[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
PUBLIC SAFETY COMMUNICATIONS FROM 9/11 TO KATRINA: CRITICAL PUBLIC
POLICY LESSONS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND THE INTERNET
of the
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 29, 2005
__________
Serial No. 109-52
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
house
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
24-252PDF WASHINGTON : 2005
______________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512-1800
Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001
------------------------------
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
JOE BARTON, Texas, Chairman
RALPH M. HALL, Texas JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan
MICHAEL BILIRAKIS, Florida Ranking Member
Vice Chairman HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
FRED UPTON, Michigan EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
CLIFF STEARNS, Florida RICK BOUCHER, Virginia
PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
CHARLIE NORWOOD, Georgia BART GORDON, Tennessee
BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois
JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois ANNA G. ESHOO, California
HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico BART STUPAK, Michigan
JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
CHARLES W. ``CHIP'' PICKERING, ALBERT R. WYNN, Maryland
Mississippi, Vice Chairman GENE GREEN, Texas
VITO FOSSELLA, New York TED STRICKLAND, Ohio
ROY BLUNT, Missouri DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado
STEVE BUYER, Indiana LOIS CAPPS, California
GEORGE RADANOVICH, California MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania
CHARLES F. BASS, New Hampshire TOM ALLEN, Maine
JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania JIM DAVIS, Florida
MARY BONO, California JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
GREG WALDEN, Oregon HILDA L. SOLIS, California
LEE TERRY, Nebraska CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas
MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey JAY INSLEE, Washington
MIKE ROGERS, Michigan TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
C.L. ``BUTCH'' OTTER, Idaho MIKE ROSS, Arkansas
SUE MYRICK, North Carolina
JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania
MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee
Bud Albright, Staff Director
David Cavicke, Deputy Staff Director and General Counsel
Reid P.F. Stuntz, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
______
Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
FRED UPTON, Michigan, Chairman
MICHAEL BILIRAKIS, Florida EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
CLIFF STEARNS, Florida Ranking Member
PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky ALBERT R. WYNN, Maryland
BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania
JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas
HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico JAY INSLEE, Washington
CHARLES W. ``CHIP'' PICKERING, RICK BOUCHER, Virginia
Mississippi EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
VITO FOSSELLA, New York FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
GEORGE RADANOVICH, California SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
CHARLES F. BASS, New Hampshire BART GORDON, Tennessee
GREG WALDEN, Oregon BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois
LEE TERRY, Nebraska ANNA G. ESHOO, California
MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey BART STUPAK, Michigan
JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan,
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee (Ex Officio)
JOE BARTON, Texas,
(Ex Officio)
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
__________
Page
Testimony of:
Botterell, Art, Emergency Information Systems Consultant..... 103
Boyd, David G., Director, Safecom Program Office, Science and
Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security.... 62
Hitch, Vance E., Chief Information Officer, Department of
Justice.................................................... 69
Kramer, Harold, Chief Operating Officer, The National
Association for Amateur Radio.............................. 112
Martin, Hon. Kevin J., Chairman, Federal Communications
Commission................................................. 13
Miller, Lt. Col. Thomas J., Deputy Director, Michigan State
Police..................................................... 98
Roemer, Timothy J., Director of the Center for National
Policy..................................................... 94
Trujillo, Tony, Chairman, Satellite Industry Association..... 107
Material submitted for the record by:
Botterell, Art, Emergency Information Systems Consultant,
response for the record.................................... 172
Gyllstrom, Gregory W., Vice President/General Manager,
Aftermarket, Visteon Corporation, prepared statement of.... 122
Kelley, Edwin A.,Principal Engineer, Interoperable Wireless,
prepared statement of...................................... 127
Kramer, Harold, Chief Operating Officer, The National
Association for Amateur Radio, response for the record..... 171
Martin, Hon. Kevin J., Chairman, Federal Communications
Commission, response for the record........................ 173
Miller, Lt. Col. Thomas J., Deputy Director, Michigan State
Police, response for the record............................ 183
Roemer, Timothy J., Director of the Center for National
Policy, response for the record............................ 185
Trujillo, Tony, Chairman, Satellite Industry Association,
response for the record.................................... 186
Vaughn, John, Vice President and General Manager, Wireless
Systems, M/A-COM, Inc., prepared statement of.............. 153
(iii)
PUBLIC SAFETY COMMUNICATIONS FROM 9/11 TO KATRINA: CRITICAL PUBLIC
POLICY LESSONS
----------
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2005
House of Representatives,
Committee on Energy and Commerce,
Subcommittee on Telecommunications
and the Internet,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., in
room 2322 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Fred Upton
(chairman) presiding.
Members present: Representatives Upton, Stearns, Whitfield,
Shimkus, Pickering, Fossella, Radanovich, Bass, Terry,
Blackburn, Barton (ex-officio), Wynn, Towns, Gordon, and
Stupak.
Staff present: Howard Waltzman, chief counsel,
telecommunications and the Internet; Neil Fried, majority
counsel; Kelly Cole, majority counsel; Will Norwind, policy
coordinator; Jaylyn Jensen, senior legislative analyst; Anh
Nguyen, legislative clerk; Johanna Shelton, minority counsel;
and Peter Filon, minority counsel.
Mr. Upton. Good afternoon. To me this seems like it is
morning because we started a markup yesterday on refineries at
8 a.m. and we finished a little bit after midnight this morning
so it was a 16-hour markup, passed by voice and many of us are
still wondering which day it is. And we also have my friend and
colleague, Mr. Markey, that serves on the Natural Resources
Committee as well and they have got a major bill on the floor
so we will be expecting members to come in and out. I apologize
for the room. It is actually not a bad room. But we were
scheduled for what we call the big house downstairs, 2123, but
there is another subcommittee hearing on at the same time and
they needed the video conferencing for that witness to appear
from, I think, Louisiana or Alabama. So in an effort to
maintain good relations with my chairman, I indicated that we
would swap for this hearing.
Today's hearing is entitled ``Public Safety Communications
from 9/11 to Katrina: Critical Public Policy Lessons'' which is
designed to explore the issues of interoperability as they
relate to our heroic first responders in public safety
organizations. Interoperability is, at its core, the ability
for various public safety groups to communicate with each
other. To best equip our Nation's first responders to do their
job, they must be able to communicate with one another, not
just between fire, police, EMS in one jurisdiction, but also on
the local, State, and Federal jurisdictions. For any disastrous
event, it is our Nation's first responders who answer the call
of relief. When citizens are forced to evacuate to protect
themselves, it is our Nation's first responders who run the
opposite direction into harm's way. For this very reason,
interoperable communications are vitally important. For
instance, on the morning of September 11, New York police
officers were able to hear the radio warnings from helicopters
that the North Tower of the World Trade Center was glowing red
and most of the police officers exited the building safely,
while dozens of firefighters who could not hear those same
warnings, tragically perished when the tower collapsed. The
radio communication system of the police was not compatible
with the system that the fire department was using,
consequently, no warnings could be heard and many, many lives
were lost.
We were faced with some horrible lessons on 9/11 and we are
here today to examine another disaster, Hurricane Katrina.
Crisis communications during both of these tragic events
failed. There is no doubt that achieving interoperability
throughout our Nation has proven to be a monumental multi-
faceted challenge and there are a number of reasons for this.
Two points which I think was most important include the
availability of spectrum and funding issues. Back in 1997,
Congress directed 24 megahertz of spectrum in the upper 700
megahertz band to be allocated to public safety. However, that
spectrum is currently occupied by the broadcasters and will be
until the transition to digital TV is complete. Chairman Barton
and I, Ranking Member Dingell and Markey have spent countless
hours working to free that valuable spectrum for public safety
by crafting legislation setting a hard date for spectrum return
as a vital and necessary step that must occur to make
interoperability a reality, and we are committed to making it
happen sooner rather than later.
The need for additional spectrum to replace old and
antiquated equipment is another challenge for cash strapped
State and local governments. According to information collected
from grantees, total State expenditures for interoperable
communication projects from the Department of Homeland Security
Grant Program totaled nearly $1 billion in fiscal year 2004
alone.
Despite such large sums, Katrina showed us that we are
still well behind the curve. What will it take to make
interoperability a reality? How much more time, how much more
money do we need to spend to make interoperability seamless? We
cannot sit back for another natural disaster or another
terrorist attack to strike. It has been 4 years since the
attack of 9/11. And as Katrina made us all acutely aware, sadly
we are far from where we need to be. But let me be clear, I
recognize that this is a far bigger problem than simply a lack
of funds or a lack of new equipment. Thousands of shiny new
radios will not fix the problem if we don't have a strategic
plan that allows all of these new radios to interact with each
other. We need coordination among Government at all levels to
ensure the equipment purchases of one municipality work with
the jurisdiction next door. We need a national vision for
funding equipment and technology. I plan to ask all the
witnesses here today, who is going to fill that leadership
vacuum? These are all the questions we need to answer, we must
answer to ensure that our first responders can do their job.
That is literally a matter of life and death.
Finally, I would like to welcome FCC Commissioner Chairman
Kevin Martin to our committee. It is the first time he has
appeared before us in his new capacity as Chairman. I thank
each of our witnesses today. I also want to say is I have spent
time with Chairman Martin. I particularly appreciate the work
that he and all the commissioners did in reacting so swiftly to
the deep-set problems that we saw with the hurricane. His
folks, he and all the folks within the Commission worked many,
many overtime hours through the weekends doing the things that
they had to do to save lives and to get that equipment up and
running, and for that, the Nation is eternally grateful. And I
yield at this time to my colleague for an opening statement
from the great State of Michigan, Mr. Stupak.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Fred Upton follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Fred Upton, Chairman, Subcommittee on
Telecommunications and the Internet
Good afternoon. Today's hearing is entitled ``Public Safety
Communications from 9/11 to Katrina: Critical Public Policy Lessons''
which is designed to explore the issues of interoperability as they
relate to our heroic first responders and public safety organizations.
Interoperability is, at its core, the ability for various public
safety groups to communicate with each other. To best equip our
nation's first responders to do their job, they must be able to
communicate with one another, not just between fire, police, and EMS
within one jurisdiction, but also among local, state, and federal
jurisdictions.
During any disastrous event, it is our nation's first responders
who answer the call of duty. As citizens are forced to evacuate to
protect themselves, it is our nation's first responders who run the
opposite direction--into harm's way. For this very reason,
interoperable communications are vitally important. For instance, on
the morning of September 11th, 2001, New York police officers were able
to hear the radio warnings from a helicopter that the North Tower of
the World Trade Center was glowing red, and most of the police officers
exited the building safety--while dozens of firefighters, who could not
hear these warnings, tragically perished when the tower collapsed. The
radio communications of the police was not compatible with the system
that the fire department was using, consequently, no warnings could be
heard, and many lives were lost.
We were faced with some horrible lessons on 9/11, and we are here
today to examine another disaster, Hurricane Katrina. Crisis
communications during both of these tragic events failed. There is no
doubt that achieving interoperability throughout our nation has proven
to be a monumental, and multi-faceted, challenge and there are a number
of reasons for this. The two problems I view as most important include
the availability of spectrum and funding issues.
Back in 1997, Congress directed 24 Megahertz of spectrum in the
Upper 700 Megahertz band to be allocated to public safety. However,
that spectrum is currently occupied by broadcasters, and will be, until
the transition to digital television is complete. Chairman Barton and I
have spent countless hours working to free that valuable spectrum for
pubic safety by crafting legislation setting a hard date for spectrum
return. This is a vital and necessary step that must occur to make
interoperability a reality and we are committed to making it happen--
sooner rather than later.
Beyond additional spectrum, to replace old and antiquated equipment
is another challenge for cash-strapped State and local governments.
According to information collected from grantees, total State
expenditures for interoperable communications projects from Department
of Homeland Security grant programs totaled nearly a billion dollars in
fiscal year 2004 alone. Despite such large sums, Hurricane Katrina
showed us that we are still well behind the curve. What will it take to
make interoperability a reality? How much more time and how much more
money do we need to spend to make interoperability seamless? We cannot
sit back for another natural disaster or terrorist attack to strike.
It's been 4 years since the attacks of 9-11, and as Katrina made us all
acutely aware, sadly, we are far from where we need to be.
But let me be clear--I recognize that this is a far bigger problem
than simply a lack of funds or a lack of new equipment. Thousands of
shiny new radios will not fix the problem if we don't have a strategic
plan that allows all of these new radios to interact with each other.
We need coordination among government at all levels to ensure the
equipment purchases of one municipality work with the jurisdiction next
door. We need a national vision for funding, equipment and technology.
I plan to ask all of the witnesses here today, who will fill that
leadership vacuum? These are all questions we need to answer, we must
answer, to ensure our first responders can do their job. This is
literally, a matter of life and death.
Finally, I'd like to welcome FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to our
Committee--this is the first time he's appeared before us in his new
capacity as Chairman. And thank you to each of the witnesses for being
here today. I look forward to hearing from all of you and learning the
answers to my questions.
Mr. Stupak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for calling this critical hearing on the lack of
interoperability communications for first responders. I would
also like to extend a special welcome to Lieutenant Colonel Tom
Miller from Michigan State Police.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to start with a quote. ``It is
important that we understand in the first minutes and hours
after attack, that the most hopeful time to save lives and that
is why we are focusing on the heroic efforts of those first
responders. That is why we want to spend money to make sure
equipment is there, strategies are there, communications are
there to make sure that you have whatever it takes to
respond.'' That was President George Bush in February 2002. I
agree with his words 100 percent, but unfortunately there has
been scant follow-through on these words. The communication
equipment is not there. The strategies are incomplete and the
money has not been spent. State and local Governments have
received little guidance and fewer Federal dollars.
The inability of our first responders to communicate with
each other is a problem known to most of us in this room for
years, but was brought to the national spotlight beginning way
back in 1995 with the Murrah Building, again on September 11,
and most recently with the hurricanes. I wonder when this
Congress will finally make a real commitment to first responder
communications.
The 9/11 Commission agreed with those of us who called for
a much larger Federal commitment. Their final report stated,
and once again I would like to quote, ``The occurrence of this
problem at three very different sites is drawing evidence that
compatible and adequate communications among the public safety
organizations at the local, State, and Federal levels remain an
important problem. Federal funding of such interagency
communication units should be given high priority.'' Sadly, 4
years after September 11, the recommendations of the 9/11
Commission have fallen on deaf ears and the President has not
kept his commitment. The 2 years after September 11, a mere
$260 million was granted for interoperable communication grants
at Department of Homeland Security. The President has never
requested money again for the grants in Congress and it has
never funded interoperability grants again.
While $260 million may be a drop in the bucket of the
estimated $18 billion that full operability will cost, it was a
start. In fact, the Administration has spent--excuse me. In
fact, the Administration has a $10 billion plan to make its
80,000 Federal law enforcement agents interoperable, while
there are over 75,000 first responders in my State of Michigan
alone.
Frankly, given the lack of funding and the lack of
planning, I was not surprised by the communication breakdown
during and after Hurricane Katrina. I know that many in this
room were not either, but I am outraged at how little has been
accomplished. Just as with September 11, during Katrina,
helicopters could not communicate with rescuers on the ground.
Just as with September 11, radio channels were overwhelmed with
traffic. Just as with September 11, police could not talk to
firefighters. Just as with September 11, those watching TV had
better information than the first responders on the ground.
The Administration had the opportunity to learn a lot after
September 11 but I am afraid they failed to listen. Then FEMA
Administrator Brown said the agency failed to anticipate and I
quote ``The total lack of communication, the inability to hear
and have good intelligence on the ground about what was
occurring there.'' Perhaps Mr. Brown should have read the
report published by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. According to
their report released in June of 2004, more than 80 percent of
America's cities are not interoperable with Federal agencies.
We are going to hear today about the need for spectrum and
the need for plans, but all those things come down the road.
The Administration says it will take over 20 years to become
interoperable. We don't have 20 years. This committee needs to
act this year on legislation, legislation I have introduced
with Congressman Fossella and Congressman Engel.
I see my time is up, Mr. Chairman, so let me put the rest
of my statement in the record. As you know, I have been on this
issue for a long time and it is quite frustrating to have
hearing after hearing and nothing happens. I am hopeful
something will happen and happen this year.
Mr. Upton. Thank you. Mr. Shimkus?
Mr. Shimkus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate you calling the hearing. Obviously, we have a
lot to talk about. I will just briefly address a piece of
legislation that I am going to introduce along this--the
companion legislation has already been introduced on the Senate
side by Senators DeMint and Stevens, Nelson, and Inouye called
the Warn Act which the basic premise is this. We do have our
only real emergency broadcast system right now is the Free Over
Air provided by our broadcasters. Telecommunications has
changed dramatically as we all know, especially those of us who
follow in this arena, and we have got to develop a way that we
use all our telecommunications assets to broadcast immediate
alerts. And we look forward to working with you, Mr. Chairman
on that legislation and look forward to hearing.
I yield back my time.
Mr. Upton. Mr. Gordon.
Mr. Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman for calling this
important hearing.
We saw an unprecedented collapse of communications on all
levels in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I am particularly
concerned about the collapse of the 911 system. According to
the FCC, 38 911 centers went down leaving citizens with no way
to call for help and severely hampering rescue and relief
efforts. Because the Legacy 911 System is not interoperable,
once a local 911 center fails, there is no back up. The 911
system is a critical component of the Nation's emergency
communication system. A 911 call is the first cry for help and
the first alarm. It is--it tells first responders where to go
and what to expect when they get there.
We lost that link between citizens and first responders
during by virtue of Katrina. And the 911 call center--well,
excuse me. By virtue of our experiences there, we found that we
lost those 911 centers and which they also frequently function
as the dispatch center for fire, police, EMS, and all three in
many areas. It would be a mistake to talk about
interoperability issues for the first responders without also
considering 911 call centers. They are an integral part of
local emergency communication systems.
Along with Representatives Eshoo and Shimkus, I have
introduced a bill several months ago that works toward an IP
based emergency response system that would allow another 911
center to take calls if one call center fails. The IP based
system would also empower 911 centers to share information and
coordinate responses in the event of regional disasters. This
bill also ensures that millions of people who use voice over
the internet protocol phone service have full 911 e-911
services. I understand this hearing will focus on
interoperability issues for the first responders; however, I
hope the committee would at a later date address the Nation's
911 system so that we can also bring this to light.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Upton. Mr. Terry.
Mr. Terry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this
hearing and our witnesses. Mr. Martin, thank you for being
here.
I would agree with the facts on the accusations laid for by
our friend from Michigan, Bart. They are serious voids and they
have been identified as long as a decade ago before September
11 about the inoperability between our first responders. And I
will tell you, I just spent 8 years on our city council and
went through an upgrade of our emergency systems. We tried to
get other agencies, other counties to join us in a total
metropolitan communication so every sheriff, police, fire all
of them could talk together and I will tell you what, it
delayed it for almost 2 years just trying to get people, the
other agencies to even sit down and talk with us.
The State of Nebraska has made interoperability one of the
priorities of our homeland security that is the State plan.
What happened? Instantly, the counties started fighting with
each other. And so yes, we have a lot of hurdles to get over.
