Government's interoperability efforts and many State and local
officials are working diligently to assess and approve
interoperable communications.
However, as we said last November, the fundamental barrier
to effectively addressing wireless interoperability problems
has been and remains the lack of effective, collaborative,
interdisciplinary and intergovernmental cooperation and
planning. Our report includes recommendations to the Secretary
of DHS and the Director of OMB for enhancing Federal
coordination and providing assistance and encouragement to
States to establish statewide interoperable planning bodies
that draw on the experience and perspectives of local first
responders.
That concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman, and I'd be happy
to answer any questions you or other members of the committee
may have.
[Note.--The GAO report entitled, ``Homeland Security,
Federal Leadership and Intergovernmental Cooperation Required
to Achieve First Responder Interoperable Communications,'' may
be found in subcommittee files.]
[The prepared statement of Mr. Jenkins follows:]
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Mr. Turner. Thank you.
Dr. Boyd.
Dr. Boyd. Good morning, and thank you, Mr. Chairman and
members of the committee for the invitation to speak to you
today.
Whether fighting a fire or responding to a terrorist
attack, emergency responders need coordination, communication
and the ability to share vital information and equipment among
a wide variety of public safety and security agencies.
Unfortunately, the reality today is that agencies too often
cannot communicate by radio because their equipment is
incompatible or the frequencies they are assigned are
different. They operate on 10 different frequency bands and run
communications systems which are often 30 years old in an era
with the technology life cycle of only 18 to 24 months.
Earlier this year, the Secretary of Homeland Security asked
the Directorate of Science and Technology within DHS to lead
the planning and implementation of a program office to
significantly improve the coordination and management of the
Department's interoperability programs for equipment and
training as well as for communications, so we can make it
possible for firefighters, police officers, and other emergency
personnel to better communicate and share equipment during a
major disaster. This office will reduce unnecessary duplication
in programs and spending and assure consistency across Federal
activities related to research and development, testing and
evaluation standards, technical assistance, training and grant
funding related to interoperability.
Since DHS assumed responsibility for SAFECOM 13 months ago,
5 principals have been put in place by SAFECOM to drive this
new office. First, emergency response providers and homeland
security practitioners who own, operate and maintain more than
90 percent of the Nation's wireless public safety
infrastructure must be integrated into the program from its
beginning to ensure the solutions we create actually meet their
needs.
Second, coordination of existing Federal programs is
essential to reduce unnecessary duplication of effort, permit
the most efficient use of Federal resources and allow us to
leverage the investments that many public safety agencies have
already made. Third, properly designed non-proprietary open
architecture standards are required to maximize competition
across industry, encourage technology innovation, reduce costs
and help to ensure compatibility among public safety and
Homeland Security agencies.
Fourth, compliance with the National Incident Management
System, the National Response Plan and relevant Homeland
Security Presidential directives will provide a consistent,
nationwide approach for agencies at all levels of government to
work well together to prepare for, prevent, respond to and
recover from major incidents. And finally, outreach efforts
will emphasize the need for interoperability and provide tools
for its implementation to practitioners and policymakers at all
levels of government. We will model the operations of this
office after the successful SAFECOM program. As a public safety
practitioner driven program, SAFECOM is working with existing
Federal communications initiatives and key public safety
stakeholders to address the need to develop better technologies
and processes for the cross-jurisdictional and cross-
disciplinary coordination of existing systems and future
networks.
SAFECOM developed the first national grant guidance already
incorporated into grant programs of the community oriented
policing services, Federal Emergency Management Agency and the
Office for Domestic Preparedness to direct Federal programs
funding public safety communications equipment in State and
local agencies. In January of this year, the major associations
representing the police chiefs, fire chiefs, sheriffs, mayors,
cities, counties and public safety communications officers
observed in a joint letter that with the advent of SAFECOM,
public safety, and State and local governments finally have
both a voice in public safety discussions at the Federal level
and confidence that the Federal Government is coordinating its
resources.
In April, SAFECOM published the first national statement of
requirements for wireless public safety communications and
interoperability which constitutes the first national
definition of what interoperability must accomplish. It will
drive the development and creation of interface standards that
will satisfy public safety practitioner needs, offer industry a
resource for understanding user needs, guide the development of
new technologies and serve as a guide in developing SAFECOM
research, development, test and evaluation programs.
Within a month of its posting, over 5,000 copies of the
statement of requirements were downloaded, and manufacturers
have begun to show us how they were mapping the capabilities of
their equipment, especially new designs, to these requirements.
We established a Federal interagency coordination council to
bring together all the Federal players who provide grants to
States and localities, operate communications systems that need
to be interoperable or that have regulatory functions touching
on interoperability. We've engaged in discussions with the FCC
and recently agreed to form a task force to allow continuous
interaction between the new interoperability office and FCC
staff.
The Nation must continue to pursue the current,
comprehensive strategy that takes into account technical and
cultural issues associated with improving communications and
interoperability. In doing so, it addresses research,
development, testing and evaluation, procurement planning,
spectrum management, standards, training, and technical
assistance. The approach recognizes the challenges associated
with incorporating legacy equipment and practices, given the
constantly changing nature of technology.
It is imperative that this new Office of Interoperability,
with its partners, work toward a world where lives and property
are never lost because public safety agencies are unable to
communicate or lack compatible equipment and training
resources.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd be happy to answer any
questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Boyd follows:]
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Mr. Turner. Thank you.
Mr. Muleta.
Mr. Muleta. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the
subcommittee. I want to thank you for this opportunity to
appear before you on behalf of FCC to discuss our work in
facilitating interoperability between the Nation's public
safety communication systems.
As an initial matter, I commend your decision to request
GAO to study the critical issues related to public safety
interoperability and its importance to homeland security. Our
staff at the FCC is committed to participating in the
initiatives of other interested stakeholders designed to
identify, assess and analyze interoperability successes and
challenges. I look forward to hearing this committee's views
regarding the findings and the recommendations of the report.
The FCC's experience working with public safety entities
and stakeholders is expansive and far-reaching. Today there are
more than 40,000 spectrum licenses designated for public safety
systems under the Communications Act. The FCC has a unique role
of providing spectrum that State and local governments use as
an integral part of these systems. Under the leadership of
Chairman Powell, the Commission has intensified its efforts in
this area and designated homeland security and public safety
issues as one of the Commission's six core strategic
objectives.
As September 11th vividly demonstrated, the ability of
public safety systems to communicate seamlessly at incident
sites with minimal onsite coordination is critical to saving
lives and property. The FCC is therefore committed to use all
of its resources to promote and enhance the interoperability of
the thousands of public safety systems that make up the
critical part of our Nation's homeland security network.
Our experience indicates that a holistic approach is the
best method for fostering interoperability. Achieving
interoperability requires focus on more than spectrum,
technology and equipment issues. It also requires a focus on
the organizational and the personal coordination and
communication necessary to make it available in the times of
our greatest needs. For its part, the Commission directs its
efforts toward providing additional spectrum for public safety
systems, nurturing technological developments enhancing
interoperability, and providing its expertise and input to
interagency efforts such as SAFECOM to improve our homeland
security.
It is important that despite all its efforts, there are
limits to what the FCC can do. The FCC is only one stakeholder
in the process, and many of the challenges facing
interoperability are a result of the disparate governmental
interests, local, State and Federal, that individually operate
portions of our national public safety system. Each of these
interests has different capabilities in terms of funding and
technological sophistication, making it difficult to develop
and deploy interoperability strategies uniformly throughout the
country.
Regardless of these problems, we at the FCC continue to
advance policies that enable all of the stakeholders to do
their best in maintaining a strong and viable national public
safety system.
In terms of additional spectrum for public safety, the
Commission currently has designated throughout the country
approximately 97 megahertz of spectrum for public safety use.
The Commission has also designated certain channels on these
public safety bands specifically for interoperability, and a
public safety licensee may use these designated frequencies
only if it uses equipment that permits inter-system
interoperability. The frequencies that have so-called use
designations include 2.6 megahertz in the 700 megahertz band, 5
channels in the 800 megahertz band, 5 channels in the 150
megahertz band, which is a VHF band, and 4 channels in the 450
megahertz band, which is the UHF band.
In addition, and very importantly, starting next January
the Commission will require newly certified public safety
mobile radio units to have the capacity to transmit and receive
on the nationwide public safety interoperability calling
channel in the UHF and VHF bands in which they operate.
In the last few years, the Commission has made two
additional spectrum allocations that illustrate the importance
placed on ensuring public safety entities have additional
interoperable spectrum to carry out their critical missions.
First, consistent with the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, the FCC
identified and allocated 24 megahertz in the 700 megahertz band
for public safety use. In particular, we also dedicated 2.6
megahertz of the spectrum for interoperability purposes.
Given the central role the States provide in managing
emergency communications and consistent also with the GAO's
findings, the FCC also concluded that States are well suited
for administering the interoperability spectrum, and that State
level administration would promote safety of life and property
through seamless and coordinated communications on the 700
megahertz interoperability spectrum.
Second, the FCC designated 50 additional megahertz of
spectrum at 4.9 gigahertz for public safety users in response
to requests from public safety community for additional
spectrum for broad band data communications. The 4.9 gigahertz
band also fosters interoperability by providing a new
regulatory framework in which traditional public safety
entities can pursue strategic relationships with others, such
as critical infrastructure entities, for the completion of
their mission.
In addition to using its resources to identify additional
spectrum, the FCC has also provided innovative licensing
methods, creative planning methods that encourage better
coordination, and advocated new technologies in order to
promote the effective, interoperable use of public safety
spectrum. Foremost, the Commission adopted the regional
planning approach spectrum management as an alternative to the
traditional first in the door approach to spectrum licensing
and management in the public safety context.
The Commission has also developed new rules permitting two
types of spectrum sharing in order to promote interoperability.
First, the FCC's rules specifically provide for shared use of
radio stations where public safety licensees may share their
facilities on a non-profit cost shared basis with other public
safety organizations that use it as end users. This rule has
now been expanded to also include Federal Government users.
A second type of sharing is unique to the 700 megahertz
public safety spectrum. In this spectrum band, State and local
public safety licensees may construct and operate joint
facilities with the Federal Government.
In terms of coordination, the FCC recognizes interagency
coordination as an essential factor in developing effective
interoperability. In 1999, the FCC organized a public safety
National Coordination Committee as a Federal advisory
committee, and asked it to recommend technical and operational
standards that provide for interoperability in the 700
megahertz public safety band. The NCC, which finished its
charter last year, also worked with the Telecommunications
Industry Association, an accredited open standards developer,
to develop interoperability technical standards that are open
and non-proprietary, that are lowering costs and increasing the
rate of adoption by public safety licensees.
The Commission staff also routinely confers and does
outreach with critical organizations, including the Association
of Public Safety Commissions Office, the National Public Safety
Telecommunications Council, the International Association of
Fire Chiefs and the International Association of Chiefs of
Police, some of whose representatives are here today. Moreover,
the staff is closely working with the Department of Homeland
Security SAFECOM, as we both share the common goal of improving
public safety communications interoperability.
We are continuing our collaborative efforts to develop a
strong working relationship both formally and informally. Dr.
Boyd and I are also continuing to work together at a personal
level to promote and ensure effective coordination regarding
homeland security and public safety communications initiatives.
In addition to our regular meetings, we recently committed
to establish an informal working group comprised of
representatives of our respective staffs to meet and share
information on a regular basis on issues of interoperability.
I'd like to thank you again for the opportunity to testify
in front of you on this important issue affecting our homeland
security, and I'll be glad to answer any additional questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Muleta follows:]
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Mr. Turner. Thank you.
Mr. Devine.
Mr. Devine. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the
committee. Thank you for providing me the opportunity to share
my thoughts today on this important topic.
In Missouri, I am involved in public safety communications,
regional planning initiatives. I serve as the local APCO
advisor, and I chair the Missouri Statewide Interoperability
Executive Committee.
The Missouri State Interoperability Executive Committee,
with its participation from across the State, has made great
strides in developing a locally integrated interoperability
environment within Missouri. My most important duty is working
for the Highway Patrol, or actually outside of my official job
description. My description as patrol frequency coordinator has
gradually evolved into an overall public safety communications
resource for police, fire and EMS and local government concerns
in Missouri sponsored by the State.
These duties identify me as the initial contact and
resource for all public safety communications issues, such as
homeland security grant process and interoperable
communications issues, State interoperability executive
committee advocacy, regional planning, promoting a dialog for
operational and technical interoperability solutions, frequency
coordination, FCC regulatory topics and other issues, including
updates, seminars and training.
Prior to my appointment to this position at the State
level, no one entity or person provided these services to
Missouri's public safety community. This caused a lack of
dialog that impaired each community's ability to serve its
constituents. It is effective for interoperable guidance and
administration to come from the State level of government in
many instances, which has responsibilities throughout the
State, not just in portions of it.
Today I'd like to briefly discuss two particular
communications outreach and planning mechanisms beneficial to
public safety at the regional level, and how interaction with
both the FCC and the Department of Homeland Security can
improve the overall interoperable potential in each State. I
generally look toward the Department of Homeland security
through Project SAFECOM to promote training, implementation,
direction and the encouragement of a consistent communications
dialog at the local level and to the FCC to cerate the enabling
regulatory environment that will public safety to best utilize
its assigned resources and promote interoperability for its end
users.
The first mechanism is the mandatory development and
expansion of Statewide Interoperability Executive Committees.
Within the NCC committee, the FCC supported but did not mandate
the creation of an SIEC in each State. The NCC has since
recommended that SIECs be mandated by the FCC and expanded to
include the administration of all interoperability spectrum,
not just that of 700 megahertz.
The expanded role of the mandated SIEC would allow the
conclusions identified in the NCC to improve interoperability
in other public safety bands. NCC recommendations on SIEC
expansion and other interoperability issues are currently
pending FCC action.
In concern with SIEC development, the Federal Government,
with support from the Department of Homeland Security, shall
provide the States spectrum management training. This is
consistent with conclusions reached in the recent MTIA report
that indicates a lack of spectrum planning resource at the
State level. MTIA previously provided a spectrum management
program to States, but it is no longer offered. In many areas,
receiving this training will initiate SIEC interoperable
development in States and promote a dialog within States as
well.
The second issue crucial to the furthering of
interoperability is the promotion of common national
interoperable parameters and conditions that enable continuity
and positively impact communications within the first responder
community. These recommendations are all included in the NCC
recommendations under FCC Docket No. 96-86. They are the
development of statewide interoperability plans, the
institution of standardized interoperability channel
nomenclature, the requirement of standardized technical
interoperable parameters and the utilization of standard
incident management or incident command systems.
The end result has public safety, after an implementation
period, using managed nationwide interoperability channels from
all public safety bands with common technical parameters and
common channel names within a standardized operating
environment. How these channels are used in each State is then
documented and made available to other States and Federal users
in the form of State interoperability plans to promote an
interoperability dialog across the country which currently does
not exist.
The establishment of Federal, State and local
communications planning and implementation dialog needs
improvement. One method would be to establish an interoperable
dialog between the Federal Government and State and local
entities through memoranda of understanding. An MOU could be
created between Federal users in each State outlining
acceptable parameters for use between the parties and then
allowing the States to distribute the parameters to the local
communities. The State would then disseminate the MOU
information and its conditions to local users through a new
MOU. This method of sharing and interoperability for all users
is outside the FCC's current rules in some spectrum, but it
will allow more effective interoperable resources to the local
user.
States should also communicate with each other in the form
of biannually published State interoperability plans created by
their SIEC via Web access, such as Denver University's CAPRAD
data base, which is being utilized as a planning tool within
the 700 megahertz regional planning initiative.
I recommend continued Federal dialog and outreach between
DHS and planning groups, such as NIPSTICK and other State SIEC
groups to help regional and local users become more aware of
their needs and abilities regarding interoperability. At a time
when significant grant moneys are being distributed to the
local community, there is an opportunity for the Federal
Government to require the standardization of certain
communications parameters at the local level, in the
implementation of interoperability resources as a condition to
the grantor.
The State of Missouri has used the Missouri SIEC as a
resource to review grant funding and make recommendations
regarding applications. The result is local users better
equipped to expand their potential interoperability.
Public safety communications at the local level has no
required, structured, centralized management mechanism with a
focus on interoperability. A suggested method of improving
discussion between Federal, State and local users would be for
Federal entities to use a State SIEC as a point of contact
within each State. State contacts could then communicate with
each other to achieve regional needs.
In conclusion, interoperability in the public safety
community starts and ends at the local level. Currently, the
freedom offered to State and local agencies to implement new
regulatory decisions in any fashion they deem appropriate often
inhibits the very interoperability we seek due to each agency's
interpretation of how those regulatory decisions should be
implemented. Pushing good, positive rules into the local
community, in the absence of followup, structure and
enforceable guidelines, can inhibit interoperable
communications. Supporting the communications needs of local,
county, State and Federal users cannot be accomplished without
an ongoing public safety interoperability dialog, resulting
from a program in each State.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm available for any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Devine follows:]
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Mr. Turner. Thank you.
Mr. Nash.
Mr. Nash. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Glen Nash. I
am a senior telecommunications engineer working for the State
of California, Department of General Services, where I have
over 30 years experience in the design, installation and
maintenance of public safety communications systems.
I am a past president of the Association of Public Safety
Communications Officials International, also known as APCO. I
served as the Chair of the Technology Subcommittee of the FCC's
Public Safety National Coordination Committee, served on the
joint FCC/NTIA Public Safety Wireless Advisory Committee,
served on the National Task Force on Interoperability, and have
otherwise been very active on matters related to
interoperability between and amongst public safety agencies. I
am here today representing the State of California and as a
general spokesman for the public safety community.
Communications, and in particular radio communications, is
a vital tool used by public safety agencies to exercise command
and control of emergent events in the community. Those events
range in scale from routine traffic stops by police agencies
and calls to EMS agencies for medical assistance to large
disasters such as the wildland fires experienced each year in
California and in other States and the events our country
experienced on September 11, 2001. Public safety radio is the
mechanism by which operational commanders and government
officials gather information about the event, deploy forces to
respond to the event and direct the actions of our Nation's
first responders. It also serves as a lifeline in protecting
the safety of those first responders. Without effective
communications, our Nation's police, fire and EMS personnel
cannot perform their primary duties of protecting the American
public's life and property.
While the term interoperability has received significant
interest since the events of September 11th, it is neither a
new issue nor something that the public safety community has
not been addressing for many years. Things are far from
perfect, and there certainly are many ways that
interoperability can be improved across the country. But let us
not ignore the successes.
In California, we have implemented mutual aid systems for
many years. These have included the California Law Enforcement
Mutual Aid Radio System, commonly called CLEMARS, in which the
State contributed and licensed radio channels statewide that
can be used by any law enforcement agency. All that a local
agency need do is sign a standardized agreement regarding use
of those channels, then program those channels into their
mobile and portable radios. Upon doing so, they are able to
talk with personnel from virtually any other law enforcement
agency that has similarly joined its system.
This system has been in existence since the early 1960's.
And I am proud to say most, if not all law enforcement agencies
in California are participants. Is the CLEMARS system perfect?
No, it still suffers from technology problems related to the
fact that the public safety agencies are spread across multiple
frequencies that are mutually incompatible with one another and
from training issues, both of which I will discuss in a moment.
Also, it provides only one channel in each major band, which
obviously would be inadequate in anything resembling a very
large event.
While we are working to resolve some of these limiting
issues, the solutions will require the expenditure of time,
effort and public tax dollars that are vitally needed in many
other areas.
Another success story can be found in the fire community.
As many of you are aware, California suffers from several large
wildland fires each year. Besides the obvious devastation
caused by these fires, the effort required to fight these fires
is tremendous. A single agency may deploy a thousand or more
firefighters along with hundreds of pieces of apparatus,
aircraft and logistical support from local, State and Federal
agencies. The State, in conjunction with representatives of
local fire agencies and representatives of the U.S. Forest
Service and Bureau of Land Management, have developed a
communications plan known as FIRESCOPE that lays out procedures
for communicating with all these resources. The plan calls for
the integration of frequencies licensed to the State and local
agencies, along with frequencies controlled by the Federal
agencies, and the integration of both the frequencies and the
equipment from the National Interagency Fire Center to create
an overall communications system that supports the efforts
directed toward controlling the wildland fire. While this
system has enjoyed great success, it too is being challenged by
technological and training issues.
I would like to mention two other efforts underway in
California because they are being driven by local agencies
coming together to develop a communications plan that addresses
their response to events that occur within a more localized
region. Those efforts are the Los Angeles Tactical
Communications Systems and the Bay Area Tactical Communications
System. In both of these efforts, command personnel from the
local agencies are coming together to discuss the operational
issues that must be resolved so that they can work together as
a team on an event; to catalog the capabilities and limitations
of their communications systems; and to develop plans that can
be readily implemented when the need arises.
These events, by the way, do not need to be large scale
events. They could include a pursuit that moves from one
jurisdiction to another or the automatic response of the
nearest fire unit to a call rather than the unit within whose
jurisdiction the call originates. If I were to characterize
these events, I would have to say they can happen at any time
and any place, often without warning. They start out as local
response events and grow into something larger.
I mentioned before that there were technological and
training issues that limit public safety agencies and personnel
at the State and local levels from implementing the ideal
solution. What are some of those issues?
First and foremost is an issue related to the radio
spectrum. Local, State and Federal agencies operate across five
major frequency bands. Each of these bands is mutually
incompatible with the others. In some cases, individual
agencies were able to select the band they used based upon
operational advantages. But more often than not, the frequency
band was determined by what was available at the time they
built their system. In many regions of the country all the
agencies have built their systems on frequencies that come from
the same frequency band, thus they have an inherent ability to
create interoperability, assuming that channels can be
identified.
There is a major problem with the interoperability spectrum
created in the 700 megahertz band. Don't get me wrong, the 2.6
megahertz of spectrum is a tremendous asset that will be useful
in the future. But realize also that no radio currently in use
by any public safety agency in America is capable of operating
on those interoperability channels.
Mr. Turner. Mr. Nash, your written statement will be
entered into the record. Do you have any other comments you
want to sum up at this point?
Mr. Nash. No, that's fine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Nash follows:]
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Mr. Turner. Thank you so much.
I want to go then to a series of rounds of 5 minutes of
questions from members of the committee. I'd like to start with
a question really to all of you that you can respond to.
In listening to the opportunities and also the definitions
of the problem and how you each have been, and the agencies
have been working this issue, there does appear to be a
distinction between the issue of equipment, what equipment
needs to be put in place, and processes or systems. We've heard
the term legacy systems and legacy practices.
And in part, you have an equipment issue and in part you
have a management issue. I'd like for you to talk about the
management issue aspects of that. You certainly have issues
such as, Mr. Nash, you mentioned the issues of culture of
command and control. You have structural, local, State and
Federal. That seems almost to be a greater impediment than the
issues of just equipment.
So you've approached this issue. Could you talk a moment
about the issue of the practices, the management versus the
equipment aspect?
Mr. Jenkins. Well, I think that the equipment, from our
perspective, follows the management. It's not the lead issue.
It's the issue of what, after you've decided what you need,
after you've decided what the gaps are, the equipment is the
alternative solution. You're looking at what the alternatives
are and how that equipment helps meet those particular
requirements.
But the equipment itself is a means to an end. It's not the
end. And the really important part is being able to establish
what the needs are and then what the gaps are. And those needs
themselves follow from a command incident structure defining
who's going to be in charge, who needs to share what
information with whom under what circumstances in what kind of
event. If that's not laid out, if that foundation is not laid
out, the equipment issue is almost irrelevant. Because even if
you have the right equipment, as we've said, one of the reasons
we're suggesting a common nomenclature is, even if you have the
right equipment, if I call it red channel two and you call it
purple dot channel five, we don't realize that we can talk to
each other, because we use different names.
So these issues of being able to agree on what the
nomenclature is, everybody knows, having these data bases that
people will know, those are very important issues and they
really are sort of external, if you will, to the equipment
itself. And the reason that we're suggesting that the States be
the mechanism is exactly what Mr. Devine said and others have
said, is that to the extent to which local governments have
developed their own, and local first responders developed their
own systems, they've tended to develop them for their own needs
and not looked across jurisdictions, looked on a regional
basis. And the States are a mechanism that allow you to do
that, that allows you to look beyond individual jurisdiction
and how does it fit together.
On a day to day basis, if I'm just responding to an
automobile accident or something, this may not be much of an
issue. But if you're dealing with a much larger event, like a
wildfire that goes across multiple jurisdictions or a plane
crash, or September 11th, then these issues that cross
jurisdictions become very important in being able to look at
them and have a mechanism in place, an incident command
structure for how we're going to deal with that.
So in our view, the management issues are fundamental and
have to be addressed before you get to the equipment issues.
Mr. Turner. Dr. Boyd.
Dr. Boyd. We would agree that the human factors, which
includes more than just management issues, has to do with all
the cultural relationships at the local level; turf issues
involving who's going to control the system, who gets to decide
when you get to get on a channel other issues, have to be a
first and key component of that. We think all of this needs to
be approached through what we call a governance approach.
And that governance approach needs to be one that begins at
the lowest level and works up, so that the localities who own,
operate and maintain the vast majority of the equipment and
have the vast majority of the money and the vast majority of
the people have a real incentive to be part of larger, county-
wide, State-wide systems. It has to be more than just going
through the motions, just saying, you can come in and come to a
meeting with me. planners have to listen to those users at the
local level first. They're the people who are going to respond,
they have most of the people--even when the State level is
considered. So you have to start with a structure that builds
from the bottom up in order to build a serious State-wide plan
that everybody really wants to sign onto.