Once we free up the spectrum, once again Chairman, we need to
get the D-TV blow up. We need to get the action, the hard date,
and move forward because a lot of this can be resolved, at
least the technical aspects, with having more spectrum.
We are going to have to focus on the political part of
this, too. With so many local agencies, we want to make sure
that they remain autonomous but they are not going to become
inoperable or interoperable if they won't go there. And so we
have got to figure out how we do this, how we do it delicately.
There are other issues not only of spectrum and equipment and
technology and political cooperation but, you know, how do you
keep the lights on when the lights are off everywhere else, so
distributed energy certainly has to be a focus of this as well.
There are just so many issues. That is why it is important we
have hearings like this to kind of vent through some of those
issues, the complexity of those issues.
And so I want to thank you, Chairman, and thank the panel.
Yield back.
Mr. Upton. Ms. Blackburn.
Ms. Blackburn. I will waive my opening statement and
reserve my time for questions. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Upton. Okay. Well that concludes our opening
statements. I will make a motion that all members will have an
opportunity to submit their opening statements as part of the
record.
[Additional statements submitted for the record follow:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Cliff Stearns, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Florida
Thank you Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing on our public
safety communications infrastructure.
Today, it is easier for Americans to communicate than ever before,
and information is incredibly easy to access. This has improved the
quality of life for millions of Americans, but our reliance on
communications might have a drawback: when disaster strikes and
disables our communications infrastructure, people can't reach their
loved ones or find out the latest news, resulting in inconveniences and
dangers that can be especially painful.
Millions of Americans suffered from a massive breakdown in
communications after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. The disaster exposed
the communications infrastructure in the area as extremely fragile. Yet
many telecom providers dealt with the unprecedented situation in
exemplary fashion.
The wireless industry quickly adapted by using mobile cell sites,
VoIP services provided critical emergency communications, and the
satellite industry's role in the aftermath of Katrina was also
impressive.
I was also pleased to see that many of these private businesses
offered free services for those who were in the affected areas.
While the industry continues to do its part to help Americans deal
with disasters and maintain communications, it is imperative that
Congress do what we can to improve our nation's ability to communicate
during disasters, be they natural or a result of terrorism.
We can complete the DTV transition and allocate the critical
spectrum for emergency services and first responders.
We can update our nation's telecom laws, which will provide the
regulatory and legal certainty the industry needs to invest and
innovate, and which will in turn undoubtedly result in even more
effective and reliable communications technology.
We can promote interoperability, be it through some sort of
legislation or in increased funding.
Perhaps even some sort of tax credits to help telecom firms recover
from these recent disasters.
During this hearing, I hope to hear even more ways that we can help
to improve disaster communications.
I look forward to the testimony of all the witnesses here today,
especially Kevin Martin, who is before this subcommittee for the first
time in his capacity as Chairman of the FCC, and who has provided
excellent leadership during these critical times.
______
Prepared Statement of Hon. Paul E. Gillmor, a Representative in
Congress from the State of Ohio
Mr. Chairman: Thank you for holding this hearing today to further
investigate the growing need to make our first responder communication
systems more interoperable.
After the horrific events of 9/11, we began to really see the need
and importance of interoperable communications for our country's first
responders. Yet today, we are here to discuss the problems that
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused the brave men and women who,
irregardless of self, charged into the disaster areas to provide aid to
their family members, friends, and quite often, complete strangers.
One major obstacle that we continue to talk about is the release of
the 700Mhz spectrum currently being utilized by television broadcasters
to send their analog signal into American households. Mr. Chairman, I
was pleased to see you and Chairman Barton taking decisive action to
remedy this problem. The circulated staff draft of the Digital
Television Transition Act was a positive and fair step towards making
this spectrum available--sooner rather than later. Yet, this is not the
only answer to the issue of interoperability. Proper coordination among
federal, state, and local entities is an equally important component in
making sure that, when the spectrum becomes available, that no time is
wasted in rolling out the new communications infrastructure to our
firefighters, policemen, emergency medical technicians, and volunteer
aid organizations.
Mr. Chairman, thank you again for holding this hearing and,
finally, I would like to welcome all of our panelists here today and I
look forward to your testimony on this timely issue.
______
Prepared Statement of Hon. Barbara Cubin, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Wyoming
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I look forward to our hearing today on the status of America's
emergency communications systems. Having just observed the 4th
anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and the disruption and
damage of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, this is a timely and appropriate
topic.
As I'm sure our witness will demonstrate today, there is more to
improved public safety communications than some grant money here, and a
spectrum allocation there. A nationwide and coordinated effort is
paramount.
Like many states, Wyoming is working on a statewide interoperable
communications system. Our system is fairly unique, though, since it is
a VHF-based system and does not reside in upper areas of spectrum that
more urban and populous states use.
VHF signals are better suited for the vast open spaces we enjoy out
west, and I am interested in learning from the experts assembled here
about how this system can work in concert with other communications
systems in the upper radio bands. Additionally, I would like to learn
what the federal plans are for building out a communications network in
the VHF band.
Interoperability and interference-free communication for our first
responders is a worthy goal and I look forward to hearing testimony on
where we are, how we got here and what is the best path going forward
to achieve this goal.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman for opening this dialog and look
forward to hearing from our witnesses. I yield back the balance of my
time.
______
Prepared Statement of Hon. Mike Ferguson, a Representative in Congress
from the State of New Jersey
Thank you Chairman Upton for holding this hearing. The recent
tragedy of Hurricane Katrina has not only highlighted the inadequacy of
our crisis communications infrastructure, it brought the fore the need
for Congress to act immediately.
Thanks to your commitment to moving DTV legislation this fall, we
will have the opportunity to ensure that the 24 MHz spectrum dedicated
to public safety use will finally be available to our first responders,
who need it now more than ever.
A few weeks ago, I traveled down to Baton Rouge to help with the
relief efforts. One of the things I packed with me were a few satellite
phones to deliver to our colleague Bobby Jindal so his staff can make
the critical communications necessary to help his constituents. In the
immediate days after Katrina, these were among the only means of
communication. Clearly, we need to do better.
I would like to briefly highlight the great work companies in my
District have done to help the Gulf Coast region to help overcome these
communications shortcomings. The Lucent Technologies and Bell Labs
teams have drawn on their expertise in network disaster recovery,
helping to re-establish vital communications services. In addition,
they have provided on-site and remote technical support, and emergency,
back-up and replacement equipment to more than a dozen of the Gulf
Region's service providers.
AT&T has also pitched in, dispatching five Emergency Communications
Satellite Units which are currently being used by the Louisiana State
Police, the Louisiana National Guard, and others, and donating AT&T
35,000 AT&T PrePaid Phone Cards, each good for distribution to
hurricane survivors by the Red Cross and Salvation Army. I am proud of
both hometown companies have done and this subcommittee thanks you.
Now it is time for Congress to pitch in, to learn from past
communications shortcomings and help ensure that we close the gap in
communications among our first responders and achieve true
interoperability. I look forward to hearing the views of FCC Chairman
Kevin Martin, our former colleague Tim Roemer, and the rest of the
witness present today on how we meet that goal. I thank you for being
here.
______
Prepared Statement of Hon. Joe Barton, Chairman, Committee on Energy
and Commerce
Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this hearing today on public
safety communications. The United States has seen some catastrophic
events in the last five years that tested our crisis communications.
Each time a crisis arrives, the first casualty seems to be the system
that permits firefighters and police to communicate. Today we examine
the progress being made to ensure that when the next crisis occurs, the
emergency communications systems actually work.
Most recently, the collapse of communications occurred in New
Orleans while thousands of people found themselves stranded at the New
Orleans Convention Center. How much progress has been made since the
September 11th terrorist attacks exposed major gaps in communications
among federal, state and local officials more than four years ago? Not
much, it seems.
On September 11, 1996, five years to the day before the 9/11
terrorist attacks, the Public Safety Wireless Advisory Committee
released a report which stated that ``unless immediate measures are
taken to alleviate spectrum shortfall and promote interoperability,
public safety will not be able to adequately discharge their obligation
to protect life and property in a safe, efficient, and cost effective
manner.'' And yet here we are and public safety is still grappling with
inadequate spectrum and radios that do not communicate with one
another. What I want to learn today is this: what on earth does
Congress need to do to make sure public safety officials and first
responders can talk to each other?
I already know that a big part of the answer is spectrum. I have
spent months working on a bill to enact a hard date for the digital
television transition so that the broadcasters will return spectrum in
the upper 700 MHz band that Congress promised to public safety in 1997.
With this spectrum, first responders across the nation could share
common channels on which multiple local, state, and federal agencies
could coordinate emergency response. We should not wait for another
terrorist attack or natural disaster to remind us of the importance of
giving public safety the tools they need to do their job.
Mr. Chairman, thank you again for holding this hearing. I look
forward to working with you to ensure that this Committee does
everything it can to ensure that first responders achieve
communications interoperability.
______
Prepared Statement of Hon. Eliot Engel, a Representative in Congress
from the State of New York
Mr. Chairman--As many of us were together until late last night, I
will be brief in my remarks. I want to thank the new Chairman of the
FCC for coming up as well as the other witnesses. Your views are most
welcome.
There is no dispute from any quarter that public safety needs more
spectrum--and they shall soon have it.
However, as we saw in New Orleans, even with that spectrum
available--local and state public safety officials need the resources
to utilize that spectrum.
I am proud to have co-authored legislation with Rep. Stupak and
Rep. Fossella that will provide these resources.
I believe our bill is superior to others that have been introduced
for two main reasons.
First, it is paid for by using revenue from the spectrum auctions.
And I would add that it would be put into a trust fund unavailable to
the annual appropriations process. Thus, we would not have to rely on
an annual fight among competing priorities.
The second reason is the breadth of uses for the money. Our bill
does not just provide new equipment--it allows engineering analysis and
design to be done first. The fact is that the concrete canyons of
Manhattan are vastly different from the plains of the Iowa. How radio
signals operate in those areas is also vastly different. Then, of
course our bill allows for equipment. But, finally it also allows the
money to be used for training. This new equipment will have many
features that enable not just police, fire and EMT personnel to speak
to each other. This new equipment will allow local, state and federal
officials to talk as well.
This is a welcome hearing. But, I would welcome more a quick mark
up of our bipartisan legislation!
I yield back.
______
Prepared Statement of Hon. Mike Doyle, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Pennsylvania
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
It took the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 for most people
to fully grasp how important it is for government, at all levels, to
upgrade the communications systems used by first responders. The 9/11
Commission spelled it out for us, we need to make the 700 MHz band
available as soon as possible, and we need to improve connectivity by
encouraging the adoption of newly developed standards. We all know
this, we just need to do it and do it right. Hurricane Katrina and its
aftermath showed us that we have a long ways to go.
To me the interoperability question is the most important issue
related to the allocation of digital spectrum. Our constituents want
new digital television service, new wifi and wimax services, and all
the other goodies that will undoubtedly unfurl once we've made
additional spectrum available to private sector interests. However, no
doubt more important then those new devices and services, our
constituents want to know that when they call 911 in the middle of an
emergency, they want to know that the people that come to save them
will be able to communicate with one another so they can figure out how
best to save them.
This is a national problem that requires a focused national
solution. This committee has spent much of the last year hammering out
the details of a DTV bill that will make the spectrum necessary for
this transition. Many of the experts that will appear before us today--
at every level of government and also within the private sector--have
done the detailed planning it will require to implement a project of
this magnitude. So now in many ways it is just a matter of
implementation.
I believe it is incumbent upon Congress not only to ensure the
availability of spectrum and the feasibility of plans, but also to
ensure that our local first responders have the financial and technical
wherewithal to implement interoperability. As the old saying goes, a
chain is only as strong as its weakest link. I think that is
appropriate in this instance because if an issue of national
significance breaks out on a local level, all these plans and policies
are for naught if we aren't all on the same page.
As I mentioned, the 9/11 attacks taught us many lessons about
interoperability. It did not take long for us to figure out how to
learn from that horrible day. Now, we have an opportunity to learn from
what happened during and after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Those
storms revealed different, but equally vital vulnerabilities about our
systems of emergency communication.
Public safety radio towers were demolished; those that ran on
batteries ran out of power, vital electronic components were flooded.
What lessons can we learn? Do we need to fundamentally alter the design
of our communications systems, at least in areas prone to hurricanes?
I look forward to hearing the views of our witnesses on these
important issues. We must focus our energies on these problems and move
expeditiously towards solving them. There is no more important issue
before this Congress.
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
______
Prepared Statement of Hon. Anna G. Eshoo, a Representative in Congress
from the State of California
The public safety response to the terror attacks on 9/11 and the
Hurricane Katrina disaster were, without a doubt, severely hampered by
critical failures in government and public communications systems.
In New York and Washington, the responses to the terrorist attacks
were handicapped by the inability of different segments of the law
enforcement and public safety community to communicate over common
networks and interoperable equipment. Government and the public were
also severely limited by the near total failure of public telephone
networks in the New York and D.C. areas immediately following the
attacks.
This was particularly troubling in Washington because the area's
physical communications infrastructure was not actually harmed when the
Pentagon was attacked.
The public safety response to Katrina was particularly hampered by
physical damage to the communications networks in the Gulf region.
Above-ground telephone lines were knocked out, as were numerous
wireless telephone towers.
Much of this damage was unavoidable, so the failures were
predictable. The question now is how do we address these failures to
ensure a better result when the next attack occurs or when the next
disaster hits.
I'm particularly interested in making sure we learn everything we
can from these disasters because the San Andreas Fault runs the length
of my District. The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated the
probability of a 6.7 or greater magnitude earthquake in the San
Francisco Bay Area between 2003 and 2032.
There are many steps Congress can and should take to shore up our
communications infrastructure in response to what we experienced on 9/
11 and the Gulf Coast disaster.
Many of the problems we observed in these disasters would be
greatly alleviated if the huge swath of communications spectrum
occupied by television broadcasters for analog transmissions were made
available for public safety and advanced telecommunications services
for the public.
I know that Chairman Barton and his staff are working hard to
accelerate this process, and as I indicated in my recent letter to the
Chairman, I'm eager to work with him to move this process forward.
The availability of the analog TV spectrum would help solve several
critical communications problems. First responders have been promised
24 MHz of the released spectrum to build their communications capacity
and to address critical problems of interoperability and system
compatibility. All new communications equipment operating in the
released spectrum bands is required to interoperate with all new and
existing equipment in the 700-800 MHz band.
This spectrum will also become available for a variety of new,
innovative wireless communications technologies, including WiMax
broadband services that will provide high-speed broadband access to
consumers without the vast deployment of costly, highly vulnerable
fiber-optic cable networks.
One of the few success stories in the Gulf Coast disaster was the
performance of 2-1-1 telephone services, particularly in Louisiana and
Texas where they have statewide systems.
Governor Blanco and Governor Perry both designated 2-1-1 as the
``go to'' number to receive assistance, to volunteer, or to ask
questions about the hurricane and its aftermath. When the 9-1-1 system
in Louisiana experience widespread failures, 2-1-1 call centers were
designated to handle emergency calls as well.
In Louisiana the call volume reached 8,000 calls per day statewide,
and in Texas it reached 18,000 per day. The United Way sent trained 2-
1-1 volunteers from around the country to staff the call centers in
each state, and call centers around the country have been designated as
the contact points for any evacuees in need of assistance of any kind.
I'm the lead Democratic sponsor (with Rep. Bilirakis) of H.R. 896,
the Calling for 2-1-1 Act. This legislation authorizes $150 million for
each of the first two years and $100 million for the subsequent three
years to help implement and sustain 2-1-1 nationwide.
I strongly believe this legislation should be included in any
hurricane relief legislative package, and Rep. Bilirakis and I have
contacted Chairman Barton, Rep. Dingell, Speaker Hastert, and Leader
Pelosi to urge them to do so.
In any disaster, location information for emergency callers is
critical, and further enhancement of wireless E-911 capabilities is
necessary. This is an issue Rep. Shimkus and I have worked on for
several years, culminating in the passage of the ENHANCE 911 Act late
last year.
A broader issue that arose on 9/11 and the Katrina disaster is the
ability of the 911 system to remain in operation in major disasters.
The September 11 attacks disabled a major telecommunications facility
in lower Manhattan, and many public safety answering points (PSAPs)
throughout the Gulf Coast were disabled by Katrina.
One of the integral features of IP-based technologies such as VoIP
is the ability of the network to withstand attacks or failures on
individual nodes in the network. In fact, the fundamental design
feature driving DARPA's creation of DARPAnet and the Internet was to
ensure the safe transport of data between mainframe computers at
different strategic locations by creating alternate communication
routes in case of a bomb attack and by decentralizing functions so that
no single computer could be targeted.
In the aftermath of the Katrina disaster, New Orleans Mayor Roy
Nagin and his staff were unable to make telephone calls out of the city
for two days and then, only through a staff member's VoIP telephone.
President Bush ultimately reached Nagin for the first time through the
VoIP service.
Obviously, the migration of voice and data communications from the
traditional telephone network will harden our communications networks
in disasters such as these, and Congress should do everything in its
power to facilitate this progress.
The communications failures of these disasters are but a few of the
factors contributing to the chaos of 9/11 and the massive human tragedy
we saw in the Katrina aftermath.
It's imperative for Congress to investigate thoroughly and learn
from these breakdowns so we never experience a human disaster of this
magnitude again.
The American people deserve no less.
Prepared Statement of Hon. John D. Dingell, a Representative in
Congress from the State of Michigan
Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this important hearing. The
inability of first responders to communicate with each other during
emergencies threatens the public's safety. It puts the lives of first
responders and those in need of assistance at undue risk.
Unfortunately, problems with interoperability are neither new nor rare.
They occur daily, especially during multi-jurisdictional emergencies
such as fighting large fires or searching for missing children. It is
unfortunate that it takes large-scale tragedies such as the attacks of
9/11 or Hurricane Katrina to focus needed attention on this issue.
The damage caused by Katrina, the levee breaches, and the flood
that ensued was unprecedented in scope and scale. As one public safety
official put it, the devastation was so widespread that the biggest
issue was not interoperability, but operability. As we heard in
testimony from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earlier this
month, the lack of commercial power was the primary issue affecting
communications in the days immediately following the hurricane. Power
was out for so long that batteries in public safety radios ran down and
could not be recharged. Emergency generators that powered the
infrastructure ran out of fuel and fresh supplies could not reach those
responding to the disaster areas.
Having said that, large scale events such as Katrina are
foreseeable. Losing commercial power during emergencies is foreseeable.
It is therefore incumbent upon decision-makers to devote the resources
necessary for public safety officials to communicate with each other
whenever and wherever necessary.
Two years ago, a national task force made up of public safety,
State and local government officials issued a report to provide
guidance in achieving interoperability. The task force identified
several key reasons public safety agencies cannot communicate,
including incompatible and aging equipment, inadequate funding, lack of
coordination and cooperation, and too little spectrum. Likewise, during
a hearing in this Subcommittee last year on the problems with
interoperability, a witness from the FCC testified that achieving
interoperability requires an emphasis on more than spectrum,
technology, and equipment issues--it also requires a focus on the
organizational and personnel coordination necessary to make
interoperability available in times of greatest need.
It is important that we address this complex problem with a
comprehensive solution. Funding, spectrum, redundancy, coordination,
and planning are all important pieces to the interoperability puzzle.
They are all needed for true interoperability to become a reality. For
example, in New Orleans, the public safety communications system was
damaged by the flooding, but there was not adequate redundancy or
planning to ensure continued communication. Additionally, in New
Orleans, public safety has had access to additional spectrum in the 700
megahertz band for years. Adequate funding, however, was not available
to purchase the necessary equipment to take advantage of that spectrum.
All levels of government must commit the necessary resources to
solve this problem. The Federal Government must work in partnership
with State and local officials to make true interoperability a reality.
Nationwide, regional, and local planning and coordination must take
place so that the lines of communication stay open during emergencies.
Adequate funding must be provided to help pay for the enormous cost of
updating public safety's old communications infrastructure with new,
interoperable equipment. Likewise, Congress has already allocated to
public safety 24 megahertz of spectrum in the 700-megahertz band.
Congress must act this year to get this spectrum into the hands of
public safety across the country by a date certain. It must do so,
however, in a comprehensive manner that does not unintentionally harm
consumers in the process and potentially delay the return of the
spectrum.
I thank the witnesses for being here today, especially Lieutenant
Colonel Tom Miller from the Michigan State Police. I look forward to
hearing your comments about what steps are currently underway as well
as what assistance is needed from Congress to make sure that first
responders can adequately communicate with one another in times of
public emergencies.
Mr. Upton. Gentlemen, we are delighted that you are here
and we are joined on our first panel by the Honorable Kevin
Martin, Chairman of the Federal Communication Commission; Dr.
David Boyd, Director of SAFECOM, Program Director of Science
and Technology Director to the Department of Homeland Security;
Mr. Vance Hitch, Chief Information Officer of the Department of
Justice.
Gentlemen, your statements have been made part of the
record in their entirety and we would like you to limit your
remarks, opening remarks to no more than 5 minutes if you can.
And Chairman Martin, we will start with you, welcome. Is
that button on?
STATEMENTS OF HON. KEVIN J. MARTIN, CHAIRMAN, FEDERAL
COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION; DAVID G. BOYD, DIRECTOR, SAFECOM
PROGRAM OFFICE, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DIRECTORATE, DEPARTMENT
OF HOMELAND SECURITY; AND VANCE E. HITCH, CHIEF INFORMATION
OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Mr. Martin. It is. Good morning, Chairman Upton and all the
members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to be
with you all today.
And as we all know, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita
devastated the Gulf Coast region. People lost their homes,
their businesses, and even their lives and our hearts go out to
all of the survivors who are now struggling with putting their
lives back together.
My statement today will focus on the effects of the recent
hurricanes on the Nation's communications infrastructure.
First, I will briefly discuss the immediate impact on
communication services in the area and provide a status report.
I will then describe the steps the FCC is taking both to
facilitate the restoration of service and to provide support
for evacuees. And finally, I will offer some initial lessons
learned from this terrible tragedy.
The destruction that the hurricanes caused to the
facilities of communications companies and the services upon
which citizens rely was extraordinary. More than 3 million
customer telephone lines were knocked down in Louisiana,
Mississippi, and Alabama as a result of Hurricane Katrina. And
as you can see on this first chart, the most significant damage
was in the region colored red. The next most significant area
colored yellow reached out more than 100 miles from where the
storm initially landed. And the area in green sustained
moderate damage and it reached out more than 300 miles from
where Katrina initially hit. And the area of size demonstrates
just how far reaching the impact was in terms of the damage to
the communications infrastructure.
Now approximately 40 call centers, 911 call centers also
went down as a result of the two hurricanes, 38 due to Katrina
and two due to Rita. And approximately another 10 were damaged
but were able to reroute their traffic. And as you can see in
this next chart, the area in blue reflects the locations where
the hurricanes knocked call centers out of service, and the
area in red indicates where the call centers remain out of
service today, all of those in the New Orleans area.
Local wireless networks also sustained considerable damage
with more than 1,000 cell sites out of service. And as you can
see in this next chart, over 20 million telephone calls did not
go through the day after Hurricane Katrina struck. The number
of failed calls peaked that day and then slowly decreased daily
as service began to be restored. We also estimate that
approximately 100 broadcast stations were knocked off the air.
This chart follows the outage and restoration of radio
stations. You can see that 80 percent of the radio stations in
the Gulf Coast Region were knocked off the air that day that
Hurricane Katrina hit. Since then, the stations have been
coming back on the area each day and Hurricane Rita caused an
additional 46 radio stations to be knocked off the air. And
finally, hundreds of thousands of cable customers also lost
their service.
Now, as a result of these service outages, it was extremely
difficult for hundreds of thousands of people to receive news
and emergency information and to communicate with their loved
ones. Emergency workers and public safety officials had
difficulty coordinating and it was at times like these that we
are reminded of the importance in the ability to communicate.
Fortunately, the work to restore communication service
began almost immediately. While considerable problems remain,
the companies in the region have made meaningful progress. They
have overcome significant obstacles including flooding, lack of
power, dwindling fuel resources for generators and security to
rebuild, reconnect, and broadcast. Now to the best of my
knowledge, the current status is as follows. This chart
demonstrates the spike in the number of customers who were out
of service, which again fell significantly about a week after
Hurricane Katrina. Approximately 2.5 million customer lines had
been restored, leaving about 264,000 customers still out of
service today. Fifty 911 call centers have been restored, two
in Louisiana remain out of service and this chart demonstrates
how the sustained damage kept many of the call centers out of
operation for almost 9 days as a result of Hurricane Katrina
when most became operational again.
Only one wireless switching center in the affected area is
not operational now and over 1,200 cell sites have been
restored, as you can see in this chart where out of service
cell sites are marked in red, approximately 820 sites continue
to be out of service, the majority within New Orleans and other
areas of Louisiana. The size of the different pie graphs
indicate the size of the markets, and the purple colors
indicate where the cell sites were knocked out of service but
have since come back into operation. You can see that cell
sites were actually knocked down as far north as Hattiesburg.
As the next chart demonstrates, 70 percent of TV stations
in the area were knocked off the air on the day after Hurricane
Katrina. Since then, TV stations have been coming back on the
air almost daily and 10 remain off the air today as a result of
both hurricanes. Fortunately, satellite service providers did
not experience damage to their infrastructure. They have helped
to bridge some of the gaps left by many of these outages. They
provided satellite phones and video links to law enforcement
officials, medical personnel, emergency relief personnel, and
news outlets.
Now the Commission has devoted significant time and
resources to enable first responders to communicate and to
facilitate companies' ability to quickly restore service. We
have granted over 90 STA's, special temporary authority
requests and more than 100 temporary frequency authorizations.
We allowed law enforcement, for example, to use ultra wideband
imaging systems to locate hurricane victims. We waive numerous
rules to enable telephone companies to reroute traffic. From
the beginning, the commissioners reached out to the impacted
industries often numerous times a day to identify their needs
and pass them along to FEMA and the National Communications
System.
And finally, we have facilitated disaster relief efforts
and fundraising efforts by temporarily reassigning the 1-800
number 1-800-RED-CROSS to the American Red Cross. At our recent
open meeting, I also announced my intention for the Commission
to take three major actions in an effort to continue to provide
immediate relief to consumers and business and to enhance the
Commission's planning response efforts.
First, I proposed $211 million in universal service funding
to the disaster area. For all the people eligible for FEMA
disaster assistance, we will provide support for wireless
handsets in a package of 300 free minutes. We will also allow
public and non-profit healthcare providers, including the
American Red Cross, shelters to apply for support of their
telecommunications needs. We will use the E-rate Program to
help reconnect schools and libraries throughout the region. And
we will allow carriers to use the High Cost Program to
prioritize rebuilding of facilities damaged by the hurricanes.
Second, we are also establishing an independent panel of
experts composed of public safety and communication industry
representatives that we charge with reviewing the impact of
Hurricane Katrina on the communications infrastructure and the
affected areas.
And finally, I announced our intention to create a new
Public Safety/Homeland Security Bureau to develop policies and
rules to promote effective and reliable communications for
public safety, national security, and disaster management.
While there is still much work for the Commission to do to
facilitate restoration, I think it is important we take the
time to learn from the tragedy. We need to assess what worked
and what did not, what the Commission can do now to make our
communications net work more robust, and I have three initial
suggestions.
First, we need to ensure that the public has the tools
necessary to know when an emergency is coming and to contact
first responders. This involves several steps. We need a
comprehensive alert system that allows officials at the
national, State, and local level to reach affected citizens in
the most effective and efficient manner possible. It needs to
incorporate the internet and other advances in technology so
that officials can reach large numbers of people simultaneously
through different communications media.
We also need to ensure that providers comply with our 911
rules. The 911 system is critical to our Nation's ability to
respond to a host of crises. This obligation to provide access
to emergency operators should not be optional for any service
provider.
We also need to ensure that Public Safety Answering Points
are redundant. That Hurricane Katrina severed communication
links to multiple PSAPs and to key facilities that handle local
emergency and first responder calls. We need to establish
redundant routing that will create a more resilient network to
aid those public safety calls.
Second, I suggest we need to enable first responders to
communicate seamlessly. We need to have an interoperable mobile
wireless communication system that can be rapidly deployed
anywhere in the country. Such a system must have two essential
features. First, the system must be interoperable and must
allow different organizations from different jurisdictions to
communicate with each other immediately through both voice and
data. This requires that there be a sufficient spectrum devoted
to these purposes. It also requires that first responders have
equipment capable of operating on multiple frequencies in
multiple formats so that different systems can connect with
each other. Properly implemented, a system with adequate
spectrum and such smart radios would help to ensure that both
data and voice are transmitted between agencies, instantly
replacing the multiple lengthy calls that occur today.
The system must also be capable of rapid deployment and
restoration using multiple flexible technologies and extremely
mobile infrastructure. Smart radios can enable first responders
to find any available towers or infrastructure on multiple
frequencies, Wi-Fi and spectrum technologies can enable them to
use limited spectrum quickly and efficiently. And mobile
antennas which are capable of using both satellite and
terrestrial technology should be used to establish
communications as quickly as possible. The infrastructure could
use inflatable antennas, cell towers on wheels, high altitude
balloons, or other mobile facilities.
And my final suggestion is to enhance network resiliency.
We need to ensure that all communications providers develop and
adhere to best practices to ensure reliability in the event of
a disaster and quick restoration of service in facilities in
the event service is disrupted. We should take full advantage
of IP-based technologies to enhance the resiliency of
traditional communications networks. IP technology provides
dynamic capability to the change and reroute telecommunications
traffic within the network so that in the event of a systems
failure within the traditional network, these technologies
enable the service providers to restore service more quickly
and to provide the flexibility to initiate service at new
locations chosen by the customers.
I look forward to working cooperatively with the members of
this committee, other Members of Congress, and my colleagues at
the Commission to achieve these goals. We appreciate any
guidance you may have on these issues and I thank you for the
opportunity to be here today and look forward to answering your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Kevin J. Martin follows:]
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Mr. Upton. Thank you again.
Dr. Boyd, welcome.
STATEMENT OF DAVID G. BOYD
Mr. Boyd. Good afternoon and thank you, Mr. Chairman and
members of the Committee, for the invitation to speak to you
today.
Interoperability requires, before all else, operability as
Hurricane Katrina demonstrated in the absence of a reliable
network across which respondents within an agency can
effectively communicate with themselves. Interoperability is
both irrelevant and impossible. Some seem to believe the
introduction of new technologies alone can solve our
interoperability problems but adding equipment addresses only
part of what a fully robust, reliable, and interoperable public
safety communication system requires. For example, when we lose
towers, first responders have only their mobile or portable
units available so range is dramatically reduced and control of
the incident is severely compromised. Portable units permit
some short-range communications until the proprietary battery
packages begin to fail and cannot be recharged because the
chargers are typically attached to the power grid. 911 centers
are tied to the wired telephone network and so is the cellular
system which depends on cell phones that also use propriety
batteries. No single fix alone can address all of these
elements.
Many solutions have been offered and many claims have been
made for each solution and all have a role, but none is a
silver bullet. Satellite phones are extremely useful for
command elements but often hopelessly impractical for
individual first responders. The required training and signals
can be blocked by vegetation, buildings, terrain, and even
weather. They also use batteries that need recharging. And a
first responder in the middle of a rescue or up to his armpits
in flood water will find the antenna hard or impossible to aim.
Van or trailer mounted communication systems dropped into the
incident nearly always offer significantly less coverage than
the original system and may require significant training to
use. And all of these without solid prior planning and
appropriate training will add to the difficulties of achieving
interoperability once interoperability is achieved.
We believe that what we have developed to support
interoperability can also help first responders successfully
navigate any communications emergency. We of the public safety
community have identified six key building blocks required to
achieve interoperability. Governance, that is the political
issue you addressed, sir; standard operating procedures;
technology, training and exercises; routine use of
interoperable systems; and cost cutting. Of all of these is the
sixth and most important element, a high degree of leadership,
planning and collaboration with a commitment to and an
investment in sustainability across all regions. To help public
safety agencies, and especially the policy levels of
Government, understand the interrelationship of all of these
factors, we developed a tool we call the interoperability
continuum and if you have not seen it, I will be happy to
provide you a copy. This planning tool explains how all these
elements interrelate and it makes clear that all of these
elements need to be addressed not during an emergency.
Interoperability is not a new issue. It was a problem in
Washington, DC, when the Air Florida flight crashed into the
Potomac in 1982, in New York City when the Twin Towers were
first attacked in 1993, in 1995 when the Murrah Building was
destroyed in Oklahoma City, and in 1999 at Columbine. Too many
public safety personnel cannot communicate by radio because
their equipment is still incompatible or the frequencies they
are assigned to are different and they have not got bridging
technologies available. They operate on 10 different frequency
bands and they run communication systems that are often
proprietary and too often 30 or more years old. Over 90 percent
of the Nation's public safety wireless infrastructure is
financed, owned, operated, and maintained by the more than
60,000 individual local jurisdictions, police, fire, and
emergency services that serve the public. National efforts to
fix the problem have historically been erratic, uncertain, and
until recently uncoordinated. Worse, the efforts have too often
been designed without the direct involvement of the people with
the greatest stake in effective communications, the first
responders. The attacks on September 11, 2001 made clear all of
this had to change.
Since September 11, significant progress has been made in
interoperability thanks to the priorities both the
Administration and Congress have placed on it. In 2001, SAFECOM
was established as a Presidential Management Initiative, the
first time interoperability had ever been addressed at that
level. In 2004, the Department established the Office of
Interoperability and Compatibility to further strengthen and
integrate interoperability and compatibility efforts. And in
the Intelligence Reform Act, Congress gave it a legislative
charter.
While fixing the Nation's interoperability problem will
require a sustained effort, we recognize that we cannot wait to
move things forward. That is why SAFECOM has initiated the
number of near term initiatives, including working with the
National Institute of Standards and Technology to accelerate
the development of standards, the Interoperability Continuum I
mentioned earlier, and the development of statewide planning
tools, RapidCom, which was a program to establish command level
emergency interoperability across 10 high threat areas, the
national statement of requirements, the public safety
architecture framework, creation of a P-25 performance testing
program, development of coordinated grant guidance which for
the first time is included in all Federal grant programs,
creation of a national baseline and identification of public
safety spectrum needs.
This Nation is heavily invested in an existing
infrastructure that is too often inadequate to the basic
communications requirements of individual agencies and not
interoperable. We must continue to pursue a comprehensive
strategy that takes into account technical and cultural issues
associated with improving interoperability which recognizes the
challenges associated with incorporating legacy equipment and
practices in a constantly changing technology and cultural
environment in which encourages strong local leadership in
ensuring that the needs of the front line of emergency
response, the first responders are met. Though many challenges
remain, we believe we have accomplished a great deal in the
barely 2 years DHS has managed this program. We are confident
that with your continued support and the assistance of our many
Federal, and in particular State and local partners, we will
continue to move 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.
And I would be happy to answer any questions you have, sir.
[The prepared statement of David G. Boyd follows:]
Prepared Statement of David G. Boyd, Director, Office for
Interoperability and Compatibility, Systems Engineering and
Development, Directorate of Science and Technology, Department of
Homeland Security
introduction
Good morning and thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Committee, for the invitation to speak to you today.
Today's testimony will focus on SAFECOM, a communications program
of the Office of Interoperability and Compatibility (OIC), which
resides in the Office of Systems Engineering and Development, Science
and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
SAFECOM provides development, testing, evaluation, guidance, research
and assistance for local, tribal, state, and Federal public safety
agencies working to improve public safety response through more
effective and efficient interoperable wireless communications. (By
public safety we mean fire, police, emergency medical services,
emergency managers, and others who have emergency response missions).
Although SAFECOM is working with practitioners to develop long-term
strategic initiatives without which the nation will never solve the
interoperability problem, we all know terrorists, natural disasters and
other emergencies will not wait for a comprehensive national solution
so the program has been designed with near-, mid- and long-term goals.
Communications interoperability refers to the ability of public
safety agencies to talk across disciplines and jurisdictions via radio
communications systems, exchanging voice and/or data with one another
on demand, in real time, as authorized. Unfortunately, the nation is
heavily invested in an existing infrastructure made up largely of
systems that are too often incompatible. To change this, efforts within
the Federal government to address the interoperability problem are
being coordinated by SAFECOM and incorporate the needs of local, state,
and Federal practitioners. But there are no immediate, silver bullet
fixes to the financial, technical and cultural challenges that face us.
As the Government Accountability Office (GAO) acknowledged in a July
2004 report, communications interoperability is a long-term problem
with no one-size-fits-all solution.
public safety communications environment
Interoperability is not a new issue; it has plagued the public
safety community for decades. It was a problem in Washington, D.C.,
when the Air Florida flight crashed into the Potomac in 1982. It was a
problem in New York City when the Twin Towers were first attacked in
1993. It was a problem in 1995 when the Murrah Building was destroyed
in Oklahoma City, and in 1999 at Columbine. The reality is that today,
too many public safety personnel cannot communicate by radio with
personnel from other agencies or disciplines because their equipment is
still incompatible, or the frequencies they are assigned are different.
They operate on 10 different frequency bands and run communications
systems that are often proprietary, and that are too often 30 or more
years old, in an era when the technology lifecycle is only 18 to 24
months. Over 90% of the nation's public safety wireless infrastructure
is financed, owned, operated, and maintained by the more than 60,000
local jurisdictions that provide emergency services to the public and
only a very tiny fraction of this funding is Federal. National efforts
to fix the problem have historically been erratic, uncertain, and--
until recently--uncoordinated. The attacks on September 11, 2001, made
clear this had to change.