Mr. Tierney made a reference to an $18 billion figure mark
that came out a study some years ago by PSWAC. That study now
is very old, and it only looked at land mobile radio systems,
that is, the equipment that goes into a car and the equipment
an officer carries. It covered none of the infrastructure. It
covered none of the new towers, none of the new repeaters, none
of the other things that would need to go with it.
So one of the things you also have to understand is that
another part of the problem really is a funding issue, because
the local communities are going to have to come up with the
money. They have to make a decision that they're going to help
pay for some of this, which means that whatever strategy you
develop has to be one that takes into account legacy equipment.
We can't leave it out, even as we try to move in a coordinated
direction to get to modern systems, because communities cannot
afford to abandon these older systems.
So the human management piece is first and foremost. The
technology piece then follows almost naturally. But you can't
lose track of either of them. You can't lose track of the
fundamental costs of decisions that may be made at a higher
level that don't meet the immediate needs of the first
responder in their locality. They have to be part of however
you design the national or the State structures.
Mr. Turner. Mr. Muleta.
Mr. Muleta. My colleagues here have explained the
situation. I think the FCC, we have since the late 1980's been
working on promoting interoperability while being cognizant of
the fact that there is a lot of sort of local involvement in
trying to not overly mandate a solution that might be over-
inclusive or under-inclusive. So what we've developed is a
system in which we are asking States and the representatives to
participate through these, like the National Coordination
Committee to develop interoperability in effect allowing the
local folks to opt into solutions that we're providing.
So we think that's the right approach, and I support the
statements that all my colleagues here have made.
Mr. Turner. Mr. Devine.
Mr. Devine. I think planning can't be underestimated. Often
people talk about a national interoperability plan, and indeed,
we have one. We have 50 individual plans that are stuck in
somebody's drawer some place that we don't communicate across
State lines or even in many areas within those States.
In Missouri, I've got Kansas City and St. Louis who don't
agree on much. I don't really need for them to do the same
thing, I just need to identify with what each of them do that
there is some commonality between them. They don't necessarily
have to do everything the same, there just has to be some
continuity. I think that dialog at that human level, as Dr.
Boyd indicated, the planning level, is what promotes that.
They're more than willing to share what they're doing. And the
disparities are one thing. But to find that common thread that
when people from St. Louis have to go to Kansas City, it's
probably a drastic incident and there will be some commonality
there.
So it's all about local planning and getting them involved,
not as much changing what people do but finding out what they
do, identifying it, laying it all out on the table and finding
where the common threads are.
Mr. Turner. Mr. Nash.
Mr. Nash. I totally agree with those comments. We've often
talked about interoperability really as being a system of
systems. And we take the local systems, we integrate them
together, through a county-wide or State-wide overlay system
that brings them together. You can then integrate that into a
nationwide system. I think one of the things we need to keep in
mind is that we're not looking for the ability of the officer
on the street to talk to the firefighter on the end of the
hose. That kind of communication usually is, quite frankly, in
appropriate.
We do need to have a way for commanders to integrate and
talk amongst themselves. And just as a good example, again, of
something that happened just recently, the funeral of President
Reagan in the Ventura area brought a lot of people and a lot of
resource requirements to a very small community. But they
developed a plan, they worked it out, they had some ideas in
place. And it wasn't a matter that everybody talked directly
with each other. But they all had an agreement that they would
communicate with each other.
And there was a system of systems there with different
agencies operating on different systems, performing their part
of the job and doing it very effectively and for some very good
reasons. For example, the Secret Service and the FBI would not
want to be integrated directly with locals, for security
reasons. So there are some very valid reasons why we need to be
thinking about a system of systems that allow us to communicate
at the levels at which it's appropriate to communicate.
Mr. Turner. Mr. Tierney.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you all for your testimony here.
Dr. Boyd, I understand that within the Department of
Homeland Security now there is the Office of Interoperability
and Coordination, but it seems tom e that the mission and the
structure of it may not be completely defined. There's also
SAFECOM, there's the Office of Domestic Preparedness and the
Office of State and Local Coordination and Preparedness. Of
those groups, who's in charge of this interoperability aspect?
Dr. Boyd. The Secretary has indicated two things. One is,
at the executive level, that SAFECOM is in charge of
accomplishing its three fundamental missions, which are a
national architecture, a standards process and the coordination
of Federal activities. So direction from OMB has gone in the
passback to every agency to include that common grant guidance.
With the creation of the Office of Interoperability and
Compatibility, the Secretary has made clear that
interoperability management and interoperability standards will
be the responsibility of the new office. To that end, we work
directly with the Office of Domestic Preparedness, with the
State and local government coordination office and in fact,
with all of the activities within the Department.
Mr. Tierney. Do you have a target date for completing your
work?
Dr. Boyd. Let me break that into two parts. Our target date
for when the office is fully operational is not later than the
end of this fiscal year. The reason I put you off on the other
is that interoperability is something that's going to take a
very long time to accomplish correctly nationally. So I don't
want to provide an end date for that. In fact, one of my
favorite stories is to point out that when I was first
commissioned as second lieutenant in the U.S. Army--and I won't
say how long ago that was, but it was quite a while--the
Department of Defense had really decided that DOD was going to
become interoperable. I retired from the U.S. Army after a full
career 12 years ago, and DOD is today almost interoperable.
That's a single department, with four Federal agencies, funded
essentially by one committee. And still, more than 40 years
later, they're not fully interoperable.
So this is going to take a while. We don't intend to take
40 plus years. We think we can do it a lot faster than that.
But it's not going to happen in one or 2 or 3 years either.
Mr. Tierney. I wouldn't expect it to happen as rapidly as
that, but I'm certainly discouraged to hear that it may take as
long as you think.
Let me ask you, your first date was that for the target
date of actually collecting the data? Do you have a date where
you figure that you're going to get all the data you need to
start working with?
Dr. Boyd. We expect to release the RFP, the solicitation to
bring on board the research activity that will actually do the
baseline research this month. So I would expect we would have
an award before the end of this fiscal year. We'll have the
report back probably mid to late fiscal year next, in 2005.
Mr. Tierney. Mr. Jenkins, what does GAO think about that
scenario and that process? Does that seem to be moving
reasonably on a good timeframe?
Mr. Jenkins. It's difficult for us to make an assessment of
that. Part of the reason is what Mr. Boyd said, the real
functions of this office, what its funding is going to be, what
its authority is going to be, what its structure are going to
be is still being developed. So whether or not they can do what
Dr. Boyd says and do it within a particular timeframe depends
very much on how that office is structured, what its authority
is, what its funding is. Those are all open questions at the
moment.
Mr. Tierney. Mr. Boyd, what do you think about that?
Dr. Boyd. That's part of why I broke it into two parts: the
when we'll have the office stood up rather than when we would
complete the mission. We had a meeting just this week with the
Assistant Secretary for Science and Technology so that we can
lay those dates out. We have put in a mark for 2006--we're
little late for the 2005 process, because the decision to
create the office was made later--so now we're dependent for
how much we're going to be able to do in 2005 on what happens
in the final appropriation this year.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you. Thank you all for your testimony.
Mr. Shays [resuming Chair]. First, if you gentlemen would
like to take your coats off, feel free. I'm serious.
What I'd like to do, Mr. Tierney, do you have other
questions you'd like to ask?
Mr. Tierney. No.
Mr. Shays. OK. What I'd like to do is ask the professional
staff, Grace Washbourne, to ask a few questions, then I have
questions of my own.
Ms. Washbourne. Thank you, Mr. Shays.
Mr. Devine, you talked about the importance of having an
understanding about the state of interoperability or the state
of communications that are around you, whether it's in your
State or across borders. I understand, Dr. Boyd, that DHS
intends to assess the state of interoperability by the year
2005 by means of a nationwide survey. Can you tell us a little
bit about what questions this survey will contain and how does
DHS plan to establish a baseline measure of first responder
communications capabilities nationwide?
Dr. Boyd. Part of what the research will be responsible for
is developing the specific questions to be asked in the fields.
In general, these are the kinds of things that we're asking
them to do as part of this baseline. We want to know the degree
to which they actually have interoperable equipment, if they
actually have plans for interoperability, the degree to which
they have both agreements with adjacent jurisdictions and the
degree to which they're actually able to communicate with them.
And we're also going to ask them about future funding plans,
where they're either putting together plans they're going to
propose, or they're putting together plans which they actually
knows will be funded.
This will probably be a scientific sample survey, but it
won't be a written survey. I have a bias against written
surveys because in the Justice Department, we learned very
early on that if you use a written survey, it tends to go to
the person the agency can spare to fill the survey out, because
they get lots of requests to complete surveys.
So we'll actually be putting teams on the ground, going to,
looking at and helping agencies to identify what this model
level of interoperability is. Because we want to be able to
characterize where the Nation is now so that we actually have a
starting point against which to measure our performance and
against which we can take the statement of requirements and
figure out what the real shortfalls are nationally, so when we
come back to you we can answer some of those questions that
Congress is regularly asking us, and that is, what is the scope
of the problem and what is the cost of fixing it. No one can
reliably do that now. We will be able reliably to make that
kind of identification by the end of next year.
Ms. Washbourne. I know a data base will probably be highly
technical. Is it the FCC or DHS that will be responsible for
this data base, and who will fund it and upgrade it and require
that people put information in it that's helpful in their
communities, since it's going to take long for us to get our
act together on this?
Dr. Boyd. Well, there are two data bases that we're
concerned about. One of them is the data base for the baseline.
We will create that data base. Out of it we intend them to
create as well a set of self assessment tools that localities
can use to determine for themselves what their interoperability
gaps are. Then we intend to try to create a voluntary reporting
process, we have no authority to require one, but to ask the
States if when they're able to collect and use this
information, they would also share it with us.
The other data base is the CAPRAD data base, which of
course is a frequency data base. We intend to continue to
support that.
Ms. Washbourne. Mr. Muleta, do you have a responsibility to
collect this data or are you interested in it?
Mr. Muleta. I think, we have a licensing data base in which
as we issue licenses we record the information, the sort of
core information as to who the licensee is, whether or not
they're a public safety agency. Because a lot of different
rules and regulations are triggered by whether, under the
Telecommunications Act, based on the definition of the
licensee.
I think the underlying issues are data bases don't go to
actual use and actual types of systems that are being used. We
can sort of guess fairly well if somebody's signing up for 800
megahertz or for 450 what kind of systems they're using. But
their technology choices and things like that are not recorded,
they're not required because we don't go to regulating specific
types of equipment. We do, as you use certain channels, we do
have that.
I think we also try and balance sort of mandatory reporting
of this, because we have an obligation not to be overly
burdensome on the localities that are using it. So we are
using, like I said earlier, the sort of planning and the State
coordination committees to help us develop and provide opt-in
information to the extent people feel this is important that
they want to provide us with that education. That's the process
we've been using in the past.
Ms. Washbourne. Thank you. I have one more question for all
of you. With the recent advances in technology and the push
from the FCC to implement systems having greater spectral
efficiency, public safety agencies will be migrating to digital
technologies. Mr. Nash, in your written testimony you stated
that most digital technologies currently being marketed are
mutually incompatible and therefore just designating channels
or allocations for public safety users is not enough, that for
interoperability to occur, one and only one digital technology
can be employed on each channel. And the FCC must regulate
technical rules for all public safety bands.
Can each one of you comment on Mr. Nash's observation?
Dr. Boyd. We like the standards based approach, because we
believe there needs to be some minimal level of communications
capability. We would, however, encourage some caution in
establishing any kind of standards or rules that are too rigid,
because we don't want to interfere with innovation.
The approach we likely would take is to try to ensure that
as people build new systems, that they ensure that they also
build in a capability to be interoperable with other
disciplines and other jurisdictions. But we would not want to
limit too much what the new technologies, which may be
dramatically improved, in the future if we don't cripple
innovation.
But it's conceivable that something we haven't thought of
might also come along. So we wouldn't want to limit that
innovation, even though we would want to make sure that they
took into account interoperability requirements as they put the
systems in place.
Mr. Muleta. As I stated in my testimony, starting January
2005 we will require new systems that have interoperability
built into it. I think that the sort of bigger issue is
something that, as part of both the personal level
coordination, there's a need to do sort of backward
compatibility. Because a lot of local authorities have sort of
long term funding cycles. So you sort of get a bond issue and
it takes, it's designed for a 10 year system. And we're in an
environment for which the technology for radio communications
is rapidly evolving. It's down to about 3 to 5 year life
cycles. So part of the challenge is, if you mandate something,
and say you have to move in 5 years, you might leave a whole
bunch of people behind, because they might not be in the right
funding cycle to be able to support these things.
So we have to deal with legacy systems. So the Commission
has in the past adopted transition mechanisms that have
provided a long lead times and we hope, through all of the
initiatives that Dr. Boyd and other folks, both at the State
and local and Federal level are doing, that we can provide
positive incentives for people to adopt technologies a lot
faster. Our rules are really designed to get that as an opt-in
measure to get everybody to buy in and move along as fast as
possible.
But we are concerned not only about new technologies, but
making sure that old technologies can work with new
technologies.
Mr. Devine. The identification of the baseline and the
interoperable quotient, as it were, is something that's
important. Different areas, California has different needs than
Missouri than Connecticut. It's important that while we find
the common thread we don't necessarily try to put users in
those areas into boxes that aren't appropriate for them to be
effective.
So the systems that are out there, funding, as Mr. Muleta
indicated, you've got fire departments that generate revenue
from bake sales. You've got to keep in mind their funding
mechanism, and if they need to be elevated to a different
interoperable baseline, then they'll need some assistance in
funding. But every area has to be looked at as its unique needs
move on. And then of course look toward the future and whether
technology will be available for them.
Mr. Nash. It's my comment, so I obviously support it. I
think we are faced here with this dilemma that we move to
digital technology, it is very desirable to be able to migrate
our systems with the advance in technology. But we're also
faced with the reality of government funding. And government
funding at a local level, where money is just not available. We
often talk about a 10 year replacement cycle. The reality, when
you get down into the very small communities, is yes, they have
a 10 year replacement cycle, they're buying the equipment that
the State just discarded after being 10 years old. So their
equipment is now 20, 25 years old.
When you're dealing with those kinds of time lines, it's
critical that you have a stable standard that you're using for
interoperability purposes. Because as we look to
interoperability requirements and bringing together people from
not only widely dispersed geographic areas in a very large
event, but we're bringing together people from many different
levels of jurisdiction on a localized basis.
If we look simply at a wildland fire, those fires often,
they occur in forest lands. The first people on the scene are
often a volunteer fire department of the people that live in
that community. They are then augmented by State and Federal
forces that come with more resources. But a large number of the
people there are, they're local volunteers, they don't have the
money to be buying equipment every 3 years.
So we do need that stable level of interoperability. We
need to set the standards, and we need to have a process that
says yes, we're going to review those standards and
periodically update them. But we need to give serious thought
to the impact that a change in the standard is going to have on
the broad community that is using it.
Mr. Shays. At this time the Chair would recognize
Congresswoman Watson.
Ms. Watson. I want to thank the Chair. And also the
gentlemen at the table for providing us with what I feel is
most needed information.
I represent Los Angeles, California. And Mr. Muleta, I am
addressing my comments to you and I would like to extend an
invitation to possibly all of you. Being a part of Pacific Rim,
and the city of Los Angeles, the largest city in our State, as
Mr. Nash knows, we have a lot of vulnerability. I hosted a
meeting at the Culver City city hall last year where we brought
together the first responders. Culver City is in my district as
well.
And we were talking about a radio and that will be used for
homeland security, for first responders independently of the
others. And I suggested to them that we look at our major
organizations beyond first responders, like school districts
that roll out hundreds of thousands of students per day, and
being able to communicate with enroute and being able to
communicate with these school districts. Because if there is a
biological attack, for instance, they certainly are in
jeopardy, and I would think that those who meant to do us harm
would probably go to places where the most people congregate.
We want to tie not only first responders together but other
large organizations.
So Mr. Muleta, would you comment on what kinds of
communication systems are already in place? We feel that we,
being so far to the west, we're the last to receive our full
funding for homeland security. They tell me it's in the
pipeline, I want it there at the destination. And we need to
have a system. Our State could be divided up into three States,
Mr. Nash knows that well. And we're at the southern part of the
State. But we are the major city, like San Francisco is the
major city in the midland part of the State.
So it's absolutely critical that we focus on securing our
communications. And I'll just, in my comments for now, the fact
that on September 11 my office was at Carpet Point, which is
near the airport, and we were evacuated. The plane of course
never reached its destination. But it was so sensitive, that
area was so sensitive that they evacuated every facility near
the airport.
So who knows where and when the next attack will be? But I
know now we need to look at our communication systems, and I'd
like you to comment, please.
Mr. Muleta. Thank you. I spend a lot of time in California.
I've built a personal relationship with one of the public
safety officials in Los Angeles, and also with the folks in San
Bernardino County and Mr. Nash here as well. The issue that you
talked about is, do we have systems for dealing across other
organizations that influence the public safety system, such as
schools and other things. The FCC is looking comprehensively at
how all these systems interact with each other. One of the key
steps is not that there is not a lack of spectrum. I believe
most school systems have probably a private wireless system
that they use to communicate with their buses and things like
that.
I think the key step that's actually needed is something
that we've all focused on here, which is sort of integrated
planning, so that if an incident takes place, I was in Pasadena
in April and there was an incident at a school. I was watching
it on TV, in which somebody had come in with a gun or something
like that, and the whole school system was shut down. So you
had all the worst possible kinds of things, parents trying to
get their children, schools under lockdown and nobody knowing
what the incident was. All you had were these terrible visual
images.
I think yes, it's necessary. So I think there are enough
resources and enough communication systems available, but
what's really needed ultimately is a plan that says what do we
do with our children if we're under a lockdown situation, and
how do we communicate that to all the commanders that need to
take action, whether it's fire department, it's hazmat, it's
Federal, State, local, police, fire, whatever it is.
So I do think there are enough resources, but the planning
around the kinds of incidents we have to worry about is, I
think, probably the most important ingredient. Part of what we
have been driving at the FCC is to force and sort of opt in all
of the organizations that are involved to participate through
the statewide planning. Because that's where it's got to start.
You've got to have all the regional groups understand, here are
the kinds of threats, here's how we respond to them and here's
all our communication facilities, such as the baseline that Dr.
Boyd described. How do we make it all work for us seamlessly
the day we need it.
So I believe that thinking is beginning to permeate across
the 40,000 public safety agencies and all of the things we've
talked about today will encourage that and help that along.
Ms. Watson. Thank you for that.
We are used to all kinds of natural disasters, we throw an
earthquake, we have a fire going here and we have floods when
it rains. All these things we get used to, and we do a pretty
good job in responding. The sheriff in L.A. County started this
dedicated radio band. And when we met last year, I suggested
they bring other organizations. So I really need you to
probably come out again and let's do it. I think a dedicated
radio band, because you don't have a television always
available, but you can have a transistor radio. But a band
dedicated, so nothing else comes on that band but responding
and directing under homeland security.
It has already been started by our county sheriff, Sheriff
Baca. But I think we need to have other entities brought into
it. And I would be willing to hold a meeting, I did tell them
I'd followup with a meeting, bring some of the Feds in to talk
about it, and I'd like to invite you to take part in that and
we'll talk.
Mr. Muleta. I'd be happy to participate. Thank you very
much.
Mr. Shays. In my community that I represent, the Fourth
Congressional District in Connecticut, it's near New York City,
it's 17 towns. A few years ago we had a tabletop exercise in
Bridgeport, Connecticut. The thing that was most stunning, it
was a great tabletop exercise, lasted 2 days and had about 200
participants. It was really amazing. We had a chemical
explosion on an Amtrak train in Bridgeport, and we had people
who were first responders become ill and some of them were
theoretically killed.
But the thing that came out there was, the Department of
Health had no communication, forget whether it was
interoperable. And it was stunning, because they were a huge
part of the challenge.
And we had another tabletop exercise in Stanford,
Connecticut, and there it was an explosion at the railroad
station that was so close to the railroad tracks, obviously,
but also I-95, that both became inoperable, the transportation
network. The thing that was so stunning in that one was that
the Department of Education wasn't even at the table. And the
first thing that came up, in the middle of the day, was all
those workers who wanted to find their kids. And there was no
communication available to call the schools, to direct and so
on.
It pointed out the value of these tabletop exercises, both
communities are a lot better off because they've gone through
that. But it also pointed out some major weaknesses.
The GAO, in their report, says lives of first responders
and those whom they are trying to assist can be lost when first
responders cannot communicate effectively as needed. So we're
obviously talking just about first responders, we're talking
about their mission. It may fail.
And then GAO recommends that the Secretary of the
Department of Homeland Security continue to develop a
nationwide data base and common terminology for public safety
interoperability communications channels, two, assess
interoperability in specific locations against defined
requirements and, three, through Federal grant awards,
encourage States to establish and support a statewide body to
develop and implement detailed improvement, and four, encourage
that grant applicants be in compliance with statewide
interoperability plans once they are developed. Those are just
pretty sensible recommendations.
I'm curious, and I want a candid answer, I know it would be
honest, but do you think that if we had this hearing in 5 years
that we would be a long way from where we are today? Do you
think honestly, given the challenge and given the resources and
given the attention that we'll be pretty close to where we're
at right now? And 5 years from now, if you say it's different,
I want you to tell me what will be different. I'm going to
start with you, Mr. Jenkins.
Mr. Jenkins. I think in the absence of some changes that
will be not much further along than we are, and those two
changes that have to be made, or one is that there has to be
some clear notion of how all the participants are going to get
together to address this issue.
Mr. Shays. How the what get together?
Mr. Jenkins. How all the participants, Federal, State,
local, first responders get together to address this issue in a
comprehensive, coordinated way. There's still not a real way to
do that. There is some progress that has been made, but there
is still not a real way to do that.
This Office of Interoperability and Compatibility can
possibly----
Mr. Shays. OK, let's go to the next one. Go to the next
one. That's one. It will depend on how all the participants get
together.
Mr. Jenkins. How all the participants get together, if they
can overcome these cultural barriers. The cultural barriers
being that, if it's not my system, I don't want to play,
essentially. I want to be, or if I can be in control, I want to
play. But if somebody else is in control in a particular
incident, I don't want to play.
Mr. Shays. OK, that's one. What's the other one?
Mr. Jenkins. The other one has to do with setting time
lines, target dates. There need to be very specific target
dates for getting certain tasks done. And that there has to be
some sort of carrot and stick approach in terms of
accomplishing those tasks. That's one of the reasons we
recommend that grant guidance is one mechanism in order to do
that.
For example, right now it's not possible really for people
to not be able to buy equipment because they don't have a plan.
So we don't recommend that you not get the money to buy
equipment because you don't have a plan. But there should be a
point in the future where if you don't have a plan, a clear,
comprehensive plan, then you shouldn't get money to buy
equipment.
Mr. Shays. Before I go to the others, who can get all the
participants together? Whose shoulder does that rest on?
Mr. Jenkins. In terms of getting the people together, right
now it rests on the States and Federal Government together, I
think.
Mr. Shays. I may not hear you well. But I want to know, is
it like everyone's in charge so no one's in charge? Does
someone, if a commission was looking back 5 years from now and
they were saying, well, nothing happened, would they be able to
identify one person at this table or one organization, say, it
was your job to bring people together? Or is it just not
defined? Is that part of the problem?
Mr. Jenkins. I think it's the latter. I don't think it is
defined. It is not really defined who is in charge and what
their authority is to make it happen or to get people together.
It's a very amorphous thing.
Mr. Shays. Is that a failure of our designing the
Department of Homeland Security? Because the Department of
Homeland Security is clearly responsible.
Mr. Jenkins. I think it's partly inherent in the structure
of it. We have some work ongoing now in terms of how the
Department is trying to look at and implement an all hazards
approach in its programs across the Department. But there are
instances where it's difficult to say who's in charge. When we
were doing our work on this job, the report that was issued
today, there did seem to be some disconnect between ODP and
SAFECOM with regard to a couple of projects, the ODP project in
Kansas City and the SAFECOM project in Virginia.
Mr. Shays. OK.
Mr. Jenkins. Those two efforts did not seem to be
coordinated.
Mr. Shays. I'm really happy I asked the question I asked,
I'm happy you gave me the answer you gave, if it's right.
Because it depends, I don't want to be here--I want to be here
5 years from now. Let me say that again. I would like to be
back. I would like to be here 5 years from now, but I don't
want you all back here 5 years from now saying the same thing.
And so, Dr. Boyd. The question is, where will we be, will
there be much progress in the next 5 years, and if not, why
not?
Dr. Boyd. I think the answer to that is that things are
already significantly different. Let me talk a little bit about
my history with interoperability. Back in 1993, while I was
still in Justice, we thought it would be useful based on what
the public safety guys were telling us to create an
interoperable solution for law enforcement, just for law
enforcement.
Mr. Shays. When was this?
Dr. Boyd. This was in 1993. And we decided we would try to
do it in a single county, just to see what was involved in
doing it, to see whether it was feasible to achieve
interoperability in a practical way because it had already been
identified, a considerable time before that as a fairly serious
issue.
We worked with the Navy the fire dispatch center, who
provided us a panel on the condition that we would provide the
funding to implement a fairly straightforward and fairly
primitive switching system which nevertheless, provided more
interoperability than existed in the county. Implementing the
technology took about 30 days. Getting the players in the
county to work together--the local, State and Federal players--
took 2 years. That was just to get everybody to agree they
would be part of it.