Since September 11, 2001, significant progress has been made to
improve communications interoperability for the public safety
community. Yet it is apparent that more must be achieved. Much of this
progress can be attributed to the priority that both the Administration
and Congress have placed on solving the problem of communications
interoperability. In 2001, SAFECOM was established as a Presidential
Management Initiative and charged with strengthening interoperability
at all levels of government by coordinating Federal programs,
initiating a comprehensive standards program, and developing a national
architecture. In 2004, the Department established OIC to further
strengthen and integrate interoperability and compatibility efforts to
improve local, tribal, state, and Federal public safety preparedness
and response. OIC was directed to:
Identify and certify all DHS programs that touch on interoperability;
Support the creation of interoperability standards;
Establish a comprehensive research, development, testing, and
evaluation (RDT&E) program for improving public safety
interoperability;
Integrate coordinated grant guidance across all DHS grant making
agencies that touch on public safety interoperability;
Oversee the development and implementation of technical assistance
for public safety interoperability;
Conduct pilot demonstrations;
Create an interagency interoperability coordination council; and
Establish an effective outreach program.
long-term vision
Practitioners helped SAFECOM articulate a long term vision for
interoperability which projects that, not later than 2023, first
responders will operate on a national system-of-systems using
standards-based equipment that provides the capability to respond to an
incident anywhere in the country, using their own equipment, on any
network, and on dedicated public safety spectrum. They will be able to
communicate with each other as authorized via voice, data, and video on
demand and in real time. Making this vision flesh will require work in
five critical success areas, including:
1. A common set of guidelines and criteria for public safety
communications systems in conjunction with a national
architecture framework;
2. Coordinated testing and evaluation processes to ensure
communications equipment meets critical requirements;
3. Standardization of equipment fortified by interim grant guidance
measures;
4. Coordinated spectrum policy that meets the needs of the public
safety community; and
5. Certification of state communications plans.
None of these initiatives will be accomplished overnight, but many
of them are already beginning to strengthen interoperability in the
public safety community.
near-term initiatives
While fixing the nation's interoperability problem will require a
sustained effort, we recognize that we must quickly ensure sufficient
interoperability at all levels of government to meet emergencies of any
kind. To do this, DHS and SAFECOM has initiated a number of near-term
initiatives, including development of the Interoperability Continuum,
development of statewide planning tools, execution of the RapidCom
Initiative, publication of a national statement of requirements,
creation of a conformance testing program, development of coordinated
grant guidance for inclusion in every Federal grant program, creation
of a national baseline, identification of public safety spectrum needs,
development of emergency response plans for immediate communications
capabilities, and coordination with Office of State and Local
Government Coordination and Preparedness' (SLGCP) Interoperable
Communications Technical Assistance Program (ICTAP).
Statement of Requirements and a National Architecture Framework
Interoperability plans to support responses to an incident need to
be developed based on a common set of guidelines and criteria for
public safety communications systems and these should be aligned with a
national architecture framework. Only when these guidelines are
universally recognized and followed will first responders and the
larger public safety community be able to communicate effectively. To
that end, SAFECOM published Version 1.0 of the first ever comprehensive
Public Safety Statement of Requirements for Communications and
Interoperability (SoR). Developed with public safety practitioner
input, the SoR defines the functional requirements for public safety
communications. Subsequent versions will further refine these technical
requirements so that industry will have a blueprint to which to build
technologies that address public safety's needs. This SoR also serves
as the basis for developing a national architecture framework for
communications interoperability. SAFECOM is working to develop a Public
Safety Architecture Framework (PSAF) that, with the SoR, will serve as
a tool to help the nation's first responder agencies understand the
technical requirements and national migration path toward fully
interoperable communications systems without imposing requirements that
stifle innovation.
Coordinated Testing and Evaluation of Equipment
The next step in achieving national communications interoperability
is the development of coordinated testing and evaluation processes to
ensure communications equipment meets the critical needs of first
responders. Public safety is faced with many complex procurement
decisions and frequently has to hope that the equipment they buy will
do what it claims. To ensure that public safety is able to truly trust
the claims made by vendors, communications equipment needs to be tested
and evaluated based on first responder needs and capabilities. To do
this, SAFECOM created a testing and evaluation working group to help
ensure that methodologies for testing and evaluation of
interoperability products are technically sound and comparable across
testing laboratories. The working group members are practitioners and
subject matter experts from law enforcement, fire services, and
emergency medical services. These members help review and develop test
criteria and serve the program by determining which products should be
evaluated. S
National Baseline of Public Safety Communications
The National Interoperability Baseline study will provide the
nation's first statistically significant, quantitative measurement of
the current state of public safety communications interoperability. The
development of the survey methodology was initiated in January 2005 and
the resulting study will provide an understanding of the current state
of interoperability nationwide upon completion. Additionally, it will
serve as a tool to measure future improvements made through local,
state, and Federal public safety communications initiatives.
The survey instrument developed for Interoperability Baseline will
allow SAFECOM to identify areas with interoperability shortfalls, track
the impact of Federal programs and measure the success of these
programs, establish an on-going process and mechanism to measure the
state of interoperability on a recurring basis, and develop an
interoperability baseline self-assessment tool for local and state
public safety agencies.
Coordinated Spectrum Policy That Meets the Needs of Public Safety
Radio spectrum is a finite resource--there is only so much
available and it is shared by public safety, radio broadcasters,
government users, and other commercial and private consumers. The large
demand for this resource can lead to overcrowding, which, in turn can
cause delays in or disruption of communication for public safety. The
Federal Communications Commission has allocated certain frequencies to
public safety, but these allocations are fragmented, creating
challenges for communications among different agencies and
jurisdictions. In the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act
of 2004, Congress required the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
in consultation with DHS and the National Telecommunications and
Information Administration (NTIA) to conduct a study to assess the
spectrum needs for local, state, and Federal first responders, which is
due in December 2005. SAFECOM is currently assessing public safety
spectrum needs in support of the President's national spectrum
management initiative. DHS, in consultation with the Department of
Commerce and other relevant agencies, is developing a Spectrum Needs
Plan out of these assessments which will be delivered to the President
by the end of November 2005.
Certification of State Communications Plans
Interoperability requires, before all else, simple operability--
that is, communications within the local agency. As Hurricane Katrina
demonstrated, in the absence of a reliable network across which
responders within an agency can effectively communicate,
interoperability is both irrelevant and impossible. Strengthening and
ensuring basic level public safety communications capabilities,
therefore, is the first task. But progressing from agency-specific
operability towards multi-jurisdictional and multi-disciplinary
interoperability requires attention to more than technology.
Some believe the introduction of new technologies alone can solve
our interoperability problems. But adding equipment addresses only one
part of what a fully robust, reliable, and interoperable public safety
communications system requires. With input from the public safety
community, we have identified five key building blocks required to
achieve interoperability. Governance, Standard Operating Procedures
(SOP), Technology, Training and Exercises, routine use (Usage) of
interoperable systems, and regular Maintenance must all be present for
interoperability to be possible. To help public safety agencies and
especially the policy levels of government understand the
interrelationship of all of these factors, we developed a tool called
the ``Interoperability Continuum.'' This planning tool explains how all
these elements relate to each other. For example, if a city within a
region procures new equipment it may have a technical interoperability
capability, but unless it has also conducted exercises to test
procedures (and find points of failure) and concepts of operation, and
developed policies agreeable to the entire region, it is unlikely the
new equipment can be effectively integrated into regional
interoperability plans. As states develop their emergency
communications plans, we recommend that they address all the elements
of the Interoperability Continuum.
Statewide Planning Tools
Statewide communications plans are often unsuccessful because the
top-down approach fails to consider the requirements of the first
responders who are the primary users and who control the most of the
wireless infrastructure.
In 2004, SAFECOM partnered with the Commonwealth of Virginia and
the Department of Justice to develop a strategic plan for improving
statewide interoperable communications for the state. The effort was
based on SAFECOM's ``bottom-up,'' locally-driven approach. The planning
process included six regional focus group sessions, which culminated in
a final strategic planning session. The focus group sessions captured
perspectives from numerous local public safety representatives
throughout the Commonwealth; these perspectives were used in the final
strategic planning session in which recommendations for key initiatives
were developed as part of a statewide strategic plan for improving
public safety communications and interoperability.
Based on lessons learned from the Virginia planning process,
SAFECOM published the Statewide Communications Interoperability
Planning (SCIP) Methodology as a model for integrating practitioner
input into a successful statewide strategic plan to every state. The
SCIP Methodology serves as one approach for states to consider as they
initiate statewide communications planning efforts.
We are also implementing Section 7304 of the Intelligence Reform
and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (Public Law 108-458), which
authorized the Secretary of Homeland Security to carry out at least two
Regional Communications Interoperability Pilots (RCIP). In accordance
with the congressional criteria for determining the location of the
pilot sites, as well as criteria outlined by the program itself,
SAFECOM selected the State of Nevada and the Commonwealth of Kentucky
as RCIP locations. SAFECOM, in coordination with the Office of State
and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness' Interoperable
Communications Technical Assistance Program (ICTAP), is helping both
states implement the SCIP methodology.
Building on lessons learned from the SCIP Methodology and earlier
SAFECOM initiatives, the RCIP projects will help us identify models for
improving communications and interoperability that take into account
the wide range of challenges across the nation. When the projects are
complete, Nevada and Kentucky will each have improved interoperability
plans and we will be able to use the lessons learned to better develop
or strengthen replicable tools and methodologies which will be made
available to public safety practitioners, as well as to local and state
governments. An interim report regarding the progress of the pilot
projects has been submitted to Congress. A final report will be
provided to Congress in June 2006.
We believe statewide emergency communications plans are fundamental
to an effective response to a catastrophic event. As states continue to
develop their own plans, SAFECOM recommends that they do so in
coordination with SAFECOM methodologies and guidance.
RapidCom
On July 22, 2004, President Bush formally announced the RapidCom
initiative, a program designed to ensure that a minimum level of public
safety interoperability would be in place in ten high-threat urban
areas by September 30, 2004.
In coordination with the Office of State and Local Government
Coordination and Preparedness (OSLGCP), the Department of Justice's 25
Cities Program, and the DHS Wireless Management Office, SAFECOM worked
closely with public safety leaders in ten high-risk urban areas
centered in Boston, Chicago, Houston, Jersey City, Los Angeles, Miami,
New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and the Washington Metropolitan
Area to assess their communications interoperability capacity and
needs, and to identify and implement solutions. In keeping with the
SAFECOM ``bottom-up'' approach, local officials drove the design and
implementation of solutions in their jurisdictions.
With the on-time completion of the RapidCom project, incident
commanders in each of the urban areas now have confirmed they have the
ability to adequately communicate with each other and their respective
command centers within one hour of an incident.
Interoperable Communications Technical Assistance Program (ICTAP)
A key component in achieving interoperable communications across
the nation is providing on-site technical assistance to states and
urban areas. SLGCP funds ICTAP, a technical assistance program designed
to enhance interoperable communications between local, state, and
Federal first responders and public safety officials. The program
provides free support to states and urban areas with the goal of
enabling local public safety officials to communicate across
disciplines and jurisdictions via radio communications systems,
exchanging voice and/or data with one another on demand, in real time,
as authorized.
conclusion
These initiatives are only part of what the SAFECOM program has
undertaken to advance communications interoperability across the
Nation. This nation is heavily invested in an existing infrastructure
that is too often inadequate to the basic communications requirements
of individual agencies and not interoperable. We must continue to
pursue a comprehensive strategy that takes into account technical and
cultural issues associated with improving interoperability, which
recognizes the challenges associated with incorporating legacy
equipment and practices in constantly changing technology and cultural
environments, and which ensures that the needs of the front line of
emergency response--the first responders--are met. Though many
challenges remain, we believe we have accomplished a great deal in the
short time DHS has managed this program.
We are confident that with your continuing support and the
assistance of our many Federal partners, we will continue to move
towards a world where lives and property are never lost because public
safety agencies are unable to communicate or lack compatible equipment
and training resources.
Appendix I: OIC Authorities from the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism
Prevention Act of 2004
Congress, with the passage of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism
Prevention Act of 2004 (PL 108-458) less than a year ago, gave OIC and
SAFECOM legislative authority to carry out its responsibilities. Before
passage of this act, responsibility for addressing interoperability was
spread across three different agencies. Section 7303 of the Act
directed SAFECOM to:
coordinate with other Federal agencies to establish a comprehensive
national approach to achieving public safety interoperable
communications;
develop, with Federal agencies and state and local authorities,
minimum capabilities for communications interoperability for
Federal, state, and local public safety agencies;
accelerate voluntary consensus standards for public safety
interoperable communications;
develop and implement flexible open architectures for short- and
long-term solutions to public safety interoperable
communications;
identify priorities for research, development, and testing and
evaluation within DHS and assist other Federal agencies in
doing the same with regard to public safety interoperable
communications;
provide technical assistance to state and locals regarding planning,
acquisition strategies, and other functions necessary to
achieve public safety communications interoperability;
develop and disseminate best practices to improve public safety
communications interoperability;
develop appropriate performance measures and milestones to measure
the nation's progress to achieving public safety communications
interoperability;
provide technical guidance, training, and other assistance to support
the rapid establishment of consistent, secure, and effective
interoperable communications capabilities in the event of an
emergency in urban and other areas determined by the Secretary
to be at consistently high levels of risk from terrorist
attack; and develop minimum interoperable communications
capabilities for emergency response providers.
Appendix II: Tools and Methods based on Local and State Pilots
Communications Tabletop Exercise Methodology, a process for a
communications-focused tabletop exercise replicable across
urban areas.
Tabletop Exercise After-Action Report, a template for capturing key
findings and identifying gaps following each tabletop exercise.
Interoperability Pocket Guide, a process for creating an area-
specific interoperability pocket guide to ensure local public
safety officials are aware of current capabilities available in
their areas.
Templates for Improving Interoperability, including governance
charter, standard operating procedure (SOP), and memorandum of
agreement (MOA) templates to help communities improve
interoperability.
Operational Guide for the Interoperability Continuum--Lessons Learned
from RapidCom, which outlines the importance of each element of
the Interoperability Continuum, provides common challenges to
consider when working towards improved interoperability, and
recommends key actions to increase an area's capabilities.
Mr. Upton. Thank you very much.
Mr. Hitch, welcome.
STATEMENT OF VANCE E. HITCH
Mr. Hitch. Thank you. Good afternoon.
Mr. Upton. I think you want to just hit the button. There
you go.
Mr. Hitch. Can you hear me now? Okay.
Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation to speak with
you today. I am the Chief Information Officer of the Department
of Justice and I have held this position since April of 2002.
And my testimony today will describe the Department of
Justice's efforts since 9/11/01 to improve interoperable
wireless communications within DOJ, as well as within our law
enforcement partners in other Federal, State, and local
agencies. I will in particular focus my attention on the
Integrated Wireless Network Program, which is a program that my
office manages and is key to our law enforcement mission.
Although most metropolitan areas have some inter-agency
communications capabilities, they are limited and do not meet
the requirements in all circumstances. Further, much of the
non-urban areas of the country have even less. Events such as
Hurricane Katrina highlight the fact that most public safety
communication systems are highly dependent on commercial or
public infrastructures such as electric utilities,
telecommunications, natural gas, and so forth. When these core
infrastructure systems fail or are overwhelmed, the agency
communication systems are badly degraded or fail as well.
DOJ is committed to helping to improve interoperability
across the entire law enforcement and Homeland Security
communities. DOJ has several ongoing programs that are designed
to address particular aspects of the communications
interoperability issue. Today I am focusing on the Integrated
Wireless Network Program. However, before I do so, I just want
to mention briefly a couple of related programs. Through the
Office of the Community Oriented Policing Services, known as
COPS, DOJ awarded $150 million in grants in 2003 and 2004 to 37
jurisdictions to improve public safety interoperability through
voice interoperability and data sharing projects. Earlier this
month, COPS awarded another $92 million to an additional 25
localities. Also through the Communications Technology Program,
the National Institute of Justice has granted over $90 million
to practitioners, universities, industry standards bodies, and
vendors to develop interoperability solutions for State and
local law enforcement.
Finally, as an adjunct and interim measure under the IWN
Program, my office has partnered with State and local officials
in 25 cities to connect existing Federal, State, and local
agency systems together. DOJ has coordinated each of these
three initiatives with SAFECOM Program managed by the
Department of Homeland Security in which you have just heard
from.
I now want to focus on the IWN Program, Integrated Wireless
Network. IWN is a partnership between the Department of
Justice, Homeland Security, and Treasury to implement a
consolidated nationwide communication system for Federal law
enforcement and homeland defense agents. IWN will support
approximately 80,000 Federal agents in all 50 states and U.S.
territories. Based on the Government's preliminary engineering
estimates, IWN will require installation of communications
infrastructure at approximately 2,500 locations around the
country.
IWN will replace the antiquated systems currently
supporting Federal agencies including the FBI, DEA, ATF, U.S.
Marshals, the Secret Service, ICE, and the Border Patrol. Using
a variety of interoperable technologies, the IWN will address
Federal agency requirements to communicate across agencies and
with State and local law enforcement partners. The IWN will
also facilitate Federal use of emerging communications
technology such as voice over IP and wireless streaming video.
Finally, IWN will allow DOJ, DHS, and Treasury to address these
requirements in the most resource efficient means possible.
The genesis of the IWN Program was a mandate from the
Department of Commerce, the National Telecommunications and
Information Administration, NTIA, to cut in half the amount of
radio spectrum used by Federal agencies for each land mobile
radio channel. To meet the NTIA ``narrowband'' mandate, as it
is known, Federal agencies have to replace their legacy radio
systems. The IWN Program began at the Department of Justice in
2000, Treasury joined us in November of 2001, and DHS joined us
in March of 2003.
To date, the IWN Program has developed functional and
management requirements, conducted a technical assessment and
market research into potential products and services, and
deployed several pilot systems to assess technology options and
gain lessons learned on managing multi-agency systems. We
currently are conducting the procurement for the development,
deployment, and operation of a nationwide IWN system.
IWN will address the following lessons we have learned from
operations of the existing legacy systems, achievements from
our 25 cities interoperability projects, and the results of IWN
pilots that we have run in Salt Lake City, San Diego, and
Seattle. First of all, deploying and operating effective
communication systems is a very complex endeavor. The systems
must adapt to each agency's unique business requirements and
must be tailored to the geographic region being supported.
Second, interoperability must be addressed regionally or
locally. Agencies and officers usually need to communicate with
compatriots from other agencies operating in the same general
area. Third, a prerequisite for improving interagency
communications is the development of successful partnerships
among participating agencies. And fourth, joint systems such as
IWN provide a number of opportunities to achieve significant
cost efficiencies. In addition, the prime lesson learned from
Hurricane Katrina is that we must carefully address
survivability as we build and deploy IWN in the future.
In closing, we believe that the IWN Program is an example
of good Government and best practices. We expect to realize
significant operational benefits from the IWN, including
communication services that are more secure, more reliable and
accessible to Federal agents over a greater geographic area
than is available today. The system will also provide inherent
interoperability between the IWN agencies and will facilitate
communication with officials from other Federal, State, and
local law enforcement agencies. Better communications will
facilitate better mission coordination and collaboration, which
in turn will make our law enforcement and homeland security
personnel more effective in stopping crime and protecting the
Nation.
Thank you for your time this afternoon and I will be happy
to answer any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Vance E. Hitch follows:]
Prepared Statement of Vance E. Hitch, Chief Information Officer, U.S.
Department of Justice
Good afternoon and thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Committee, for the invitation to speak to you today.