Now, let's move forward--at that time, the money I had to
use to fund that was general money that we could scrape off
other programs. Now, let's move forward to now. DHS stood up,
of course, in March. We just took formal responsibility in S&T
for SAFECOM in July.
Here's how dramatically things have changed. At the
direction of the Secretary of Homeland Security, we have a
program called RAPIDCOM 9/30. What we've been asked to try to
achieve, is a command level incident based interoperability
capability for emergencies, something the footprint of about a
Twin Cities, and to be able to do that by the end of this year
in the 10 cities where the intelligence tells us the threat is
greatest. We're not going to stop there, but that's where we're
going to try to be by the end of September.
Mr. Shays. You're losing me a little bit. Where is this
story going?
Dr. Boyd. The point I want to make is now when we go to
these cities, we're accepted immediately by all the players who
are involved. All of them want to work with us to fix the
problem. There is, I think a much, much better understanding of
the importance of interoperability, and of course, we've had
interoperability money from Congress for the last 2 years for
the first time. Before there was never any money designated
specifically for that.
So I think you've seen some dramatic changes. And in the
Department, with the creation of the Office of Interoperability
and Compatibility, I think you're looking for the first time at
the development of a serious central office that's going to be
responsible for pulling all of these things together.
Mr. Shays. OK. I'm going to come back to you, but I want
you to respond to Mr. Jenkins' comments about it will depend on
if we get all the participants together, and that we need to
set targets and dates. I want you to tell me who gets all the
participants together.
Dr. Boyd. We frankly think that it's in large measure our
role to bring together folks at the national level, at the
Federal level, and to provide a model to help the States
actually bring people together in their States. In the State of
Virginia, for example, we were asked to come in and help to use
the SAFECOM model to bring folks in from the bottom up in the
development of a model State interoperability plan for
Virginia. We'll be publishing that report probably within the
next month or so.
And we hope to use Virginia as a model that we can provide
to others, in particular to those States that don't yet have
statewide interoperability plans, to help them understand----
Mr. Shays. It makes me a little uneasy though, as I think
about it, you were asked. I mean, it's nice you were asked. But
if you weren't asked, you wouldn't have done it. And that's
what makes me uneasy. And it may be you weren't given the
authority.
Dr. Boyd. We have no authority. We had to be asked in this
case, because we have no authority to cause any of these things
to happen.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Muleta.
Mr. Muleta. I'm a glass half full kind of guy. So I have to
tell you, actually, I think in 5 years at least at one level we
will have a lot of success, which would be on the planning
level. I think there is a wide level of recognition across all
of the people that are involved that planning is integral and
we have to do all the things we've been talking about.
I think the actual systems implementation is a very long
cycle. I don't think in 5 years it would be fair to actually
even measure whether we're successful or not. I think we can
look at the highest density population, New York City types of
areas, and we can actually probably make some measurement,
Kansas City, L.A. are all places we can probably see some
significant advances in terms of systems implementation.
But on the planning level, I actually do think
interoperability is something that all of the public safety
officials are always now talking about, whether it's e-911
interoperability or public safety radio interoperability. It is
a focus of all of our attention. And that is, primarily because
I think Congress is now focused on it and has provided the
funding, has provided the guidance.
Mr. Shays. I thought you had the capability to clear bands
and to make some extraordinarily significant decisions that
would protect communication bands.
Mr. Muleta. I think we're already putting those in place
already. However, I don't think we can compel any one
individual actor whether or not to use their system. So if they
decide to use it, yes, our rules, for example, 700 will provide
that mechanism for doing that.
Mr. Shays. Is that the be all and end all, or is that just
an indication that you did something dramatic that was helpful
and that you could do more of that?
Mr. Muleta. I think we need to do more of that. All of the
FCC decisions are driving toward that. The focus on the States
for planning purposes, the issue of moving to mandatory, I
think one of the core issues that Mr. Devine mentioned was
should we make State planning mandatory. It's under our system
of government, mandating that the States do something is
something that I think requires close, careful deliberation. I
think Congress can also be helpful, like I said, by providing
funding and guidance. We will do what we're authorized to do
under the Communications Act.
Mr. Shays. If we just see progress in terms of planning in
5 years, I'll consider that a gigantic failure. It's got to be
more than just planning in 5 years. And the glass if half full
to you. But I don't think the glass would be half full. I think
it would be one quarter full.
Mr. Muleta. If I can respond to that. I have, there are
40,000 public safety agencies, different geographies. So I just
want to make sure that we set out reasonable targets for folks
to achieve, if we plan. I would say that's 80 percent of the
issue. For us, 80 percent of the issue comes to people not
knowing what to do when an incident happens.
Mr. Shays. But right now you have 40,000 agencies that are
planning and implementing. And if they're just waiting for you
to plan, it just strikes me that they're going to be
implementing bad things.
Mr. Muleta. I think we're all in agreement, sir, that the
planning today is uncoordinated. When I say planning in 5 years
will be the fact that everybody here on the table can actually
hopefully pull out and say, here's the incident response and
the systems that we're all using, the baseline is there and
everybody can work off of that. I think that's a different type
of planning than what's done today. What's done today is very
local, doesn't take into account all the types of incidents
that we have to worry about. I think if you look 10 years back
and say, what were we worried about, it would be a very
different set of things locally than what we do today. That's
why I think in 5 years it will be a significant achievement for
us to get the planning right.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. Mr. Devine and Mr. Nash, I'd like you
both to jump in. Where are we going to be in 5 years, as you
see it now, not trying to be optimistic or pessimistic, just
realistic.
Mr. Devine. I'll go first. To me, it's directly
proportional to the mechanisms and the way we do business. If
outreach and dialog are increased and, such as Mr. Muleta
indicated, the planning, when a State has to create a plan, and
invites the local people to it, that's far more receptive at
the local level than somebody saying, you will do this. When
it's an inclusive environment and they come and they want to
participate in the creation of that plan, I think all of a
sudden you're ahead of the game, because now people want to
contribute and they realize that in the contribution, there's a
betterment and something for them in it.
So in that type of mandatory planning, I think all of a
sudden now you've got a dialog. Without the dialog, we will be
at the same place we are now in 5 years or worse. Any dialog
and outreach is an improvement. Then people begin to realize,
you know, we have these things in common, and the only thing
that stopped us from identifying that previously is because we
never talked to each other.
Mr. Shays. OK, let me just say to you that Senator Nunn
said that, I'm describing a little bit of progress here, is
what, people are starting to talk. But Senator Nunn said, a
cheetah chasing a deer, a deer running away from a cheetah may
be running in the right direction. The question is, how fast is
it running and how fast is the cheetah running. I'm not
encouraged by what you're telling me. I want some concrete
sense of where we are today versus where will be, then which is
more than just that we're communicating with each other. What
that says to me is things are so pathetic that gosh, if we just
started to talk with each other we would be a lot better off.
Mr. Devine. I think that's the greatest impediment,
frankly. The lack of dialog is non-existent.
Mr. Shays. But the dialog is a process to get to something
else. And you're telling me that we don't even have the dialog.
Mr. Devine. Correct. What I'm saying is once the dialog is
created, I think we'll find that in many areas, they are not
too far part, the solutions aren't that far away. But until
it's ever communicated, they'll never realize that.
Mr. Shays. OK. Mr. Nash.
Mr. Nash. I would agree. I think what's going on right now
is that there are several funding programs----
Mr. Shays. You would agree with what?
Mr. Nash. I don't think things are going to be much better.
In some ways, I think they could be worse, because we think
they're better. And that's what concerns me, is that funding
programs today are very short cycled. People are throwing money
at it. They're buying equipment based on some salesman's
promise that it's going to make things better. Yet they really
don't understand what the problem is, or how the solution fits
the problem. But they have a solution. So now they believe they
have it taken care of. And that's what really concerns me.
I think we really do need some serious level planning, and
we need to have people sit down and whether it's tabletop
exercises or what it is, that you sit down and work through
some of these things, and you figure out who do you need to
talk to and why do you need to be able to talk to them. Then
you look at how can I do that. It is not necessarily everybody
together on one big radio system. Because quite frankly, one
big radio system, where everybody's trying to talk at once, you
have no communication.
I mentioned that I was recently at a presentation about the
communications aspect of President Reagan's funeral. Something
that really caught my attention there was, the comment was made
that the different agencies came together and they agreed to
communicate with each other. That was the essential point. It
wasn't a matter of they were all on one radio system or that
they could all talk to each other. They agreed to communicate
with each other. And in some cases that meant they were in
different rooms of a building, they were in different trailers
parked around that building, they were on different radio
systems.
But it all came off very well because they had agreed to
communicate with each other and expressed their needs, and
asked each other for help to do those things. That's what's
critical. I really think the planning aspect of it is very
critical, and we need to support the planning aspect and get
not just public safety officials, but as you mentioned, when
you deal with a big disaster, it goes beyond simply police,
fire and EMS. You now have utilities involved, you have the
telephone companies, you have businesses, you have the schools,
you have the hospitals, you have health care officials, you
have disaster organizations. It gets huge very quickly.
Mr. Shays. Well, I'm left with the fact that 5 years from
now, it's not going to be all that different. And I'm a pretty
optimistic person. Because what I think is happening right now
is, I think the Department of Homeland Security has to exert
authority almost like the courts did a long, long time ago, and
then have someone say they don't have the right to do it. They
have to just, I think when I voted for the Department of
Homeland Security, I voted for believing that we had this huge
challenge and that the Department needed to be there to get all
these disparate players cooperating.
So that's one view I have. The other view I have is the
FCC's got to make some decisions. And every year they wait,
it's going to be more costly. And that they are going to be
tough decisions, and they are going to be criticized by a lot
of people. You're going to be criticized anyway.
So that's kind of what I'm getting from this panel. I mean,
I've got a lot of important information, but that's kind of
what I'm left with. And it tells me I think what our committee
could, the full committee could be recommending when we write a
report.
Any comment? I'd like to get to the next panel. This room
is going to be used at 2 by another subcommittee. There's lots
more we could ask. Is there anything that any of you would like
to put on the record? Mr. Devine.
Mr. Devine. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Muleta indicated earlier
that with regard to SIEC and mandating of that, in many States
there are planning committees. And to make sure, I think what
he had indicated was, the FCC is probably hesitant to require
something of a State, whether it has something or not. But if
it has something currently existing, they are hesitant to
duplicate that or force that down upon the State in the form of
a mandate.
So what it might require is some communication with the
States to say, you need one of these bodies. If you have one,
it should be inclusive, it should include locals, it shouldn't
be just State government. It should include everybody, all of
the people who are going to be responding, and maybe they can
use that in a way to communicate to the State and say, if you
have one, just make sure it does these things, rather than
forcing another entity on them or another body.
Mr. Shays. I hear you. And I also am struck by the fact
that maybe the Department of Homeland Security, it gets
criticized by local communities. But maybe it needs to step in
and acknowledge what States are really doing a great job and
are good models, and which States are just simply dropping the
ball.
Mr. Devine. We agree entirely. In fact, part of what we're
working to do now and as we've done with Virginia and other
States, South Dakota, some of the experiences out of California
and Missouri, is to try to collect those best practices.
Because they provide a variety and enough range of flexibility
among them that we think a lot of States could take some really
valuable lessons from these. So a key part of what we're trying
to do is sort of bottle that information so we can share it
with all the rest of the States.
As you've heard, a number of States not only don't have a
body to coordinate this, they don't have an SIEC, neither do
they have any other kind of a structure to help coordinate
these things at the State level.
Mr. Shays. And in the State of Connecticut, we don't even
have counties to help organize.
Anybody else who would like to put something in the record?
Mr. Jenkins.
Mr. Jenkins. This point has been made in our report, but I
think it's very important, and that is that to the extent that
the grant guidance itself and the way the Federal grants are
structured actually encourages this sort of fragmented
approach, and they do, the way that they're structured. They're
part of the problem, they're not part of the solution. And I
think one of the things that needs to be looked at is the way
that grants are structured, the number, the purposes that they
can be used for and the accountability for them.
Right now, the fragmented nature of Federal grant structure
actually makes it difficult for localities or regions to come
together and use those different grants for a common purpose.
That is something that needs to be addressed as well.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Devine.
Mr. Devine. Just one more quick note, with regard to Mr.
Jenkins' comment. In Missouri, we had an 18 county region
wanting to apply for communications equipment through the grant
process as a region. And literally, the guidelines didn't allow
that. It required up to a county level.
So here you're actually negating the cooperation and
coordination between these people by the regulations saying,
no, you can't apply for that as one, as an 18 county entity. It
has to be 18 separate requests, which bleeds down into a whole
bunch of other complicated matters. So it's an interesting
point.
Mr. Shays. Well, we have our work cut out for us. We're all
people of good will here, I know. But ultimately, I'm struck,
Dr. Boyd, by the fact that somebody has to be in charge of
this. And I will tell you, I believe ultimately, most Members
of Congress thought it was the Department of Homeland Security
that would help be the basis of it. If you are so inclined to
start to exert more authority on this, you'll find a number of
people, or at least get the Department to, that will say you're
doing your job.
Thank you all very, very much. We appreciate it a lot.
We have our second panel, which is Mr. Hanford Thomas,
director of the New York Statewide Wireless Interoperability
Network; Mr. William Gardner, radio shop supervisor, Suffolk
County, NY, Police Headquarters; Mr. Glenn Corbett, Department
of Public Management, John Jay College of Criminal Justice,
City University of New York. We invite all three to stay
standing and we will swear you in.
Thank you very much. I'd just like to say, for the first
panel and second panel, we will be writing letters of questions
that we didn't get to and it would be helpful to get a
response. Thank you all.
Mr. Thomas, Mr. Gardner, Mr. Corbett, if you'd stay
standing, please. If there is anyone else that is joining you
in that dialog, we have Mr. Gardner in the middle.
Please raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Shays. Note for the record that all three witnesses
have responded in the affirmative.
You all have been here for the first panel and that's
helpful, because you might want to make comments about that as
well. Mr. Thomas, we'll go with you and then Mr. Gardner and
then Mr. Corbett. We welcome your comments, your statement will
be on the record if you want to just ad lib based on what
you've heard already, feel free. It's your choice.
Mr. Thomas.
STATEMENTS OF HANFORD C. THOMAS, DIRECTOR, STATEWIDE WIRELESS
NETWORK PROJECT, NEW YORK STATE OFFICE FOR TECHNOLOGY; WILLIAM
J. GARDNER, SUPERVISOR, SUFFOLK COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT,
TECHNICAL SERVICES SECTION, SUFFOLK COUNTY, LONG ISLAND, NY;
AND PROFESSOR GLENN P. CORBETT, JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL
JUSTICE
Mr. Thomas. Good afternoon, Chairman and members of the
subcommittee. I want to thank the subcommittee chair for the
opportunity to testify today regarding the New York State
statewide wireless network, an integrated, statewide land
mobile and radio network for both State and local emergency
first responders.
My name is Hanford Thomas. I'm the Director of the
Statewide Wireless Project under the Office for Technology. I
was appointed in January 2000 and I'm responsible for the
development and implementation of an integrated wireless land
mobile radio network with statewide coverage, which will
provide a common communication platform for New York State's
public safety and public service agencies.
The project is one of the largest technology projects ever
undertaken in the State, and the first comprehensive upgrade of
statewide radio communications in more than 30 years.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Thomas, I'm going to interrupt you. We have
Carolyn Maloney, who wanted to make sure that this panel was
going to be part of our hearing. Regretfully, the stock option
goes to the Floor and she has an amendment. I would like her to
be able to make a statement then I'll come right back to you.
Mrs. Maloney. I made an opening statement. I just want to
thank the chairman again and all of you for your work. I can't
think of anything more important than having a communication
system that works. I just find it, I'm mystified that there
hasn't been more of an effort focused on communications and to
getting the systems working.
I specifically asked for a panel on New York, because we
still remain target No. 1, and we still have radios. The radios
that didn't work on September 11 still do not work. And any
insight that you can give us on how we can move this forward
will be greatly appreciated.
I am saddened that I can't stay to hear your testimony. I
have, literally I have to debate on the Floor on something that
I feel is very important to the safety and soundness of our
financial markets. So I regret that I have to leave. My staff
assistant is here, and I thank the chairman.
Mr. Shays. We'll make sure they pay close attention.
[Laughter.]
Thank you.
I'm sorry, Mr. Thomas, I wanted that to be on the record.
Thank you.
Mr. Thomas. The State of New York is working on many fronts
involving enhanced operability. With the Canadian border to our
north and New York City in the south, we are working to develop
operational plans and technical capability to address all
issues.
The Canadian border activity brings together New York State
Police, Federal agencies and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
to control border crossings and apprehend terrorists. These
activities required shared, secure radio communications. My
office is engaged in the development of a statewide wireless
radio network. We are near the end of an extensive procurement
practice. We have selected a prime contractor for the proposed
award and are currently in final contract negotiations. SWN
will be used by all State agencies and will also be available
for use by other government entities, including authorities,
counties and other local government and Federal agencies.
The systems that exist today do not provide adequate
coverage throughout the State. As a matter of fact, there are
areas where coverage is spotty or non-existent. It is currently
possible in some areas of the State that an emergency medical
services team enroute to a medical facility with a critically
ill patient might at times be unable to communicate or a police
officer would be unable to relay vital information regarding a
pursuit.
To address these issues which place both the public and the
public safety community at risk, the Statewide Wireless Network
specifications require that the network provide 90 percent
coverage on road and navigable waterways and 95 percent area
coverage in each county in order to eliminate any potential for
lost communications. In addition, the Statewide Wireless
Network requirements call for 97 percent portable coverage in
street in New York City.
Just as standard voice communications have given way to
electronic transfer of data in the office environment, the need
for data transport to supplement voice and mobile
communications is equally important. The purpose of
interoperability is not whether government agencies can
communicate, but whether or not they can communicate in a way
that enhances their ability to respond effectively in a public
safety crisis. Today, that capability is severely constrained
by outmoded technology and disparate radio systems operating on
different frequency bands. Individual agencies in New York
State have a basic ability to communicate, but their ability to
communicate between agencies in real time over wide areas is
extremely limited.
The most robust form of interoperability today is achieved
by having all or a large number of agencies operating on the
same or similar communications networks. Interoperability is
seamless with no technology or geographic limitations. For
those agencies whose current communications systems require
replacement, joining a multi-agency shared network such as the
Statewide Wireless Network is a cost effective way to achieve
the highest level of interoperability. For those agencies that
elect to maintain their own networks, the wireless network will
offer them the option of linking to the statewide network. This
will allow those agencies to communicate to other public safety
agencies which they otherwise would not be able to do easily or
on an expansive basis.
An important public policy goal is fostering State and
local partnerships. The Statewide Wireless Network encourages
voluntary partnerships with local governments. The SWN advisory
council and other outreach activities have been and will
continue to be used to identify and address local government
needs.
The Statewide Wireless Network will replace the outdated
standalone State agency systems and will be used for day-to-day
operations, as well as disaster and crisis situations. The new
radio network will make it easier for all agencies to
communicate in both day-to-day and crisis situations and allow
agency to agency communications where none exist today. New
York State's Statewide Wireless Network will bring public
safety communications in New York State into the 21st century
by bringing as many as 65,000 Federal, State and local
government users under one modern communications network, and
providing links into other existing Federal and local
government communications and data networks. SWN will
facilitate full, seamless interoperability between the
Statewide Wireless Network participating agencies any time, any
place in New York State.
New York State continues to seek use of public safety
communication spectrum promised under the 1997 Balanced Budget
Act in the 700 megahertz band width as part of crucial homeland
security planning. To gain useful access to the spectrum, two
actions must occur. First, the commercial television
broadcasters must be compelled to vacate the spectrum no later
than the current 2006 deadlines. Second, the FCC must
facilitate frequency harmonization with Canada.
To date, the FCC continues to license use of 700 megahertz
public safety spectrum to low powered television stations in
the New York City area, even though the wireless network is
already licensed to operate on these same frequencies. This
will only create additional obstacles which must be overcome as
we build out the statewide wireless network.
The FCC is currently negotiating with Industry Canada to
harmonize use of 700 megahertz public safety band frequencies
across the U.S.-Canadian border. It is critical that these
negotiations be completed as soon as possible. At the same
time, resolution of this issue alone will not allow New York
State public safety agencies access to the new spectrum.
Commercial television broadcasters must be compelled to vacate
the spectrum again no later than the 2006 deadline.
The Office for Technology has supported the development of
the consensus plan and anxiously awaits the final details. The
Statewide Wireless Network holds approximately 450 licenses
that will be affected by the plan, and is one of the major
public safety license holders in the country. As was
accommodated within the FCC 700 megahertz plan, New York State
would like the FCC to issue New York State's 800 megahertz
frequency replacements in a block for statewide use.
Large scale shared-use systems provide optimum efficiency
in the use of spectrum. Trunking systems provide better
spectrum utilization. In addition, the system can be designed
and built for the future, which presently includes benchmarks
for mandatory conversion to narrow band channels. By
participating in a single large scale system, interoperability
between the multiple agencies' systems users is inherently
optimized.
Interoperability systems to date have been constructed on a
limited basis to meet minimal requirements. Systems that have
been implemented for mobile coverage will be inadequate for
portable coverage inside buildings. However, this limited
deployment does not ensure that units arriving from distant
areas will be equipped for operation on the implemented
channels. In order to acquire the significant quantities of
equipment necessary to build large area radio coverage on the
FCC and NTIA designated interoperability channels, funding
support will be required.
That is the conclusion of my comments.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Thomas follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Thomas.
Mr. Gardner.
Mr. Gardner. Thank you for the opportunity to submit my
testimony and to be present at this meeting. My name is William
Gardner, and I'm a lifelong resident of Suffolk County, New
York. I'm the Supervisor of the Technical Services section of
the Suffolk County Police Department, 13th largest police
department in the country.
When I joined the Department in 1977, we had five single
site base stations for police communications, one shot of
microwave radio and a handful of computers. In the year 2004,
today, the police communications system has a 22 channel, 800
megahertz trunk system with 8,000 users on it, 179 different
base stations at 13 different sites, we have a mobile data
computer system with 700 computers in sector cars.
There is also a separate infrastructure that runs that
mobile data computer system using 13 UHF frequencies at 13
different sites. In addition, we have a digital microwave radio
system with a 6,000 channel capacity at 17 different sites.
Since 1993, Suffolk has invested more than $50 million in
these systems. Some of that money has come from COPS MORE
grants. We had a $15 million grant back in 1997 or 1998, but at
that level of investment, I was picking up on what the
gentleman from New York was saying, the State, I think we're at
odds a little bit about building the statewide infrastructure.
We've got $50 million invested in our system. Our neighbor,
Nassau County, currently has an RFP out on the street. They're
looking to spend $48 million to build out their system. I think
this problem of communication and who's in charge here, who's
running the show, gets to be problematic.
As our systems expanded, so did interoperability. The trunk
system ties together, the Suffolk County trunk system ties
together Federal, State, county, town and village agencies. All
23 individual police departments in our county have access to
the trunk system. Any of the 8,000 users can talk to any other
user on that system.
For mass response situations, there are law enforcement
only talk groups, for county-wide disasters, we have county-
wide talk groups that allow all agencies access to any other
agency. We also have the capability of direct communications to
fire rescue dispatch. This has all been done since 1995.
Radio communications with our neighbor, Nassau County and
New York City still are very much lacking. I'm sorry to say
that if a similar event to September 11 happened tomorrow, we
would be in exactly the same communications problem that we
were almost 3 years ago. We have no radios that are compatible
with the system. Nassau County has only a handful of radios
that are compatible with the system.
Only recently, we established a radio link to Nassau Police
headquarters. But without some intermediate intervention, such
as that by a duty officer or watch commander, there is no
direct radio communication between the departments. Similar
circumstances exist for communications with NYPD.
There are many reasons and causes for this lack of
interoperability. Agencies build or are forced to build systems
that they know cannot communicate with other agencies due to
their own frequency, monetary or operational constraints. To
improve our own interoperability in our area, the Suffolk
police requested and were granted a Federal grant through
Congressman Steve Israel's office, specifically to assist with
interoperability with NYPD and Nassau County. The grant will
allow the Suffolk police agencies to utilize the NYMAC UHF
channels. Those channels were granted to us by the FCC.
This grant request was a direct result of the events of
September 11 where some 200 police from Suffolk County traveled
to New York City, only to find a black hole of communications.
The officers were out of range of the Suffolk system and they
could not talk to any New York city officers, as we did not
have any radios that were compatible with their system.
Again, should a similar situation arise today, utilizing
the grant radios which, if I can just backtrack a bit, it took
2 years from grant approval to grant procurement. We only got
the final OK from our own legislature last month in June. It
took us 2 years from start to finish to make that grant and get
the money. And we still don't have the equipment on the street.
With the grant money, should a similar situation arise
today, utilizing these grant radios, officers will now be able
to communicate directly to any of the five city boroughs and
directly to New York City police dispatch. The grant will also
extend that UHF system out into Nassau and Suffolk Counties.
This will allow NYPD officers and NYPD personnel as they come
out onto Long Island, they will be able to utilize their own
radios to talk on a system that we will maintain. They can
commenced to us and we can communicate to them.
Finally, the grant will also enhance the coverage of the
800 megahertz national channels. We will extend the backbone of
the national channels to three new locations, one in Nassau and
two in Suffolk. NYPD will be provided with radio control
stations which will tie in directly to these national channels.