I am the Chief Information Officer for the Department of Justice. I
have held this position since April 2002. My testimony today will
describe efforts the Department of Justice has undertaken since
September 11, 2001, to improve interoperable wireless communication
within the Department of Justice, as well as between the Department and
our law enforcement partners in other federal, state and local
agencies. I will focus particular attention to the Integrated Wireless
Network (IWN) program, which is a program that my office manages.
Interagency communications is a priority issue for the Department
of Justice and we recognize that such capability is also a top priority
for the public safety community at large. DOJ's ability to protect this
country and stop crime (including terrorism) is heavily dependent on
working closely with other federal, state, tribal and local agencies.
Such working relationships cannot be achieved unless we can
interconnect agency communications systems. Similarly, we consistently
hear this same message from law enforcement partners in other federal
agencies as well as at the state, tribal and local level. Indeed, the
need for interagency communications has been widely recognized among
the law enforcement community for at least two decades.--The terrorist
attacks on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent analysis of what
occurred during and in response to the attacks, highlighted in a very
public way the communication deficits facing the country as a whole and
the law enforcement and homeland security communities in particular.
Although most major metropolitan areas have some basic capability
to link agency communications systems together to communicate in
emergency situations, much of the country's existing capabilities are
limited and do not meet the requirements for all circumstances.
Further, most of the nation's interoperability capabilities exist only
in our major cities. Much of the non-urban areas of the country have
little interagency communications capabilities. In addition, events
such as Hurricane Katrina highlight the fact that most of our public
safety wireless communications systems (federal, state and local) are
highly dependent on commercial or public infrastructure (e.g., electric
utilities, telecommunications services, etc.). When these core
infrastructure systems fail or are overwhelmed--as was the case during
Hurricane Katrina--the agency communication systems are badly degraded
or fail as well.
The Department of Justice is committed to supporting the
improvement of interagency communications among the law enforcement
community. DOJ has several ongoing programs that are designed to
address particular aspects of the communications interoperability
issue. The one I want to focus on today is the Integrated Wireless
Network Program, an initiative to improve federal tactical law
enforcement and homeland security communications capabilities. However,
before I talk about IWN in detail, I first want to stress that the
Department's efforts are not one-dimensional--in addition to addressing
specific DOJ communications requirements through IWN, the Department
also has contributed to addressing communications issues at the state
and local level too.
Through the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS)
program, DOJ awarded $150 million in grants in 2003 and 2004, to 37
jurisdictions to improve public safety interoperability. The projects
funded by COPS include voice interoperability and data information
sharing to large and small population centers across the nation.
Earlier this month, COPS--awarded another $92 million to 26 localities
to address public safety interoperability. Through the Communications
Technology (CommTech) Program, the National Institute of Justice--has
granted over $90--million to practitioners, universities, industry
standards bodies and vendors in order to develop interoperability
solutions for state and local law enforcement. CommTech efforts span
five different disciplines: research and development, integrated
product test & evaluation, pilot programs, standards development, and
outreach and technical assistance. Finally, as an initial step in the
development of the IWN, DOJ has partnered with state and local
officials in 25 cities across the country to augment or implement
multi-agency emergency communications capabilities. This effort--which
we call our 25 Cities Interoperability Program--has sought to achieve
interoperable communications by connecting existing federal, state and
local agency systems together. DOJ has made a concerted effort to
coordinate across each of these three initiatives, and also with the
SAFECOM program managed by the Department of Homeland Security.
I now want to focus on the Integrated Wireless Network (IWN)
program. IWN is a partnership between DOJ and the Departments of
Homeland Security and the Treasury to implement a consolidated nation-
wide communications system in support of the federal agents and
officers engaged in the conduct of the law enforcement and homeland
defense missions of the three Departments. The scope of the IWN is
significant. When fully implemented, IWN will support approximately
80,000 federal agents and officers in all 50 states and the U.S.
territories. Based on the government's preliminary engineering
estimates, the IWN will require installation of communications
infrastructure at approximately 2,500 locations around the country.
The IWN will replace the antiquated and functionally limited
existing systems currently supporting federal agencies including the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration,
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, U.S. Marshals
Service, U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In doing so, the IWN will
address federal agency requirements to communicate across agencies, and
with state and local law enforcement partners. The IWN also will
facilitate federal use of emerging communications technology (such as
Voice over Internet Protocol, and wireless streaming video). Finally,
IWN will allow DOJ, DHS and Treasury to address these requirements in
the most resource-efficient means possible, thus reducing the dollars,
staff time and radio spectrum needed to meet federal agency
communications requirements.
The genesis of the IWN program was a mandate from the Department of
Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration
(NTIA), to cut in half the amount of radio spectrum used by federal
agencies for each land mobile radio channel [For reference, see 47
U.S.C. 903(d).]. Land mobile radio is the technology most law
enforcement and public safety agencies (federal, state and local) use
for tactical communications systems. The practical effect of the NTIA
``narrowband'' mandate was a requirement for federal agencies to
replace their legacy radio systems. In 2000, as a cost avoidance
measure, DOJ decided to build one system rather than replace the six
separate systems in place at that time. A similar decision was made by
officials at the Department of the Treasury. In August 2001, DOJ and
Treasury officials began discussing a joint project. Initial agreement
was reached on September 7, 2001, and the two departments signed the
first memorandum of understanding for the IWN in November 2001. The
Department of Homeland Security joined the partnership when it was
created in March 2003.
The September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon
changed the focus of the IWN program from compliance with the NTIA
narrowband mandate to improving the mission effectiveness of the
communications system, of which interagency communications is a key
aspect.
To date, the IWN program has developed a comprehensive set of
functional and management requirements, conducted a technical
assessment and market research into products and services that may
provide the basis for the IWN system, and deployed several pilot
systems to assess technology options and gain lessons learned on
managing multi-agency systems. At present, the Department of Justice--
on behalf of the three-department partnership--is conducting a
procurement for the development, deployment and operation of a
nationwide IWN system.
The IWN has been greatly influenced to date (and will continue to
be influenced) by a number of lessons learned by DOJ, DHS and Treasury.
The sources of these lessons include the experiences gained through
operation of the existing individual agency systems, achievements from
our 25 Cities Interoperability projects, and results of IWN pilots in
Salt Lake City, Utah, San Diego, California and, most recently,
Seattle, Washington. From these experiences and pilots, we have learned
the following:
Deploying and operating effective communications systems is a complex
endeavor. Public safety communications systems in general are
complicated because they must be flexible in order to support
the complex business processes of an agency that must address
or respond to a wide range of non-routine situations. Multi-
agency systems add a layer of complexity because each agency
has its unique business processes or functional requirements.
In addition, wireless communications systems have to be
tailored to the geographic region being supported (this is a
key distinguishing factor between wireless systems and all
other IT). As a consequence, wireless communications systems
such as IWN can employ common architectures and standards, but
cannot be developed and deployed in a ``cookie cutter'' manner.
Interoperability must be addressed regionally or locally. While the
federal government and its agencies can provide a national
perspective to communications issues, interoperability,
especially as it pertains to law enforcement, is essentially a
``local'' issue. Agents and officers usually need to
communicate with compatriots from other agencies operating in
the same general area. Further, because every region has a
unique mix of government structures and communications
resources in their ``embedded base,'' no one solution can be
appropriately imposed uniformly across the country. Instead,
what is needed is a set of solution options that can be applied
in varying combinations to address the specific communications
needs of each region.
A prerequisite for improving interagency communications is the
development of successful partnerships among agencies in a
particular region. As DOJ officials have worked to implement
our interoperability initiatives, we have observed that good
interoperability solutions start with good partnerships. To the
credit of state and local government, we have witnessed across
the country a tremendous collaborative spirit among law
enforcement agencies. This collaborative spirit at the local
level has served as the foundation for success. Indeed, where
DOJ has been able to help improve interagency communications,
we have simply enhanced the efforts that already were initiated
locally. In the rare instances where we have encountered
challenges achieving consensus across prospective partners,
interoperability efforts have been slowed considerably.
The collaborative projects have a multiplier effect. We have observed
that the efforts to bring agencies together to work on a joint
project have tended to foster better working relationships
between agencies beyond the project itself. We have seen this
specifically in the Seattle IWN pilot. Partnerships forged in
developing that joint system have carried over into other
operational areas among several of the federal agencies
participating in the Seattle pilot.
Joint systems such as the IWN provide a number of opportunities to
achieve cost efficiencies. Examples of such efficiencies
include increased purchasing power and reducing the aggregate
quantity of communications infrastructure and overhead
expenditures (e.g. site and circuit leases, infrastructure
maintenance, and system administration personnel). Such
projects also tend to be more open to leveraging facilities and
services of other joint ventures. As an example, in the Seattle
and Utah IWN pilots, we were able to obtain microwave
connectivity services from the respective states. Doing so is
saving the federal government substantial sums of money we
would otherwise have paid for similar services.
DOJ, DHS and Treasury are also garnering lessons learned from
Hurricane Katrina. Katrina had a devastating effect on most public
safety communications systems in southern Louisiana and Mississippi.
All of DOJ's legacy (non-IWN) systems in this region were either
disabled or substantially damaged either as a result of the storm
itself (wind and flood damage), or because the systems were dependent
on local electricity, natural gas and telecommunications services that
all were disabled during or shortly after the storm. Each of our
components was able to re-establish emergency communications
capabilities within days of the storm. However, based on this
experience, the IWN program is reassessing requirements for how the IWN
is built and deployed. We will also look at strategies for reducing
dependence on utility services that are at risk of damage or failure
during a storm--or a terrorist attack.
We believe the IWN program is an example of good government and
best practices. IWN will provide management efficiencies through
consolidation of departmental resources and the elimination of
overlapping federal systems. As an example, by consolidating program
management and system acquisition activities, the IWN program allows
DOJ, DHS and Treasury to avoid a significant portion of the overhead
costs the government would incur if each Department were to acquire
services independently.
More importantly, we believe the IWN is an example of how
government can achieve mission enhancement through the appropriate use
of information technology. Specifically, the three IWN partners expect
to realize several significant operational benefits from the
consolidated system. The most significant of these will be
communication services that are more secure, reliable and accessible to
federal agents over a greater geographic area than what is available
today to each individual agency. Further, the IWN will provide inherent
interoperability between the agencies that are regular users of the
system, because each agency will be operating on common infrastructure
and technology and will have preprogrammed inter-operability ``talk
groups'' established for cross-agency communication. The system also
will have a number of mechanisms (e.g., gateways, system-to-system
interconnections, etc.) by which IWN users can communicate with
officials on other federal agency systems and those of the state and
local law enforcement agencies, as well as mechanisms to reconstitute
wireless communications systems through the use of ad hoc deployable
systems.
A point worthy of note is that the shared nature of the IWN further
facilitates inter-operability by bringing together DOJ, DHS and
Treasury officials for the planning, development and operation of the
system, thus conditioning the agencies to work together at a number of
levels--from executive management to field office staff. Likewise, we
anticipate that our efforts to incorporate inter-connectivity
capabilities with other federal, state and local agency systems into
the IWN will also facilitate building of inter-agency partnerships for
mission purposes.
So what does IWN represent in the ``big picture?'' The Department
of Justice believes that the capabilities of the IWN--and the
collateral benefits of joint project ownership and management--will
result in better communications within DOJ, DHS and Treasury, among the
federal agencies broadly, and ultimately across the law enforcement and
homeland security communities as a whole. Better communications will
facilitate better mission coordination and collaboration, which in turn
will make our law enforcement and homeland security personnel more
effective in stopping crime and protecting the nation.
In closing, I want to assure you that DOJ recognizes that the
federal law enforcement community is only a small piece of the overall
public safety community. Nonetheless, we also understand that we have
an obligation to lead by example. Toward that end, from this point
forward, the communications systems we implement will be connected to
those available to state, tribal and local agencies. Further, the IWN
is an example of the type of collaboration needed to improve
interagency communications, and is representative of our commitment to
achieve this objective across the country. These are core principles of
the Integrated Wireless Network program.
Thank you for your time this afternoon. I will be happy to answer
any questions you have.
Mr. Upton. Okay, thank you. Thank you all.
At this point, we will have Members ask questions and
dialog with our panel.
Certainly comments that you have testified today
underscores the need as I see it that we pass our Transition to
Digital Bill as quickly as we can, knowing that it will free up
a lot of that spectrum and be able to give it to our first
responders. And in conjunction with that, I have been working
with Chairman Barton and members on both sides of the aisle to
give an added boost for money for interoperability as part of
that spectrum sale. Once we are able to complete that, I look
forward to seeing such an amendment passed and wind its way
through the Congress.
But I have to say, Mr. Hitch, and I again appreciated your
testimony. When you talk about IWN, the new program we are
working with 25 different cities----
Mr. Hitch. Yes.
Mr. Upton. [continuing] did one of those cities happen to
be New Orleans?
Mr. Hitch. Yes, sir, one of them was New Orleans.
Mr. Upton. And how did it work? Where are we on the
timeline in terms of getting it started?
Mr. Hitch. The 25 cities program is an adjunct to the IWN
Program; the 25 cities are in various states of completion.
Unfortunately, New Orleans is in the last phases and it is not
going to be--it was not planned to be completed for another 6
months.
Mr. Upton. I saw an article in the Chicago Tribune last
week, you received $6 million to fund emergency response
system, regional emergency response system, regional emergency
response system connecting New York City to surrounding areas
will be created with a $6 million Federal grant addressing a
flaw identified by the September 11 Commission. A grant from
the Department of Justice will be used to create a regional
command and control radio frequency for police, fire, and
emergency officials in New York City, as well as surrounding
counties in New York and New Jersey. How much money is in that
pot that allowed $6 million to go to New York and how much is
left, and where are we in terms of seeing such programs
available? Is that part of the IWN?
Mr. Hitch. Mr. Chairman, actually the 25 cities initiative
is really an adjunct to the IWN Program. The IWN Program is
really intended to be the next generation radio system for the
law enforcement community in the Federal Government, primarily
Justice and Homeland Security. We wanted to--when we got
approval from our congressional appropriators--to set aside
some money for the 25 Cities Interoperability Project so that
we could make some progress in the short term. So it actually
was not a lot of money. It was on the order of $25 to $30
million for the 25 cities. And in many cases, some significant
improvements have been made where the projects have been fully
implemented. As I said, it is in the very early stages of
implementation. Of the 25, I think about six or seven have
actually completed the implementation, and the rest of the 25
are due to be completed over the next 12 months.
Mr. Upton. Well, I just know I was reading the Washington
Times earlier this week and Asa Hutchinson had a wonderful bit
piece earlier talking about the importance of interoperability,
and I am going to ask unanimous consent to make that part of
the record.
[The article follows:]
the washington times
[Published September 28, 2005]
Communications disconnect
By Asa Hutchinson
As hearings begin on how to improve U.S. emergency preparedness
after Hurricane Katrina, Congress must give serious and immediate
attention to a major, recurring and needless public-safety problem:
inability of first responders to communicate with each other during a
catastrophe.
This ``crisis of interoperability'' came horrifyingly to light on
September 11, 2001. After the first World Trade Center tower collapsed,
more than 100 New York City firemen died because their radios could not
receive the police band call to evacuate the second tower. Soon it was
discovered that police, fire and other emergency departments in
municipalities and counties around the nation could not talk to one
another as they converged in Lower Manhattan.
This electronic ``Tower of Babel'' was seen again during last
year's hurricanes in Florida. The hurricanes hit widespread areas and
required response efforts from many jurisdictions, most of which in the
rush of rescue couldn't communicate to each another over their
department systems.
In the days following Katrina, it became clear most jurisdictions
in both the Gulf region and the nation as a whole have taken little or
no action to address interoperability issues. The reason is not lack of
will so much as lack of funds. Replacing existing first-responder
systems with state-of-the-art equipment is a huge financial challenge
for any locality. Ensuring municipalities nationwide make this
transition requires a new funding plan.
Now many in Congress urge a rapid response, at last, to this need
of first-responders. Sens. John McCain, Arizona Republican, Susan
Collins, Maine Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat,
Reps. Jane Harman, California Democrat, and Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania
Republican, have all provided leadership on this issue. One approach,
advocated by Mr. McCain and others, would accelerate freeing parts of
the wireless radio spectrum previously allocated for public safety use
but not yet available.
Broadcasters now use this spectrum to transmit analog television
signals. It is in the highly valuable 700 MHz section of the spectrum.
Together with an adjacent larger swath, these frequencies are slated to
be vacated when stations move to digital television (DTV) transmission
in 2009.
Mr. McCain's plan would speed this transition. Moving broadcasters
out, moving public safety in, and auctioning the remainder will be
highly complex, but could begin earlier than now scheduled. Spectrum
engineers agree the McCain plan will provide more than enough
additional frequencies for first responders' needs. But it will not end
the interoperability crisis.
The inability of first responders to communicate in crises is only
minimally due to inadequate bandwidth. Mostly it is a matter of
inadequate radios and other devices. More frequencies won't help when
agencies can't pick up one another's signals.
Municipalities will need to coordinate their purchases, seeking
technologies that allow cross-agency communications that don't
interfere with the communications of others. All the tens of thousands
of police, fire and rescue organizations must receive upgraded software
or replace their mobile devices, and very few public safety agencies
are able to afford that. National costs are estimated in the billions
of dollars.
Simply, Congress will need to provide first responders with not
just more radio frequency spectrum but more money. Without new funds to
pay for communications upgrades, giving local agencies additional
spectrum will prove fruitless.
New funding need not mean new federal taxes or borrowing. Congress
can and should use the spectrum auctions to fund interoperability. The
DTV transition plans anticipate auctioning the rest of the 700 MHz band
to licensed wireless service providers of both voice and broadband
applications.
For technical reasons, this section of 700 MHz spectrum is
unusually valuable. An auction could raise billions, funding both
public safety interoperability and the television set-top converter
boxes necessary for older TV sets to receive DTV signals after
broadcasters vacate the analog spectrum.
The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to auction a
section of Defense Department airwaves next year, but most of those
proceeds are already earmarked for other uses. Congress should look to
the broadcast spectrum to fund interoperability, and it should direct
the FCC to move up the DTV transition to early 2008.
As Hurricane Katrina showed, America's public safety
interoperability problem remains unsolved. Though the issues
surrounding this crisis are complex, the solution can be simple. As it
begins post-Katrina hearings, Congress has the tools to end the
interoperability crises once and for all.
Mr. Upton. Chairman Martin, we applaud your work again in
establishing a new Public Safety/Homeland Security Bureau to be
in charge of the interoperability issues. What duties
specifically related to interoperability will be tasked and how
much money do you expect for this new department? What are your
staffing needs? How quickly do you think that it is going to be
up and running? And do you expect to see standards and
protocols established that other communities across the country
might be able to utilize?
Mr. Martin. Well, certainly, we are certainly trying to
address the standards issue and potentially even the
establishment, not only of technical standards, but of standard
practices for planning purposes is one of the things that they
would be able to explore and address. As far as the staffing of
the new bureau, I would hope to be able to pull the staffers
that are working on it in the different areas of the agency
today. So that you have for example people in the Media Bureau
that work on things like the Emergency Alert System, people in
the Wireless Bureau that might work on 911 issues and I think
to consolidate them all into one place.
Mr. Upton. Are you able to do all of that administratively?
Do you need any assistance from us?