State participation, from my point of view, up to this
point has been minimal, almost non-existent in the metropolitan
area. Now it is pursuing a statewide wireless system intended
to provide connectivity throughout the State for certain State
agencies and local agencies and provide improved communication
to other localities. Personally, I have reservations about this
from a local perspective, but the general idea of improving
interoperability and interconnectivity is a worthwhile pursuit.
The FCC has been active locally through the efforts of
Region 8 planning committee. By opening up the 800 megahertz
spectrum, much needed new spectrum became available in the
region. However, that available spectrum was quickly used up
and there are no new frequencies available in the region on the
800 megahertz spectrum.
Fire departments in Suffolk County, for example, cannot be
accommodated without additional frequencies. This and similar
problems led to the opening of they 700 megahertz spectrum and
the 4.9 gig spectrum, and Region 8 is now setting rules and
guidelines for its use. We desperately need this new frequency
spectrum.
In my opinion, a major component of the FCC's future
involvement is the adoption of the consensus plan for rebanding
users within the 800 megahertz spectrum. Public Safety is a
strong advocate of the consensus plan, which will separate the
useable spectrums of commercial and public safety, greatly
reduce interference, add more frequencies to the public safety
pool, and make the 800 and 700 megahertz spectrums a contiguous
spread of public safety only spectrum. I consider the consensus
plan to be an extremely critical component of improving
communications period, as well as having the capability of
greatly improving future interoperability.
I just want to take 1 second and say personally, this is,
while it's not totally analogous, I think back to what we did
in Y2K. I hear these stories about planning for 3 years and 5
years and 7 years, and why we can't do this and we can't do
that now. I know that when we worked to solve what was really a
Y2K problem, we came together, we discussed issues at all
levels of government. We had meetings, conferences. We brought
together State, local and Federal Governments, commercial
agencies, public agencies. We exchanged ideas, discussed
issues. We identified problems and solutions and we implemented
them.
Much was made of the alleged scare tactics relative to Y2K
when nothing of major proportions happened. However, I am
firmly convinced that nothing major happened because of the
efforts at all levels of government. We did such a great job
that we overcame those obstacles in our path. If we can apply
the same dedication and same level of cooperation, we can also
overcome the obstacles of full interoperability.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gardner follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Gardner.
Mr. Corbett.
Mr. Corbett. Chairman Shays and members of the House
Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and
International Relations, my name is Glenn P. Corbett. I'm the
Assistant Professor of Fire Science at John Jay College in New
York City. I also serve as a captain in the Waldwick, New
Jersey fire department and as technical editor of Fire
Engineering magazine, a 127 year old fire service trade
journal. I want to thank you for inviting me to speak on this
very important topic of public safety communications. I'd like
to provide yo my observations of emergency communications in
the New York City metropolitan area as well as provide you with
a set of general recommendations.
As has been noted before, effective communications are the
life blood of all emergency responses, determining the level of
success that is achieved. As has been well documented, gaps in
communications had disastrous results at the World Trade Center
on September 11. More than 100 firefighters likely never heard
evacuation orders to leave the north tower, although police
officers in the same structure were able to escape. Lack of
radio interoperability and separate command structures in New
York City's fire department and police department stood in the
way of survival of these firefighters.
Nearly 3 years have passed since the disaster at the World
Trade Center, with some progress having been made in New York
City and the metropolitan region. We still have a very long way
to go, however. Significant monetary, technical, bureaucratic
and political hurdles are in our path. Since September 11, the
NYPD and FDNY have taken steps to integrate their
communications at large scale incidents. They have for example
ensured that NYPD helicopters will carry FDNY chiefs, who can
then communicate to FDNY units on the ground. They've also
provided radio equipment to senior level FDNY and NYPD officers
who can communicate with each other.
The FDNY itself has instituted the use of a post-radio
system, a portable signal amplifier that allows for better
communications in high rise structures. The unit is, however,
currently limited to command officer to command officer radio
transmissions and must be physically taken up in the building
to a floor near the fire floor or floor where the incident is
taking place.
Utilization of this equipment replaces an extra middle man
in the communications chain. For example, orders to evacuate a
building from the lobby command post must first go through the
chief officer on the fire floor and then be re-communicated to
the firefighters themselves. Many consider this to be, this
post radio to be a temporary fix with a long term permanent
solution still years away.
These improvements still leave significant problems to
overcome. The FDNY still cannot communicate effectively in
subway locales, although plans are apparently underway to
improve the situation. This is the case despite the fact that
the metropolitan transit authority has had subway communication
system radio capabilities for some time. It must be pointed out
that poor communications are not just a radio problem, but an
issue involving radios, antennas, signal amplifiers, repeaters
and the like. For example, achieving proper communications in a
tall high rise building may necessitate the use of powerful
radios in conjunction with a repeater installed inside the
building.
Who pays for this equipment is also at issue. While the
radio is typically a city purchase, the repeater may need to be
purchased and installed by the building owner.
Perhaps even more problematic is the issue of
interoperability in the context of New York City's new city-
wide incident command system, or CIMS. This new response
protocol in my opinion greatly complicates response to
chemical, biological and radiological terrorist attacks and
what would be considered to be normal hazardous materials
releases. It places the NYPD in charge of assessment, while
placing FDNY in charge of life safety of such incidents. The
net result is that both the FDNY and NYPD have personnel
operating in dangerous hot zones of the incident, both under
separate tactical level commanders and operating with different
communications equipment.
Communications problems are woven throughout this New York
City battle of the badges, most recently surfacing during a
mock drill involving a subway attack. A firefighter was thrown
to the ground when he attempted to pass a police officer who
was securing an area due to the presence of a suspected
secondary explosive device. It's very possible that firefighter
never understood that because it wasn't communicated to him.
Communication challenges remain outside New York City as
well. Bergen County, where I serve as a fire captain, has 69
fire departments and over 100 police and emergency medical
service agencies. This multiplicity of emergency response
organizations obviously complicates communications. While nine
mutual aid organizations have existed for decades to coordinate
the 69 fire departments within Bergen County, radio frequency
and channel standardization has been difficult at best.
Although Bergen County has established a common frequency for
all fire apparatus, this single one frequency would be quickly
overloaded in any major disaster.
Only recently have portable radios been issued to
coordinators of these nine mutual aid groups to organize large
scale responses. These radios, however, only allow for
communication between the mutual aid coordinators and Bergen
County's Office of Emergency Management. Interoperability
between the multitude of agencies within Bergen County at a
large scale incident, especially at the tactical level, remains
an elusive need.
Considering that another major terrorist attack on the
order of September 11 in the New York City area would
necessitate a region wide response involving multiple counties
and possibly States, the problems grow exponentially. Although
some progress in terms of integrating a multi-jurisdictional
response has been made at the State level in both New Jersey
and New York, I do not believe that the tangled communications
snake pit has been straightened out.
While New York City and its metropolitan regions are unique
in many respects, many of the public safety communications
issues that I have identified are applicable across the
country. I have prepared the following recommendations to
address these concerns.
The first one is that the Department of Homeland Security
Office of Interoperability and Compatibility must take a
proactive role in equipment purchases at the State and local
levels. Secretary Ridge recently announced the creation of this
office within DHS. There is a critical need for this entity to
take a close look at how Federal funds are being disbursed for
acquisition of communications equipment at the State and local
levels, specifically how these purchases fit into the region
wide big picture in each State.
This review could take place as part of DHS' role in the
review of local emergency operations plans through the
enactment of the National Incident Management System protocol.
DHS also must play a more forceful role in encouraging
interstate communication agreements where appropriate.
The second idea is that States should be more forceful in
assuring proper communications planning at the county and local
levels. The States play a crucial role in overcoming turf
battles within the borders. Too often, inter-jurisdictional
jealousies lead to improper response protocols with a
corresponding communications gap.
A third idea would be that we need to ensure
interoperability at the responder tactical level. This is
something I didn't really hear a lot about today. This is the
issue where basically, we have a concern that although one
jurisdiction can talk to another, we don't have the
interoperability between jurisdictions at the lower levels, the
firefighters and police officers.
Not that police officers and firefighters have to talk
together, but if I would find myself, for example, in Stanford,
Connecticut responding from Bergen County for whatever reason,
I have no idea what channels or radios or equipment would even
be utilized there. So we've got to make sure that this is not
just a senior level State or county-wide situation, that this
is in fact something that goes all the way down to the actual
people where the rubber meets the road, basically.
And the fourth suggestion I would have is that SAFECOM
should increase their efforts to ensure the equipment is
interchangeable. Proprietary technology creates immense
barriers to purchases by State and local governments.
Jurisdictions should not find themselves locked into a
particular vendor and equipment purchases should not be an
impediment to interoperable communications.
That's something also I didn't hear a lot about today but I
would encourage it. That's a very important thing, that
whatever equipment is purchased needs to be interchangeable,
that we can't have operating platforms, radio platforms that
don't match across jurisdictions.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify. I
welcome any questions that you might have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Corbett follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you. Professor Corbett, because of your
honesty, I'd like to ask unanimous consent to bestow on
Professor Glenn Corbett an honorary doctorate in national
security communication. Your degree will be your name plate
that says Dr. Corbett.
Mr. Corbett. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Corbett. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. It's great to have this power. [Laughter.]
I want to ask you, Mr. Gardner, the communications that you
have with Nassau, should I in a sense visualize it like a red
phone that you pick up and the only way you can communicate
with Nassau is through that red phone? Or do you have the
capability just integrated into your existing system and can
Nassau communicate with any of your players or just the one
holding the phone?
Mr. Gardner. Two parts. It starts out as a hot phone,
basically. It's from duty officer to duty officer. It cannot be
activated by anybody out in the field, it has to be requested
of somebody at the duty officer's position, for instance, in
Suffolk County they can get on a talk group which is a radio
channel dedicated specifically to talk only to Nassau County
duty officer. On the Nassau County end, the Nassau County PD
can then take one of their frequency bands, highway band,
precinct band, whatever they want, patch it onto that talk
group, patch it onto our system through the patch that the duty
officers just made, and they can talk to any player in Suffolk
County.
Mr. Shays. So if the two gatekeepers choose to, almost
anyone in Suffolk can talk to anyone in Nassau?
Mr. Gardner. Correct. But it must have that third party
intervention. It must be activated on both ends. But those are
both, those are 7 day, 24 hours a day positions. There is
always someone there at both of those positions. And basically
it's not a phone, it's actually getting on a radio.
Mr. Shays. I understand.
Mr. Gardner. It's just basically me talking to you, when
you hear that radio, you know it's me talking to you, pick it
up, activate a patch on your end, and I do it on mine and we're
in business.
Mr. Shays. OK. Would both of you comment about the SWN
system, what New York is doing? What are its positives, what
are its negatives?
Mr. Gardner. The hangups that I see is, and again, this is
only my personal opinion, and I'm not nearly as smart as I'd
like to be, we have invested locally, and I'm going to say
Nassau and Suffolk County, over $100 million if you include
Nassau's bid that just hit the street last week. We have an
extremely robust infrastructure that talks for the length and
breadth of Suffolk County. We have Federal, State and local
agencies on it. There are 8,000 radios already utilizing it.
I can't see a statewide system coming in and replacing that
and doing anything better than we do. I don't know the full
extent of what they're going to do within Suffolk County,
whether they just want to talk or latch onto our system. But
then if that's the case, then from a personal and taxpayer
perspective, the amount of money that it's going to cost to
build this system statewide does not benefit me to the amount
of investment that I'm going to be getting from Nassau, Suffolk
and New York City to put into this project.
Mr. Shays. Professor Corbett.
Mr. Corbett. I'm not knowledgeable enough, I think, to
speak on that issue as far as statewide communications within
New York State goes.
Mr. Shays. In New York City itself, can someone speak to
this issue, have they resolved how you communicate around
buildings and the obstructions that occur? Is that a solvable
problem without a lot of expense?
Mr. Gardner. If I may, I'm a member of NYMAC, New York
Metropolitan Area Advisory Committee for the FCC. We work
fairly well together with the city. The city doesn't
necessarily have coverage problems as much as they have the
interoperability problems. Their coverage problems are not
nearly as bad as they used to be. Their system has gotten more
robust, and robust to the point where they can almost fully
operate on portable radios throughout the city. That's always
been their intention. And that is not nearly as much a problem
as the interoperability questions.
But we've even approached them, the FCC almost
serendipitously, the day before September 11, those licenses,
they're called the INTEROP channels in New York City, they
operate in the UHF range, because those are radios that New
York City already had. It was a question of the tail shaking
the dog here.
We have an 800 megahertz system that they can't talk to. We
can't talk to their UHF system. Nassau couldn't talk to us. But
you had this big 8,000 pound gorilla in New York City with
almost 30,000 radios. You weren't going to ask them to change
and go to the national system.
So what we did is through the efforts of the NYMAC
committee and the FCC, we got 6 INTEROP channels specifically
for interoperability with and within New York City. Those
channels are dedicated to interoperability and are manned 24
hours a day by the city.
Going back to one of the problems that was mentioned
earlier, these timeframes that it takes to get this things
going, those frequencies had only been established for probably
7 or 8 days as being legally usable within the city by the FCC.
If they had been done 6 months prior, maybe other radios could
have been programmed in time to utilize them while we went into
the city. Maybe other city agencies could have used them. Maybe
the fire department could have used them.
We worked at that problem for almost 7 years to get it
resolved. It did ultimately get resolved, but it just takes so
long to get these things done.
Mr. Shays. Professor Corbett.
Mr. Corbett. I would actually disagree with Mr. Gardner as
far as the city goes. The fire department, I don't believe, is
anywhere near where they need to be as far as communications
within the subways.
Mr. Gardner. I don't want to argue, but we were talking
police. I didn't mention fire.
Mr. Shays. OK. I know, you were talking police. So let me
just say, so the police we think are OK but the fire we think
we've got a challenge?
Mr. Corbett. Yes. And I think that was, the police have a
much more robust system within New York City. The fire
department doesn't have near as much ability to communicate
throughout the city. That's one of the major challenges that
they have before them. And again, this post radio was an
attempt, I guess a temporary fix to try to address that issue,
at least in high rises. But they have significant gaps.
To tell you the truth, I mean, I haven't seen evidence that
they've actually identified where all these areas are within
New York City. I mean, the logical places, but I don't know
that they've done a comprehensive effort to try and identify
every square inch of New York and where those problems are.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Gardner, is there within Suffolk County the
capability for fire and police and everyone to communicate with
each other?
Mr. Gardner. Yes, we can. Not on an individual radio to
radio basis, but we can talk to fire dispatch and fire dispatch
can communicate on all the police precinct channels and all the
police county-wide channels.
Mr. Shays. Is that same gatekeeper model where----
Mr. Gardner. No, sir. Those are established talk groups on
the radio system. They are usable without any level of
intermediate action. They are in the radios and ready to go.
Mr. Shays. So the $50 million you're talking about is just
basically within the police department in Suffolk?
Mr. Gardner. Not necessarily, sir. I am a member of the
police department, but we also manage, because of the money
invested in it, our system, as I said earlier. It takes in
Federal agencies, State agencies, county agencies, town and
village agencies.
Mr. Shays. But it doesn't include fire?
Mr. Gardner. It doesn't include any of the local fire
departments, no. When the system originally was designed and
requested, there were not frequencies available to accommodate
that extra loading that the fire departments would have had on
the system. And in addition, because it had big brother and
cultural issues that were mentioned, they didn't want to be
part of it as a whole. They actually opted out of it when we
designed it.
Mr. Shays. Interesting. They opted out.
Mr. Gardner. Yes.
Mr. Shays. How long ago did they opt out? When was this
decided?
Mr. Gardner. Our system went on line in 1993.
Mr. Shays. So pre-September 11th?
Mr. Gardner. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. Mr. Thomas.
Mr. Thomas. The Statewide Wireless Network was never
conceived as a, or scaled to replace all the radio systems in
the State of New York, one, just due to cost. It's also in
recognition of the fact that a lot of municipalities, a lot of
counties, public safety and emergency first responders,
agencies within that sphere have very good communications
systems. They have, like Suffolk County, a modern digital 800
megahertz radio system.
The purpose of the Statewide Wireless Network as it was
initiated was to replace the State's aging infrastructure for
its public safety and emergency first responder agencies, New
York State Police, Department of Transportation, DAX, ENCON and
several other agencies.
Decisions were made at the front end that once this network
was put out, or as it was put out to cover the State agency
needs, and to upgrade our systems, that because it had a
statewide footprint with statewide coverage, it would also
serve to enhance interoperability between agencies on a
statewide basis, either through gateways with existing modern
systems or for those agencies in other parts of the State which
unfortunately aren't as sophisticated as Suffolk County's, and
where there is not enough funding to adequately upgrade those
systems that we would offer them the opportunity on a voluntary
basis to partner with us in the wireless network and come onto
the network and have us be their radio system. But again, on a
voluntary basis.
Having this statewide footprint out there creates a radio
umbrella for us on a statewide basis where we can, using a
digital trunked radio system, set up talk groups, set up
interoperability with any locality that needs it. It also
provides us the opportunity to foster those partners and
produce efficiencies such as the ability to coordinate upstate
resources as we move them or downstate resources as we move
State resources around the State, whether we're involved in a
problem in the western part of the State in the Niagara
Frontier, the Adirondacks or the greater metropolitan New York
area.
We've also got several other things going currently with
respect to the city of New York. We have a partnering
arrangement we're working on now with the MTA in New York City.
I spoke earlier about the use of the 700 megahertz frequencies
that we've been allocated, and the need to have the DTB
transition completed so that we get better access to those
frequencies. For the purposes of the MTA, those are available
right now, and we are working with the MTA to assist with their
radio system in the tunnels within New York City, where we can
in fact use those frequencies right now.
Mr. Shays. Professor Corbett, you don't have any horse in
this race. How do you react to what Mr. Thomas said?
Mr. Corbett. Well, I think he pointed out, made a very
important point that this seems to be a system where they're
trying to get coverage across the State as far as point to
point goes. But again, I go back to the issue of when it comes
down to moving groups of people, firefighters, police officers,
what have you, I think that's where it drops off the map here.
Because we're still lacking, again, at those lower levels, that
interoperability to talk to each other.
This is a system where, and there are other systems out
there, I know for example in New Jersey they've connected all
the hospitals together. But that doesn't necessarily mean that
they can go hospital to hospital, it doesn't mean that we can
take a group of people in one area and talk to another. I think
that's my observation, I think that's where we still lack a lot
of capability basically.
Mr. Thomas. This is not a point to point radio system. This
will support any level of interoperability right down to
individual and users. It will support 65,000 users at any given
time on a statewide basis. It will support a quarter of a
million pieces of equipment or unique addresses. It is
specifically designed to provide that level of
interoperability.
Mr. Shays. We're not having a debate, so what's interesting
is what you hear him say then he can clarify, then I'd love you
to just react to that. Does that make it a more valuable
effort?
Mr. Corbett. Yes, I mean, that certainly explains it a
little better. I think I understand it a little better now. But
again, this, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the issue
is not that the platform perhaps is there to communicate, but
we actually don't have that communications capability. I mean,
radio to radio, if one particular jurisdiction said, I want to
be able to communicate from one group of firefighters to
another, is that possible. I think the system exists, but I----
Mr. Thomas. For one, the system doesn't exist. But
ultimately yes, it will do what you're talking about.
Mr. Corbett. Right.
Mr. Shays. So before we close, give me an assessment of
what I should learn from this panel. Hearing what we learned
from the first panel, I'm kind of thinking that there may be
some valuable pieces of information that I may not be picking
up. What do you think this panel is sharing with the committee?
In general, we have a statewide system--I'll tell you what I'm
hearing. I'm hearing that we have a statewide system that will
allow communities to communicate, that you can provide specific
communication between community A and community T, I'm making
an assumption that could mean fire or police communicating from
place to place.
I'm hearing Mr. Gardner tell us that they've got a pretty
robust system in Suffolk, particularly as it relates to police,
that it is totally modernized, digital and so within the
county, they've got a pretty good communication, and now they
have an agreement with Nassau to basically be able to tap in
and vice versa. They can tap into your good system and you can
tap into their good system and basically accomplish the same
thing county by county. That's what I'm hearing.
What is the negative I'm hearing and what's the positive?
All three of you jump in. Mr. Thomas, what isn't happening that
should happen? And let me put it this way, all of you think
about it. Given what you heard in the first panel, where are
we? Should I say, this is pretty good, we've got a good
statewide system in New York, an important State, we've got an
important county that's got a good system, we're on our way?
What should I be hearing?
Mr. Thomas. Well, I would think, I would be encouraged at
the fact, the work that Suffolk County has already done. One
thing that needs to be said with respect to the wireless
network, we have had an advisory council for a very long time
with different people involved. In fact, we've had Suffolk
County serving on the advisory council, as we've produced the
specifications for this system. A procurement of this size and
magnitude, it's actually unprecedented.
Mr. Shays. On a statewide basis?
Mr. Thomas. On a statewide basis.
Mr. Shays. What are we talking about in terms of dollars?
Mr. Thomas. Estimates for the project run well over $1
billion.
Mr. Shays. Wow!
Mr. Thomas. Now, having said that, I can't give you any
more detail, because we're currently in contract negotiations.
What I'd like to point out to public safety community here and
in New York State, is we have, because of the procurement, and
the way procurements are structured, had a need to not discuss
the technology solutions that we are working on here that have
been proposed by the vendors and so on. Those will be available
as we conclude our negotiations and get this contract signed in
the next few months.
It is our intent and I think it will serve a lot of
people's purposes once we can get out there, tell them exactly
what the technology is, and they can avail themselves of this
network to the extent that it serves their best interests, or
they don't have to use it at all.
Mr. Shays. If you haven't designed it well, or it will be
outdated shortly, that will be one heck of a billion dollar
expenditure.
Mr. Thomas. This has been a very long procurement, and it
has been very long because we've put an extensive amount of
effort into correcting every problem we've seen develop in
other States to ensure that we have a system that is current,
it is sophisticated with respect to the technology, is
spectrally efficient, but also that will be refreshed over the
term of this contract, so that we're never again in the
position of having 20 year old technology and having to do this
type of upgrade again.
Mr. Shays. When we've tried to upgrade our computer, IT
systems in the Federal Government, it is a continual process of
taking so long by the time we get it, it is an outdated system.
It really is kind of pathetic.
Any other reaction?
Mr. Gardner. I would echo what we heard earlier from the
earlier panel, too. The crying need is for frequencies. We have
the need for frequency and frequency spectrums. And to make
those spectrums able to talk to each other.
The 700 megahertz, for instance, right now, there is no
equipment made that will operate in those frequency ranges. So
we can talk all we want about them and where they're going to
be and who's going to use them. But there is no equipment you
can buy today that will operate on those frequencies. We need
to do things today and we also know what we can do 2 or 3 or 4
years from now.
We need the FCC, if at all possible, to speed up their
decisions, speed up their regulatory process. We can't be
waiting 3, 4, 5, 10 years, even when they make guidelines you'd
like to be able to budget out what can I do 3 years from now,
what I can do 5 years from now. If I don't know that they're
going to make a decision, for instance, at all, new radios must
be digital by year whatever, I can't plan now to upgrade my
system, to begin changing out my system, to begin buying
radios.
If I had to go home today and buy radios, I couldn't
because it would be a capital project, I'd have to put it in
next year, and the earliest I would see the money would be
2006. So these processes need to work hand in hand, and we need
to get things in place as quickly as we can as far as planning
goes and implement those plans.
I also agree with what the panel I think earlier came up
with about there needs to be some leadership, either at a
Federal level or within the State. We have systems that can
talk to each other that don't because they chose not to. We
have systems that could have talked to each other but
frequencies weren't available for them to buy or purchase or
use, whether it's a commercial system or another town or a
local government.
Nassau County, again, our neighbor to our west, they're
putting almost $40 million into a UHF system. We are a trunked
system. They're going to be trunked with UHF, we're going to be
trunked 800.
In a perfect world, every one of those radios should be
able to talk together with just a flick of a switch or a
changing of the channel on a radio. Right now it's not going to
be able to be done.
I have another town to the east of us that built an 800
system but chose not to build it onto ours. And I mean ours by
Suffolk County. God bless them, they can make their own
decisions and do whatever they want. But they made the
deliberate decisions not to be part of a bigger county-wide
system and enjoy the benefits of that. That would have allowed
them access to the 8,000 radios on our system. They can't do
that now, because they chose to build a standalone system.
Same county, different towns, same State. There needs to be
somebody who can sit and say, you will do this, you should do
this, be sure to look at these options, have you looked at
this, have you thought of this. Too much money is being spent,
too much money in my opinion is being wasted.
Mr. Shays. Anybody else want to make comments before we
adjourn?
Mr. Corbett. Yes. I would just echo what Mr. Gardner just
said, but I would mention that DHS has to take that active
role, as you mentioned earlier. That's the critical point.
But it's got to get all the way down to the local level. It
can't just be the States. Because I don't think the States have
stepped up to the plate, at least in New Jersey, I don't
believe we have, to address these issues. It's got to get all
the way down, and I think there's mechanisms that do that, as I
mentioned earlier through the NIMS enactment as well as through
the funding that they provide. There's a mechanism to ensure
that this is taken care of.
Mr. Shays. Thank you all very much. You've been a wonderful
panel and been very helpful. I appreciate it. Thank you.
With that, this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned, to
reconvene at the call of the Chair.]
[The prepared statement of Hon. Dennis J. Kucinich and
additional information submitted for the hearing record
follow:]
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