Mr. Martin. No, we will have to go through, work with
Congress in getting their approval. Whenever we do a major
reorganization of the Commission, that would always work
through Congress in doing it so that is what we would do
through that normal process and also have to make sure the
Appropriations Committee was fully apprised and supportive. So
we are just actually beginning that process and it was only an
announcement of our intention to do that, to work with Congress
to do that.
Mr. Upton. Well I know we would like to help and as we look
at legislation in the near future if there is something that we
can do, we should be communicating, obviously, to make sure
that it is bipartisan, and do all that we can.
I see that my time is expired so I yield to my friend again
from the great State of Michigan, Mr. Stupak.
Mr. Stupak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Director Boyd, I have been trying to get information from
DHS, Department of Homeland Security on home much money is
being spent because every time we try to get money for
interoperability, we are told that it has to go through the
grants that the State's receive from Homeland Security. So I
have been down the floor a couple times. I am still looking for
the information for 2002, 2003. Could you go back to DHS and
tell them to give us that information? It sure would help us
out a lot.
Mr. Boyd. Sure, I will be happy to take that message back,
sir.
Mr. Stupak. Okay. I understand that DHS and DOJ are
soliciting bids for $10 billion to make your 80,000 Federal law
enforcement officials interoperable. It does not include
emergency workers or health workers. What is DHS's estimate of
trying to achieve full operability between local, State, and
Federal first responders?
Mr. Boyd. That is one of the questions we are routinely
asked and it is really hard to answer and let me explain why.
We think we can achieve emergency level interoperability that
is the kind of interoperability you need to address an
emergency pretty quickly and that, in fact, has occurred in a
number of places around the United States already. If you have
cooperation from all of the political elements, they are
willing to sign on----
Mr. Stupak. Well isn't that what your job is supposed to
be----
Mr. Boyd. Yes, sir, and that is what we are working on.
And, in fact, that is why we produced this. In the course of
the RapidCom effort for example----
Mr. Stupak. Well the estimates we have seen it is going to
be 20 years. It is still going to be 20 years to get full
interoperability in this Nation between the State, local, and
Federal?
Mr. Boyd. You are probably talking about the 2023 number
that you sometimes will hear.
Mr. Stupak. I have not heard anything else different so----
Mr. Boyd. Well the 2023, well let me explain the 2023
number because I know exactly how it came about. The 2023
number comes from a meeting we had with public safety where we
said look, we would like to find out what is the ideal. What is
the perfect future you would like to have? The public safety
guys said, okay, let us slap a number on the wall arbitrarily
and let say it is going to be 2023 and let us say what would
the world look like in 2023. No one ever intended to set 2023
as a date when you arrive at full interoperability.
Mr. Stupak. Well give me your best estimate then, when will
it be fully interoperable between local, State, and Federal
first responders?
Mr. Boyd. In at the emergency level, I think that can be
done probably within the next 3 to 5 years. And I think you can
achieve that in most of the major areas really fast if you have
a commitment. In the RapidCom cities----
Mr. Stupak. Commitment of what, resources, financial
resources?
Mr. Boyd. Well that is what I want to explain. In the
RapidCom cities, the 10 cities we have pulled together----
Mr. Stupak. Right.
Mr. Boyd. [continuing] we were able to establish command
level interoperability within an hour to address an incident
about the size of the Twin Towers. We did that roughly in 150
days. In fairness not we did, we helped facilitate each of
these localities in doing it because ultimately they have to do
it. And we did that without any new resources. We did that
based on what they already have in place. Most of the technical
requirements, the kinds of equipment you need are available if
communities are willing to build governess agreements and
decide how it is they are going to work together to be able to
establish that level of interoperability. Now full
interoperability we define as meaning I can take the radio that
any public safety officer has----
Mr. Stupak. Right.
Mr. Boyd. [continuing] deploy him anywhere and it will work
in that system. That is going to take a lot longer.
Mr. Stupak. For your filibuster you mean. I got a couple of
questions. Let me move on. Interoperability in your testimony
you said the methodology was initiated in 2005 and sort of
implies that the study has not begun even though it is supposed
to be finished by 2005. Has the study begun?
Mr. Boyd. No, the study now is we have----
Mr. Stupak. When it is going to begin?
Mr. Boyd. As soon as we get through the requirements for
the Paperwork Reduction Act and we have all the responses in
the first 60-day period that has to be posted. We will make
those adjustments and then there is another 30----
Mr. Stupak. So 2006 maybe, hey?
Mr. Boyd. So we think by summer of next year will have
the----
Mr. Stupak. Summer of next year, okay.
Let me ask you this. You mentioned stated communication
plans in your testimony. You explained the criteria you
encourage States to use when making their plans. Are the States
required to submit plans and are the States required that their
plans be certified?
Mr. Boyd. When it involves Federal funding, funding that
comes through the office of State, local Government
Coordination Preparedness----
Mr. Stupak. Sure.
Mr. Boyd. [continuing] that is part of the selection
criteria and they have to submit plans to ODP. But remember
that more than 97 percent of these systems are funded locally,
it is not Federal money.
Mr. Stupak. But do they have to be certified? These plans,
they have to submit plans but my impression is the plans have
to be certified. My question is if they have to be certified in
order to get Federal funds, do they or not?
Mr. Boyd. Well they have to be--you have to address that to
ODP to ask exactly what the rules are for how they decide
whether the plan is going to meet their requirements for
funding.
Mr. Stupak. Are they going to have to be certified in order
to do it? Can you answer that question, Mr. Hitch?
Mr. Hitch. I am not from ODP, I am from the Department of
Justice.
Mr. Stupak. Right.
Mr. Hitch. For each DOJ grant that is issued, there are
specific requirements. We do require that they follow the
SAFECOM methodologies and procedures. We require
interoperability. I don't know about on a specific grant
whether certification----
Mr. Stupak. Well if you follow your interoperability
guidelines code sphere, isn't one of your interoperability
guidelines, it is a thing we use in Michigan quite a bit. It is
a lot cheaper, a lot quicker, interfaces and everything works
but it is not in your guidelines so is Michigan going to be
denied if they use code sphere to get interoperability in
interface communication systems because----
Mr. Boyd. It is not in the guidelines because the
guidelines are not written in a way that would prevent them
from deploying that kind of system if they want to. The
guidelines are intended to point at a way to move forward
nationally toward our goal of the system of systems. One of the
things we have made very clear is that you are not going to
have a single system.
Mr. Stupak. I agree and I mentioned the guidelines, I said
certified. Mr. Hitch said required so they do not have to be
required just as long as they have something to resemble those
guidelines? I am trying to get this down because the State's
are saying we are getting denied and the money is not being
pushed over as quickly as it should be.
Mr. Boyd. Okay. Well I cannot speak to that part. I can
tell you that for the grants that came in particular out of the
COPS office for example, we were part of that process and so
the guidance and compliance with the guidance which is fairly
general it says if you are going to be developing a digitally
trunk system, then you ought to consider P-25 but it does not
say you have to because we understand there are times when you
do not do that. And we helped to develop that criteria and
applied that criteria in the selection process in the COPS
grants and then earlier in 2003 in the FEMA grants. The ODP
grants are block grants so the guidance becomes a
recommendation to the State.
Mr. Stupak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Upton. Welcoming the chairman of the full committee,
Mr. Barton.
Chairman Barton. Thank you. And I want to thank each of you
gentlemen for appearing today, especially Mr. Hitch. I know you
had to rearrange some things and I appreciate you being here.
I want to commend you, Chairman Martin for the steps that
the FCC has already done. I read your testimony and you and the
Commission's efforts in terms of the Rural Health Program, the
E-rate Program, and the High Cost Reconstruction Program I
think are excellent. I wish we were getting a little bit more
publicity about what you are doing.
I did have a question about you on the decision to create a
new bureau in the FCC, this Homeland Security Bureau. Why do
you think that is necessary as opposed to the organizational
structure that you have right now?
Mr. Martin. Well as I mentioned to Chairman Upton, many of
the issues are still being dealt with across different aspects
of the Commission and within the different bureaus so while we
do have an office that focuses on Homeland Security that
interacts with FEMA, it does not actually have interaction into
the policy process for example on the Emergency Alert System.
That is still handled out of the Media Bureau or whether or not
wireless 911 issues should be handled and that is done out of
the Wireless Bureau. And I think actually trying to coordinate
and have one group of people focused on public safety and
homeland security will produce a more consistent policy and
processes across the different sectors of the industry. So just
like we have an Enforcement Bureau that enforces all of our
rules and enforces the rules against media companies and
telecommunications companies hopefully in a more consistent
way, I think the way thing is true of public safety and
homeland security.
Chairman Barton. Can you do that with the existing staff
and existing resources?
Mr. Martin. I do not think it will require any additional
staff and resources. I think that it will be pulling staff and
resources from the existing bureaus that are working in a more
disparate way and putting them all and locating them all in one
area.
Chairman Barton. And can you do that without any change in
existing statutory authority?
Mr. Martin. We do not end up having to seek a change in the
statute but we do end up having to come to Congress for
approval when we do a major reorganization of the Commission so
we do have to work with Congress to make sure they are
approving of any of the proposed processes as we go forward.
Chairman Barton. Let me ask a question about your testimony
on seamless interoperability. The gist of it appears to be that
the FCC thinks these smart radios are the way to go. Is that
something as we move our new Telecommunication Bill which we
hope to do in the next month or so that we should set a
standard in the law to cut out all the bickering and everything
that has been going on or do we set some general parameters and
leave that up to the various State and local officials and
Federal officials to determine what is best for each particular
area?
Mr. Martin. Well I think that the use of smart radios or
software defined technologies, software defined radios are able
to more efficiently use the spectrum that they have so I think
that that is something that depends upon the other aspects of
when they will get both the spectrum that they could be able to
use and when they would have the resources to be able to buy
new radios. So obviously though, I think that we need to do--to
take all the steps we can to make sure that those local public
safety officials have some additional resources. And I think
that smart radios means that they can do less with--they can do
more with less spectrum. So I think it is possible that they
could end up addressing it in that way but whether or not we
should require that in the upcoming rewrite of the
Telecommunications Act depends in part on how many other
resources they are going to get to be able to purchase new
radios and what spectrum will be made available to them.
Chairman Barton. Mr. Hitch or Dr. Boyd, do either of you
have an opinion on that last question I asked the chairman?
Mr. Boyd. My experience is that the public safety
communities intensely interested in better technologies that
can meet those requirements but it is a very conservative
group. So it is going to require that it be available for them
and that they get a chance to see it piloted in use. And then
my expectation is that these new technologies that offer so
many new features are going to become some of the things they
are going to look to but they are going to ask for that proof
up front and I think that will forthcoming as the software
defined radio and is IP based and so on mature in this
environment.
Mr. Hitch. Certainly that is the kind of technology that we
are looking to implement as part of IWN and we have already
implemented it in the pilots that we have done. So we would
encourage it and it would make it easier for interoperability
to work with local organizations that have similar technology.
It is not impossible to do it otherwise and we will do it but
it makes it much more efficient.
Chairman Barton. Well, I do not know what the will of the
committee is, but, you know, I am very disappointed to learn
that we still have a problem in interoperability 4 years after
9/11. And I am not saying that a statutory of standard is the
preferred solution but it is an optional solution. It is
something we are going to be looking at.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have got another hearing
downstairs on the environmental consequences of Katrina so I am
going to have to excuse myself, but thank you for holding this
hearing.
Mr. Upton. Thank you. Thanks for keeping us up late last
night, too.
Mr. Wynn?
Mr. Wynn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Boyd, I want to understand some process aspects of this
problem of interoperability. First of all, did your department
do a prioritization of the country in terms of high risk areas
and the degree of interoperability in high risk areas relative
to terror and areas prone to natural disasters and
interoperability relative to that? Because I think the one
thing we understand is that this cannot all happen at once. So
my question goes to who is going to be first in line and have
you made those kind of determinations, New York, Washington,
DC, natural disaster prone areas along coastal regions, those
kind of things.
Mr. Boyd. My office does not make that kind of
prioritization but the secretary has made very clear that he
wants a risk based process that begins to look at how you can
allocate resources best across what the real risks are. That is
one piece of the issue.
Mr. Wynn. Okay. So somebody in homeland security has done
that risk analysis and established the priorities?
Mr. Boyd. For interoperability the--first, let me explain
how you are looking at a couple of different things. The
ordinary security initiative which allocates money to the urban
area cities is allocated against threat and there was a threat
calculus to do that. I cannot provide you all the details on
how that is done because that is in another office----
Mr. Wynn. Is interoperability on a parallel track with
that?
Mr. Boyd. Interoperability, we look at interoperability as
a national issue. My office does not provide direct funding to
support----
Mr. Wynn. So it may be that they are on one track of
national priorities and you are on a different track in terms
of interoperability?
Mr. Boyd. No, I don't think so. Let me make a clear
distinction here. The money that comes under the Urban Area
Security Initiative or the WAT grant money is defined in
formulas by Congress.
Mr. Wynn. By risk.
Mr. Boyd. The interoperability funding that was
specifically for interoperability also had to be allocated
according to rules set by Congress.
Mr. Wynn. Most problem money is based on a risk analysis.
That is what you said. I am just asking you is the
interoperability money on a parallel track with that risk
analysis? In other words, are the high risk areas that are
getting the grant money for preparedness also getting money for
interoperability?
Mr. Boyd. DHS does not have any money specifically for
interoperability.
Mr. Wynn. Okay, all right. Which brings me to my second
question, have you done an assessment of local capabilities? In
other words, you have got an analysis here, a risk base
analysis here, have you determined whether or not your high
risk areas, what the capabilities of your high risk areas are?
Mr. Boyd. We have a study called the baseline study under
way now which is intended expressly to try to answer that kind
of question. There is no place in the United States you can go
to and say what is the status of interoperability anywhere in
the United States or across the country and that is why the
baseline study will be the first attempt to do that.
Mr. Wynn. When will that be completed?
Mr. Boyd. It should be complete by summer of next year.
Mr. Wynn. Okay. Now as the chairman said that is somewhat
disappointing given the 4 years that have passed. Here is my
situation. I represent two suburban counties outside of
Washington, DC, probably second highest risk area for purposes
of terrorism. I happen to know that there are limited
capabilities in terms of one of those counties. One of those
counties would be necessary for evacuation, it is the location
of many Federal facilities. My concern is have you ascertained
what that county's capabilities are vis-a-vis interoperability
so that you can determine whether if something happens at NIH
or at Census and Census is in a county with fewer resources
that you are going to get them interoperable as soon as
possible. Have you made those kind of determinations?
Mr. Boyd. My office of four Federal officials is focusing
on building tools that that county will be able to use to make
that assessment and on conducting the baseline studies so that
they can collect that.
Mr. Wynn. They can use to make an assessment. They already
know they do not have the money. They do not have 800 megahertz
radios much less smart radios.
Mr. Boyd. They will have--okay, but they are going to have
to do some kind of assessment of their own to figure out what
it is that is required there.
Mr. Wynn. They have assessed--my time is money. They have
assessed, they know they do not have the money. You want
interoperable system. They are in the second highest risk area,
they house Federal facilities, what are we going to do to help
them get, become interoperable with the District of Columbia,
the Federal agencies, et cetera? Otherwise if somebody hits the
Census Bureau in Suitland, Maryland you are going to have a
mess on your hands.
Mr. Boyd. Well most of the national capitol region, in
fact, has established and experimented with having demonstrated
a couple of interoperability capabilities. My first was in
Justice and first got involved in interoperability some years
ago. We created a system based on the Alexandria Police
Department which was used on 911 to support and to be able to
provide the kind of monitor you needed in this region. You are
not--if you are asking what is the funding going to be that
goes----
Mr. Wynn. I am just saying they do not have the radios and
unless that issue is addressed, it is going to be hard to read
interoperability.
One last question because I think my time is just about up.
You mentioned several times and I think you did, too Chairman
Martin, the proprietary nature of some of this equipment and
suggested that that was a barrier to interoperability. Is that
the case?
Mr. Boyd. It is and it can be in many cases because it can
make it impossible for different systems to communicate with
each other.
Mr. Wynn. How do we overcome that?
Mr. Boyd. We have a standards process under way with the
National Institute of Standards and Technology expressly to
address that. In October, next month, just a few days, the
fixed station interface will go to ballad in the standards
community so we expect that standard will be available almost
immediately. That will then be incorporated in the Standard
Grid Guidance and we in January, the ISSI interface which is
the interface that manages the trunking system which is
probably the most central piece of the standards should be
completed and we expect it to be balloted and approved
somewhere around March and then it will also be incorporated in
the coordinating grant guidance.
Remember in the United States, the standards process is a
consensus based standard process among all of the industry
players and we have been able, in fact, to give you an idea how
astonishing it is that we are able to produce those standards
in just the next few months, it took about 15 years to produce
the first volume of P-25 standards. We are going to be able to
do these next two pieces very, very quickly.
Mr. Wynn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Upton. Mr. Shimkus?
Mr. Shimkus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, since we have been here, we have seen the attacks
of September 11 terrorist attack. Now we see this, you know,
this natural disaster of almost historic proportions. I have
mentioned this to my colleagues before. I serve on the NATO
Parliamentary Assembly. Sam Nunn has come around with a
strategic exercise called ``Black Dawn'' where the hypothesis
is a small grade nuclear blast over Brussels, Belgium, mass
casualties, mass destruction. Are we taking into consideration
at this time the affects of electromagnetic pulse and how harm
communications equipment. And if we are not, don't you think we
should? Yeah, why don't we start, yes, sir.
Mr. Hitch. We work with public safety to do it because in
fairness you need to understand that the kind of guidance and
direction we offer is built within the public safety community.
We tell them you have to plan for worst case scenarios and it
does not matter whether you launch the system because of a
major EMP pulse or because of a Katrina. You have to plan for
worst case scenarios and then work back from that. It is very,
very difficult to address the massive loss of communications
facilities if you have not thought through these things.
In my days when I was a career soldier, I can remember the
boss saying that when you are in the fight is the wrong time to
figure out how to handle the fight. You need to have done this
in advance. You need to have planned it up front and you need
to have thought through all the way to the very worst possible
case, and then you need to have thought of how many things can
aggravate that even further and how could I think through all
of those pieces not necessarily because I am going to be able
to put something in place to fix it right now but so I at least
know what I am going to have to go do, and I will at least have
some notion of how I am going to approach the answer.
Mr. Shimkus. Kevin?
Mr. Martin. Well I think that we do need to end up having
to have a public safety system that can be--that is not only
interoperable it can be reestablished quickly and I think that
involves having to have some kind of mobility in the antennas
at the end of the line, antenna infrastructure. Some of the
cellular providers are talking about trying to use cell towers
on wheels that they can roll in even if their cell towers have
been destroyed and that they would be capable of not only
plugging back into the land line network but also be sending
traffic over satellite so aggregating traffic on the ground and
then using satellite capability which should not be destroyed
in the same way. There has also been talk about having
inflatable antennas and, you know, they can be dropped even
from, potentially from airplanes and so they can be
reestablishing communications quicker. So I think we have got
to have a system that as I said not only is interoperable but
can--is capable of being reestablished and is mobile very
quickly.
Mr. Shimkus. I think the public policy debate that we are
going to be experiencing when we deal with the DTV issue and I
am not one that likes to legislate science but we have to make
sure we have some standards so that when the Federal Government
is assisting in the purchase of equipment that it meets the
interoperability standard or in essence the harden standard.
You know, I fear we buy all this communication equipment
and then there is an electric magnetic pulse that wipes out the
communication equipment that we have got safely protected. They
pull it out and all the things are fried or there is in the
atmosphere an airburst that knocks out the satellite system.
Don't you--somehow we need to be addressing this and I am not
sure how we go about it other than ask you all and then find
out through the process do we need a worst case scenario? But
when we do that, also it is a higher cost, it is at a higher
cost which means you have in essence less deployment, slower
but you have more issues. And that is the issue that we have to
wrestle with. Anyone want to add or comment on that?
Let me just end with saying just thank you for coming. I am
going to work with my colleagues in the Senate along with the
Committee on trying to address other emergency notification
systems across the communication spectrum. I hope you all will
take a look at that and if there is any advice and counsel you
want to give us on that, we would be welcome to receive it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Upton. Ms. Blackburn.
Ms. Blackburn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank all of you for being here today and giving
us your time on this. It is the communications and what took
place as we went through Hurricane Katrina is very important
and I am looking forward to hearing from each of you as we move
forward as to what your lessons learned are.
I have said in the initial hearings that we have had
whether it was financial management, whether it was the initial
response, I find it incredible and being on the ground in
Mississippi following this storm, I found it absolutely
incredible that you were unable to talk to individuals that
live there. I found it absolutely amazing that we were without
cellular service. That we were without basically any kind of
service, hard wired phone service, that cable was down. I
understand in some areas of Mississippi it is going to be a
year before that infrastructure gets put back in place. And I--
so one of the things that is quite amazing is that nobody
seemed to have a plan for what you were going to do with the
emergency communications when everything failed. People did not
even have a plan for how you were going to refill the generator
once the generator ran out of gas. And I--that is of tremendous
concern.
And one of things that I want to focus on is what we are
going to do as we rebuild this infrastructure. As you have cell
towers that are down, as you have cable systems that the
infrastructure is destroyed, as we know there are new
technologies available for data, for voice, for video, what are
the plans going to be and how is that going to be approached?
There was an article I found, I guess it was weekend before
last in the Weekend Journal. I do not know if any of you saw
this. Mr. Martin, you are smiling so I guess that possibly you
did it. But we have got folks that are holed up over in the
Superdome, they are in New Orleans, they do not have any
communications, nothing is working, nobody is on the same
frequency with their radios and one guy remembers he had set up
a VOIP account. So as you look at how you are going to handle
all of this, I think that knowing that that is something that
needs to be considered. What are your different components,
what is going to comprise your overall plan when you talk about
all of your interoperability issues and the different templates
that you are going to use.
So I thank you. I know I have gone around the horn and I
have vented a little bit. And I know that you all probably will
seemingly lose your patience with some of us Members of
Congress. Dr. Boyd, you are smiling and I think you have kind
of lost your patience. I promise I am not going to get your
last nerve. Maybe your next to last nerve, sir, but not the
last one. But, you know, we definitely want to be certain that
the communications issue is addressed in a very thoughtful
manner. My parents in Southern Mississippi still do not have
telephone. They have cable from time to time and the cell
towers work about 15 percent of the time, other than Nextel it
seems to go through fairly regularly.
Okay, Chairman Martin, may I ask you a question, please?
What--let us talk about the 700 megahertz band. What can we do
for our first responders by clearing broadcasters out of that
700 megahertz band and would that affect the overall
communications plan? Is there a--do you have a template? Are
you thinking forward exactly how you would set that up if you
cleared that spectrum and if you were to put folks onto that?
Mr. Martin. Well, in the 700 megahertz band there has been
24 megahertz of that spectrum that has been dedicated to public
safety uses. A certain percentage of that is already being and
allocated and indicated that it should be used specifically for
interoperability, so about a little more than 2.6 megahertz of
that should be used for interoperability specifically. In
addition to that as a result of 9/11 Commission's report and
congressional legislation last year, the Commission owes a
report to Congress in December about whether public safety,
whether that is an adequate amount of spectrum for all public
safety uses or not. And the--we have begun gathering a record
and giving public safety the opportunity to comment. And there
is a record that has been developed public safety some have
indicated they could use another 10 to 30 megahertz of spectrum
out of that 700 megahertz band that they could be using for
other issues not only interoperability but other public safety
uses. So we have definitely allocated a certain percentage of
it already for public safety. We have already allocated or
indicated a certain percentage of that will definitely be used
for interoperability and we have--we are studying now and we
will have a report in December about whether even additional
spectrum should be provided to public safety.
Ms. Blackburn. Okay. Let me ask you one more thing on that.
You were talking about an additional 10 to 30 and you have
talked about the public safety. Are you including in this an
interface with military in any way or are you just looking at
first responders?
Mr. Martin. It is just--when we are talking about that it
is just first responders.
Ms. Blackburn. Just first responders.
Mr. Martin. But they do end up interacting with other
people that would be coming into an area which at times could
be military but we are not addressing----
Ms. Blackburn. But you are not addressing that component at
all.
Mr. Martin. [continuing] providing any spectrum to the
military, no.
Ms. Blackburn. All right. I just wanted to clear that
because we continue to hear more about the relationship between
military components and first responder components since we
look at national disasters. Do you think that is something you
should put on your plate and look at or not?
Mr. Martin. The interaction between first responders and
the military you mean?
Ms. Blackburn. Yes, an extra allocation there or may be
considering that allocation.
Mr. Martin. Well we certainly--like I said, we are
considering it and it is whether or not we should be providing
them any additional spectrum beyond what they have already been
given. I do not think we consider specifically the military,
any particular military applications in the first responder
program.
Ms. Blackburn. That is fine.
I have got 1 minute left. Dr. Boyd, I am going to come to
you. You are saying it is going to take 2 years to get the
study done so then we can start thinking on the process if I am
understanding you right. Correct, sir?
Mr. Boyd. Well, not 2 years. This summer we should be
finished.
Ms. Blackburn. Okay. So this summer you would have your
study done?
Mr. Boyd. That is correct.
Ms. Blackburn. All right, okay. You know, we have asked you
this question and you have been kind to take the time to answer
it. I just am going to ask you if you will, sir, to list your
goals and a timetable of where you think you are going to be
when. You have thrown around several different dates. You are
saying 3 to 5 years, you know, as we talk about responding to
national disasters, I would love to have an idea if we are
closer to 3 years or if we are closer to 5 years.
And also if you agree with Mr. Hitch that interoperability
is a local issue. I think that we are all concerned. We are
concerned for our communities and if you are going to be the
one providing guidance, I would certainly love to see stated
goals and stated timetable.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back.
Mr. Upton. Okay. Go ahead, Dr. Boyd.
Mr. Boyd. Okay, well, and in fact you did not hit any
nerves but you did tickle my funny bone.
When I talk about 3 to 5 years to achieve emergency level
interoperability, that is not a technology issue, it is not
even a matter of when equipment goes into place, it is
experience in helping communities figure out how to build
governess processes talking about how they begin to build the
kind of partnerships that work together.
In 1993, I initiated the first interoperability program I
was involved in while I was in justice. It took about 30 days
to implement the technical piece. It was fairly permanent but
it worked and it provided for interoperability in every agency
in the county. It took 2 years for us to get all the agencies,
Federal, State, and local in the county to agree that they were
even interested in being part of it. So when I talk about 3 to
5 years, I would start with the point that for the most part,
if it is applied and if people are committed, most of the
equipment and the technologies are available now. They exist,
they can largely be bought fairly inexpensively to allow that
command level of interoperability. It is not the smoothest, it
is not the prettiest kind of interoperability but it can meet
emergency requirements.
The hard nut to crack, the very hard nut to crack and
typically when I use this continuum to talk about all the
pieces that have to go together depend on two things. One is
technology is only one of the tracks. It is only one of the six
lanes. And I will talk about governess last because that is the
tough nut to crack because that means we have to get sheriffs
who many not like to talk to each other or fire chiefs who do
not want to deal with the police chiefs or city council's that
do not want to share money or are afraid that it may cost
something on--that may cause a problem in their control of the
peace. So you have to be able to build a process starting from
the bottom up so that everybody has a stake, everybody has a
reason to be a part of it. And we have been, I think every
successful in doing that but unfortunately, I have to tell you
it is not a simple process. Getting people to agree on things
like this is a really tough challenge because it involves
making some concessions about control and authority.
Mr. Upton. Thank you.
Mr. Whitfield?
Mr. Whitfield. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I just have a few brief questions I would like to ask
Chairman Martin and certainly appreciate his being here this
morning, as well as Dr. Boyd and Mr. Hitch.
Chairman Martin, when I read your September 15 press
release about Universal Service Funds going for assistance in
the New Orleans and Mississippi Katrina devastated area, it
reminded me of the number of hearings that we have had here in
Congress particularly with the Energy and Commerce Committee on
the Universal Service Fund, E-rate, and so forth. And all of
us, I think acknowledge that that has been a tremendously
successful program that has benefited the entire country in
many ways. But we also hear criticism from these various
hearings that we have had and I guess the oversight an
investigation subcommittee is going to be issuing an E-rate
report that will be going to Chairman Upton's committee to take
whatever action they may want to take. But in some of these
hearings there has been criticism or at least concern about the
coordination, the communication, the planning between the FCC
and USAC, the Universal Service Administrative Company. And
they are, at least there seems to be, some perception that
there are some problem areas there in those areas that I have
mentioned, the communication, planning, policy, and so forth. I
would like to get your perspective on that.
Do you perceive that there is a problem there? I notice for
example that you announced this $211 million in Universal
Service Funds and I am assuming--did you all talk to USAC about
that before making the announcement, did you sit down and work
that through together or not?
Mr. Martin. Well we certainly sought information from them
in order to ascertain what would be the best way to end up
trying to do that and what an estimate of some of those costs
could end up being. For example, talking about how many schools
are in that area that have received funding and what is the
high cost funding that has gone to those states. We did not, we
have not talked in the specifics about some of the orders that
are front of the commission implementing data but of course
those are--there are some more coordinating with them after the
Commission has adopted the order of course and we have received
input from them on some of the concerns they have had and tried
to address that in our order about how it would work. But I
think that a lot of the focus in the past about for example
some of the concerns related to E-rate have been on some of the
auditing issues that have occurred in the past and on some of
the distribution of funds. And I think that the Commission has
tried to work with USAC to make sure that as an appropriate
oversight, I think the Inspector General has been very involved
in that as well. He has, on some audits that have already
occurred, he has worked out with USAC to coordinate to do an
extensive additional number of audits going forward. I think
about 700 audits is the plan for them to end up doing of
different Universal Service recipients to make sure that they
are using funding appropriately. So I do think that there needs
to be a close coordination and auditing of what is going on
with the funds.
What we are doing with our response from Hurricane Katrina
is actually just allowing for schools in that area to apply for
funding through the Universal Service process but they will
still have to meet the same accountability constraints that any
school does whenever they are applying for funding. So there
would not be any exemption from that as going forward, it is
just a question of what schools would be in the area and what
would be an estimate of what could be the impact on the fund
for that.
Mr. Whitfield. If you were speaking at a rotary club say in
Hopkinsville, Kentucky and you were going to explain your
relationship with the administrator of the Universal Service
Fund, what your joint responsibilities are to each other, how
would you explain that?
Mr. Martin. Well there is an unusual relationship and I
think there has actually been a couple GAO studies that
occurred in the 1990's that was looking at the way USAC was
structured and even had some questions that were raised about
how that should end up functioning. But the Commission is
actually the policymaking governmental entity deciding that--
what would be the policies for the distribution of those
resources and I think USAC would be described as administrative
in the sense that they would be, not be making policy judgments
but rather would be handling the administration of applications
that are coming in and then dealing with whether they met the
criteria that we had established as a policy perspective to
distribute that money. So they both are coordinating the
collection of the resources from the telecommunications
companies and then coordinating the distribution of those but
they don't have any independent policy authority so that they
can only do so in relation to the rules so to speak or
priorities that the Commission establishes as the appropriate
governmental entity. So they can not make policy, they can just
administer the fund.
Mr. Whitfield. And who is the primary liaison between say
your office and USAC?
Mr. Martin. Well I think it depends somewhat on what aspect
of it. For auditing purposes for example it is the Inspector
General's Office that takes the lead on that. For some of the
management issues it would be the Managing Director's Office.
For the policy issues, it would be the people in the
telecommunications, the wire line, Telecommunications Bureau
that is set up and made those policy decisions. So it depends
on if it is a policy decision, a management decision, or an
auditing one.
Mr. Whitfield. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Upton. Mr. Pickering?
Mr. Pickering. Thank you Mr. Chairman.
I want to first follow up on some questions that Chairman
Barton asked on whether we need to address legislatively some
type of requirement to reach the interoperability standards.
Having seen where we were on 9/11 and then all of the focus and
all of the recommendations of hoping to achieve
interoperability among our communication networks and first
responders and equipment, the tragedy is that we really have
not made that much progress. And in my own State of
Mississippi, the first really 3 to 4 days after the storm, we
had an essentially no communications capability. Governor
Barber talked about how he had a satellite phone and his
Adjutant General of the National Guard had a satellite phone,
his emergency response, the MEMA official had a phone but it
worked so unpredictably and erratically that they basically had
no communication other than like civil war, he would send
runners. And that was the means of communication during the
most critical time to save lives, protect lives, and respond.
No ability to coordinate, no ability to help people because you
have no communication. And no real progress since 9/11 to
Katrina 2005.
So I would like to know legislatively should we put a
process together that would give you Dr. Boyd and Chairman
Martin and the others in the community a chance to have a
voluntary standard adopted within a deadline and failure to do
so would then require a mandatory process to the FCC or
Homeland Security or the appropriate agency so that one way or
the other we will have an interoperability standard within a
time certain given the industry and the community their first
shot at it to do it as it should be done but failure to do so
will not justify 5 years from now still not having the progress
that we should have after 9/11 and Katrina. And would you all
agree that that would be a good forcing catalyst to give you
deadlines to work this out by yourself and failure to do so
would require a Federal action deadline and requirement to have
the standards in place? Mr. Martin?
Mr. Martin. Well I certainly think that it is helpful in
the sense that you would make sure that everyone was compliant.
I think it has got to be not just a technical standard but the
protocol standards as well. I mean for example one of the
things that we discovered in response to the hurricane is that
when 911 call centers go down, there is not even a standard
protocol for where they send those emergency calls. And so the
very first thing we started doing as Hurricane Rita was
approaching the Gulf Region was just calling all the 911
centers the 2 days before and telling them they at least need
to establish a protocol of if they are physically damaged,
where do those 911 calls, where should they be rerouted to and
have you told the telephone companies where to go. And I think
that some kind of requirements to establish like I said not
just technical standards but standard protocols could end up
being appropriate. That is one example where we made some real
progress by trying to reach out to do that.
Mr. Pickering. I think everybody knows what needs to be
done. We want to define the problem. We have much better
technologies. We are beginning to have the spectrum available.
My question is very straightforward. Do you need deadlines,
legislative deadlines to give you a voluntary process to get
the job done by that deadline? Failure to do so will then start
a process to the FCC or through Homeland Security that it will
be done for the Nation, if it is not done on a voluntary basis.
Would that be a good way to make sure that we get this job
done? Dr. Boyd?
Mr. Boyd. If I can. The current standards process is driven
by the public safety community through the Association of
Public Safety, let me explain that, communications officers.
The reason I think it is imperative that we stick with that----
Mr. Pickering. I understand the process. I understand the
issues but we still have not--it has been since 9/11 and we
still have not done--it sounds like you are on your way from
what you said earlier about the process and what is about to
happen over the next 6 months. So my hope is that you are
successful in the current process to get it done. But let us
say 6 months from now, a year from now it is still not done.
Some disagreement, proprietary, for whatever reason you still
have--you have had your process but you still have not reached
the agreements necessary to give us interoperability standards
that we need. At that point, would it not be helpful to have a
legal requirement for all participants to force them to either
voluntarily reach agreement or that they will be required by
law to do it?
Mr. Boyd. Well----
Mr. Pickering. And there are many legislative examples of
what we have had to get the standards in place and we have
always given industry the first shot on a voluntary basis. That
would be the preferable way. But failure to do so still, our
country could not if we have an EMP, another hurricane four or
five, another terrorist attack over the next year, we do not
want to be looking at lessons learned if it is the same one
that we failed to do something about.
So my question, again, legislatively, should we give you a
year to do it with your existing process? Failure to do so
would be required by law that somebody will be responsible,
accountable, and required to do that.
Mr. Boyd. Well that is why I have to defer to the
Department for legislative issues but I will tell you that one
of the reasons things have moved forward where they have now is
that I was--is that I told industries some months ago that it
is our preference that they develop the standard, but if they
don't, we will.
Mr. Pickering. Do you have the legal authority to do that?
Mr. Boyd. As far as we are concerned, working with the
public safety community and then applying it in the common
grant guidance. We have that authority.
Mr. Pickering. You have incentives through the grants?
Mr. Boyd. Yes.
Mr. Pickering. Is that enough?
Mr. Boyd. Well, we don't have the authority to impose
requirements on systems not purchased with Federal money.
Mr. Pickering. I think you have answered my question. I
think that we need to give everybody a chance to do it right
themselves, and then we need to give a legal backstop that it
will be done, shall be done, and it will be done by a day
certain.
Mr. Upton. Mr. Martin.
Mr. Martin. Well, no, I was just going to say, I can't
speak to SAFECOM's--whether they will be able to get that done
within any particular timeframe, but I do agree that deadlines
are often helpful in public safety issues to get them done. I
think we see that in the context of 911 as well. I think that
is how you make a lot of progress, by telling people they don't
have it done voluntarily within a certain timeframe, you have
to end up doing it. And that is what we see with Voice over IP
and wireless. So I think that is critical.
Mr. Pickering. For both of you and for the first responder
community, I would ask you all to work with Chairman Upton and
Chairman Barton and the committee to have a process that would
give the current process the time that they need to do it on a
voluntary basis, but with a legal backstop and process that
will ensure and give confidence to the country that it is going
to be done.
Mr. Chairman, how much time have I gone over?
Mr. Upton. These lights are right in my eyes, but it looks
like about 3 minutes over.
Mr. Pickering. Mr. Chairman, thank you for your patience,
and I will come back and ask some other questions in another
round.
Mr. Upton. Okay. Well, I know that we were just alerted
that we are expecting votes on the House floor about 3:30, so I
am hoping that we can finish with this panel. I might say that
a number of members have communicated with me that they would
like to propose sending some written questions to you, so we
will try to get those assembled up and get them to you by the
end of tomorrow, maybe. If you can respond by the end of next
week, that would be very appreciated.
Ms. Blackburn, do you have one quick question you want to
ask?
Ms. Blackburn. I do have a question for Mr. Hitch, and I
will tell you, Mr. Chairman, in the interest of time and
knowing that we are going to the floor for votes, these are
questions about the integrated wireless network, and
flexibility with that and expense. I will submit those in the
interest of time. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Upton. Mr. Radanovich, did you have questions to ask?
Mr. Radanovich. To Chairman Martin, you know, the FCC is
responsible for distributing spectrum to State, local, and
public safety agencies. Why has the distribution spectrum been
done on kind of a seemingly random basis, and why hasn't
interoperability been the goal from the beginning?
Mr. Martin. We have provided quite a bit of spectrum for
public safety, about 50 megahertz at the 4.9 gigahertz, and
some additional public safety spectrum was just allocated when
we were rebanding the 800 last year. But the most significant
piece of spectrum that has been given to public safety recently
is in the band, as Chairman Upton talked about, is in the band
that is currently used by the broadcasters. So I mean, it is
not that some of that isn't anticipated, including the
interoperability, it is that but some of the spectrum that we
have provided to them and that Congress has provided to them is
in a band that is already currently used and that will be
vacated in the context of the digital transition for
television.
Mr. Radanovich. All right, thanks.
Mr. Upton. Well, that concludes panel No. 1. Thank you,
gentlemen, for your testimony, and we look forward to working
with you in the days ahead.
We will take about a 2-minute recess and let----
Mr. Pickering. Mr. Chairman, could I just----
Mr. Upton. Go ahead.
Mr. Pickering. Just real quickly. I will have some
additional questions for the panel concerning satellite policy,
your universal service funds for the affected areas, and plans
for deployable systems, whether it is high altitude or balloons
that we can pre-position and replace networks.
You know, interoperability is fine, but if you don't either
have satellite or a replacement system, interoperability
doesn't mean anything. And so I would like to work with all the
members of the panel to try to have a greater confidence that
we will have capabilities and interoperability in cases of
crisis and natural disaster.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Upton. Okay. We will take about 2-minute recess and
allow the nameplates to be changed, and we will get started.
Thank you.
[Brief recess.]
Mr. Upton. Let me get started. We might--so only I get to
ask questions so--I say in jest to my good Michigan Police,
State Police Officer, you might want to arrest this guy, he is
a big Notre Dame fan and 2 weeks ago----
Mr. Roemer. What was the score of that game, Fred?
Mr. Upton. It is called luck of the Irish. We are joined by
my--our formal colleague and for me the--my former member from
the adjacent district and friend, Tim Roemer who is the
Director of the Center for National Policy and was a member of
the 911 Commission. Mr. Tom Miller, Lieutenant Colonel of the
Michigan State Police, Mr. Art Botterell. Is that correct,
Botterell, Emergency Information Consultant from California,
welcome. Aren't you glad that our hearing did not go in--or our
mark up did not go into today which would have canceled this
hearing. Mr. Tony Trujillo, Chairman of the Satellite Industry
Association, and Mr. Harold Kramer, CEO of the American Radio
Relay League and again we appreciate the work of all of your
members as we dealt with this terrible storm earlier this
month. As you know, our rules are such that your testimony is
made part of the record in its entirety. We would like you to
spend no more than 5 minutes discussing as an overview your
statement.
And Mr. Roemer, you are recognized for 5 minutes. Welcome
back.
STATEMENTS OF TIMOTHY J. ROEMER, DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR
NATIONAL POLICY; LT. COL. THOMAS J. MILLER, DEPUTY DIRECTOR,
MICHIGAN STATE POLICE; ART BOTTERELL, EMERGENCY INFORMATION
SYSTEMS CONSULTANT; TONY TRUJILLO, CHAIRMAN, SATELLITE INDUSTRY
ASSOCIATION; AND HAROLD KRAMER, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, THE
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR AMATEUR RADIO
Mr. Roemer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
An honor to be before this very distinguished panel. And an
honor to be with some of the brave and courageous people that
serve our country on the front lines.
Mr. Chairman, you have graciously entered my statement into
the record, I appreciate that. I also appreciate the service
with you a democrat and republican that worked together often
times on fiscal and education issues. It is nice to be back and
see you and see other Members of this Committee.
Mr. Chairman, I guess the message from the 9/11 Commission
is pretty simple. We have threats to our country, people that
want to kill our citizens not just over there in Iraq, Madrid,
London, Indonesia, but right here, New York, potentially
Michigan, Indiana, California. The people on the front lines
like these brave people here with me today need all the
equipment they can possibly get to communicate and fight the
enemy. They do not have it. They need more.
Right after 9/11 when I served in this distinguished body,
Members of Congress were then provided with some equipment to
better communicate. ``Blackberries'' were provided in many of
the budgets for people in Congress to make sure they could
communicate, get to their committee assignments, have
discussions between each other, make sure the Intelligence
Committee operated. These people still need some of that same
kind of equipment. We need to get that to them.
Let me give you a couple examples of what the 9/11
Commission found as to some of these problems. We found all
kinds of compelling instances of bravery and courage; people
going into burning buildings and rescuing people. They might
have rescued more. We might have saved more of the Fire
Department chiefs, officers, police officers, emergency
personnel if they would have had public radio spectrum to
better communicate.
At 9:59 in the morning on 9/11, 4 years ago, a general
evacuation order was given to firefighters in the North Tower.
The South Tower had collapsed, a place that held up to 25,000
people had been diminished to cement, steel, and ash. The
people then in the North Tower, many of the chiefs in the lobby
did not even know that the other tower had collapsed or else
they might have been able to get more people out more quickly.
We had comments from people saying such things as we did not
know it collapsed. Somebody actually said, Mr. Chairman that
people watching TV had more information than we did in the
lobby on 9/11 in the North Tower. People on TV in Florida or
California knew more than our first responders onsite in New
York City. We cannot let that continue. We have got to do more.
We cannot make it like a general in Iraq who needs
reconnaissance and maps and intelligence. We try to provide
them all we possibly can. So too should we provide these
officers, these emergency personnel all the intelligence, all
the communication, all the equipment that they possibly need.
Mr. Chairman, then we had a disaster happen in the southern
part of our country in New Orleans where we had other
communication problems. In New Orleans, there were three
neighboring parishes were using different equipment on
different frequencies. They could not communicate. We had
National Guard in Mississippi communicating by human courier,
not by radio frequencies, and we had helicopters up in the air
looking at our own citizens on the roofs of their homes in New
Orleans screaming and yelling for help but they could not talk
and the helicopters with the boats and the water to try and
find out who was rescued, who was not, and who needed help.
We can and we must do better. The 9/11 Commission has
recommended that Congress provide as quickly as possible the
public radio spectrum of 700 megahertz so that these first
responders can indeed do their job. We don't lose their lives.
We don't lose American citizen's lives and we have better
interoperability, better strength in these communications, and
have this communication be able to have a deeper capability as
well.
I would just conclude, Mr. Chairman with a quote from one
of my favorite founding fathers, John Adams.
Mr. Upton. I was hoping it was Bob Davey.
Mr. Roemer. Bob--no, it was not. It could be Charlie Weiss
but he is not quite that old as the coach of the Fighting
Irish. John Adams said this, he said, ``We cannot guarantee
success, we can do something better, we can deserve it.''
Congress will never prevent every future terrorist attack.
There is no way that they can. But working democrats and
republicans to provide this radio spectrum to our first
responders, we can deserve to give them, they deserve the best
protection they possibly can get. Let us get this done as
quickly as possible.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Timothy J. Roemer follows:]
Prepared Statement of Timothy J. Roemer, Director, Center for National
Policy
Chairman Upton, Ranking Member Markey, Members of the Subcommittee
on Telecommunications and the Internet:
It is an honor to appear before this distinguished panel today to
discuss an issue of great importance to the security of our
nation.
As we learned on 9/11, the new threats we face are not confined to
distant battlefields--they can materialize here, on the streets
of America.
Now we are all on the front lines. If terrorists strike again on
American soil, it will be local emergency responders--police,
firefighters, and emergency medical technicians--who will
answer the call.
I would like to talk about our investigation into events of 9/11, as
described by the 9/11 Commission in its report. Those events
dramatically illustrate the need for the reform we're here
today to discuss.
poor communications--first responders at the wtc
The response at the World Trade Center on September 11 was the
largest single emergency response in our nation's history. Hundreds of
firefighters, NYPD, and Port Authority Police converged on Lower
Manhattan to participate in the rescue.
What we learned in our investigation is that our first responders
did not have the communications they needed or deserved.
Firefighters had a particularly difficult time communicating with
one another and with their commanders.
As an FDNY chief in the North Tower told us: ``One of the most
critical things in a major operation like this is to have information.
Unfortunately, we didn't have a lot of information coming in.''
The fire chiefs in the North Tower lobby didn't have any reports of
what the NYPD helicopters overhead had seen.
They didn't know the extent of the damage to the building over
their heads.
They didn't know the condition of the stairwells.
They couldn't get updated information from FDNY dispatch, where
dozens of calls were pouring in from civilians on the floors above
them. That information would have been extremely valuable to them.
Another chief in the North Tower lobby that day told us that people
watching on TV had better information than he did.
Without real-time information, the chiefs were at a huge
disadvantage. They were like generals on a battlefield without
reconnaissance, intelligence, or even a current map.
Without real-time information, many fire department units were told
simply to head up the stairs and report back via radio.
As the units in the both towers climbed higher, their radio
transmissions were disrupted by the many floors between them and their
commanders. Communications with the chiefs in the lobby became weaker
and more sporadic.
Furthermore, the main radio channel for FDNY communications was not
designed to handle the number of firefighters at the towers.
So many people were trying to speak at once, the transmissions
overlapped and often became indecipherable.
Because that channel was so overwhelmed, it was impossible for the
chiefs to track the location of the many FDNY units in the towers.
At 9:59 that morning, the South Tower collapsed. A general
evacuation order was issued for firefighters in the North Tower.
Some did not receive the evacuation order over their radios, but
were alerted in person by other units.
Some did not receive the order at all.
Some received the order, but did not evacuate with great urgency:
Many disregarded the order to stay and search for civilians.
Some waited for members of their teams to regroup before they
headed down the stairs
Some were tired, so they rested in stairwells before continuing
down.
Many firefighters in the North Tower didn't even know that the
South Tower had collapsed. Even chiefs in the North Tower lobby didn't
learn of the collapse of the South Tower for 30 minutes.
Several firefighters who survived told us that they, and others who
did not survive, would have evacuated more urgently if they had known
of the South Tower's collapse.
NYPD communications were generally better, because most NYPD
officers were not climbing the Towers, but were outside evacuating
civilians and controlling crowds.
Meanwhile, most Port Authority Police had no way to hear any
commands issued over the World Trade Center command frequency.
poor communications between agencies
As we learned in our investigation, the quality of communications
varied from agency to agency. But radio communications and operational
coordination between agencies was uniformly a problem, at the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon.
For example:
Fire chiefs in the lobbies of the towers got no information from
the police helicopters circling above. Reports that called into
question the condition of the North Tower, at 10:08, 10:15, and 10:221
a.m., would have been extremely valuable information for the FDNY
chiefs in the North Lobby.
Many redundant searches were conducted that morning. For example,
firefighters wasted valuable time searching the PATH transit station
under the Trade Center, not knowing that the area had already been
cleared by Port Authority officers.
Even at the Pentagon, where the emergency response effort was a
comparative success, the Arlington Country After-Action Report
concluded that ``almost all aspects of communications [were]
problematic.'' The report also notes that ``radio channels were
initially oversaturated.''
what we recommended
The courage and determination of the first responders saved
thousands of lives that morning.
They risked their lives, and many gave their lives, to rescue
people they had never met.
They performed far beyond what we would ever have any right to
expect. Had they received timely information that morning, many of
those brave firefighters and police officers could have saved more
lives, and their own lives.
As we said in our report, ``The first responders of today live in a
world transformed by the attacks on 9/11. Because no one believes that
every conceivable form of attack can be prevented, civilians and first
responders will again find themselves on the front lines.''
To help those on the front lines, the 9/11 Commission made a
common-sense recommendation: Congress should reallocate broadcast
spectrum for public safety purposes.
conclusion
Hurricane Katrina reminds us that this problem has not been solved.
Poor communications delayed emergency response. Poor communications
again cost lives.
New Orleans and three neighboring parishes were using different
equipment and different frequencies--they couldn't talk to each
another.
Helicopter crews couldn't talk to rescuers in boats.
National Guard commanders in Mississippi had to use human couriers
to carry messages.
After Katrina, communications for first responders must become an
urgent priority for this Congress. We should not have to learn these
lessons a third time.
The transition to Digital TV offers us the perfect opportunity to
fulfill this recommendation. The analog TV spectrum is ideal for public
safety use. Emergency communications on these frequencies can easily
penetrate walls, and travel great distances.
Broadcasters have dropped their opposition to a hard deadline for
returning the analog TV spectrum. This is a step forward.Now the ball
is in your court. Congress should set the earliest possible date for
the transfer of 700 MHz spectrum to America's first responders. We
cannot afford another four year delay--we will surely be hit again, and
if we have not fixed communications problems lives will be lost.
We need a date certain for the turnover of the spectrum, so that
all involved can prepare:
Manufacturers can produce new public safety communications
technologies to take advantage of the new spectrum, and
Public safety agencies can acquire these capabilities.
We know that there are other contentious issues involved with the
Digital TV transition. They should not stop a bill to reallocate the
spectrum for public safety purposes. Our first responders must come
first.
Chairman Upton and Ranking Member Markey, Chairman Barton and
Ranking Member Dingell of the full Committee, Representative Pickering,
Representative Wynn, and numerous other members of the Committee on
Energy and Commerce should be commended for their leadership on this
important national security issue.
Other members of the House and Senate have also been strongly
supportive of this reform. We thank them for their efforts.
We look forward to working with you, and with your counterparts in
the Senate, to enact this common-sense 9/11 Commission recommendation
into law this year--for the safety of our first responders, and the
communities they protect. Thank you, and I would be pleased to respond
to your questions.
Mr. Upton. Thank you.
Lieutenant Colonel Miller, welcome.
STATEMENT OF LT. COL. THOMAS J. MILLER
Mr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Committee.
I am Lieutenant Colonel Tom Miller, Deputy Director of the
Michigan State Police. Thank you for the opportunity to testify
regarding the urgent need to promote interoperable
communications between public safety first responders.
Our first responder capabilities have been tested recently
in this country from 9/11 to the most recent hurricanes in the
Gulf Coast. In Michigan, our tests have included a flooding
disaster in the upper peninsula, civil unrest in Benton Harbor,
the blackout of 2003, and most recently mobilization of our
forces to assist the communities along the Gulf coast with the
recent hurricanes. We have fortunately in our State experienced
the unexpected and responded well. Still in Michigan, like
every other State, we still face challenges. My testimony will
describe the interoperability and communication challenges
facing the Michigan State Police, as well as all of our State's
75,000 first responders.
In my 24 years of law enforcement experience, I have come
to learn firsthand that effective, coordinated, and accessible
communications between first responders is critical to the
public safety mission. Michigan has the largest geographically
based public safety communications system in North America.
Since 1995, Michigan taxpayers have invested $211 million in
the statewide communications system. The State is currently
investing another $19 million in 2006 to upgrade this operating
system to provide enhanced data capability, as well as
additional microwave backbone capability in Southeast Michigan.
Governor Granholm has also set an ambitious goal that by 2008,
our first responders in Michigan will have fully interoperable
communications. The State of Michigan has been recognized by
industry and user groups as visionary as its approach to
interoperability. But even with this success, Michigan still
faces critical funding and other challenges in its quest to
achieve the required level of public safety communications
interoperability.
There are four interrelated challenges facing public safety
agencies in Michigan, as well as public safety agencies across
the country. I would like to highlight some of those four areas
for you. First, limited and fragmented funding. Sufficient
funding is not available to replace and update equipment.
Different communities at different levels of Government have
various funding schemes and budget priorities. Further, Federal
guidance on local and regional collaboration, as well as,
funding assistance would surely help.
Two, limited and fragmented radio spectrum. Public safety
agencies compete with each other and with commercial wireless
carriers for scarce radio spectrum creating problems among
jurisdictions as they scramble to acquire as many frequencies
as they can to meet their own needs. In Michigan today, with
the state-of-the-art system that we have, we have significant
commercial wireless interference that impacts the safety of the
first responders utilizing that system.
Three, limited fragmented planning coupled with lack of
coordination. Mr. Chairman, you mentioned that in your opening
remarks. The foundation of any effort to achieve
interoperability is to create a coherent and cooperatively
developed and shared plan. Currently, public safety agencies in
Michigan are working out a plan for interoperability, a
comprehensive plan for interoperability in our State. That is
definitely a foundation and requirement to have success in this
area.
Four, incompatible and aging communications equipment.
Aging communications equipment is a key challenge because they
are either obsolete, will become obsolete, or aging at
different stages and different jurisdictions which makes
coordination and collaboration difficult. Federal assistance is
needed as many local Governments do not have the resources to
modernize their systems.
Public safety access to the 700 megahertz spectrum is
critical to the safety of our citizens and to public safety
first responders as a whole. In 1997, Congress and the Federal
Communications Commission allocated 2400 megahertz of spectrum
to public safety in the 700 megahertz band for additional voice
and data capacity but there is still a small number of TV
stations that use this dedicated spectrum, preventing public
safety access in most major metropolitan areas. Congress must
address the loophole in the 1997 legislation that failed to set
a firm date when TV stations must vacate the spectrum. There
must also be an equitable solution to assure that no citizens
are left without access to public information during a crisis.
In Michigan, we are taking short-term initiatives or
initiating short-term strategies to develop and address our
interoperability issues. I would like to provide this Committee
with a couple brief examples. First off, Michigan is pursuing
implementation of TACNET, a mobile digital cross band repeater
system for integrated directly into patrol car electronics.
This system is integrated into the car, patching together as
many as five disparate frequencies with the touch of a screen.
The State has also deployed and interfaced different radio
systems in 20 counties in the State allowing interoperability.
Michigan and Ohio are piloting a project involving dual
programming of State Michigan radios and Ohio radios. Michigan
has developed a microwave link between the State of Michigan's
system and the State of Wisconsin for the installation of a
telephone hotline between our Upper Peninsula dispatch center
and the Wisconsin State Police. Talks are currently underway
with the State of Indiana for an interoperability solution
between Indiana's system and the State of Michigan's system.
Communications interoperability for first responders is an
important life safety challenge. The Michigan State Police
commends this Committee's leadership in addressing this urgent
issue. Michigan has been committed to enhancing public safety
interoperability prior to the heightened awareness placed on
this issue as a result of the terrorist attacks on September
11. Additional funding and spectrum are key to Michigan and
other States reaching our goal of public safety
interoperability. We do urge Congress to assign a date as soon
as possible for the spectrum transition of the 700 megahertz
band which can be made available for public safety use.
I thank you for the opportunity to testify and will be
pleased to answer any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Lt. Col. Thomas J. Miller
follows:]
Prepared Statement of Lt. Col. Thomas J. Miller, Deputy Director,
Michigan State Police
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I am Lieutenant Colonel
Thomas J. Miller, Deputy Director of the Michigan State Police. Thank
you for the opportunity to testify about the urgent need to promote
interoperable communications among and between public safety first
responders. On behalf of the Michigan State Police and my colleagues in
law enforcement and other first responder agencies across the state, we
appreciate the Committee's leadership in addressing this vital issue.
Our first responder capabilities have been tested in recent years
as a country--from 9/11 terrorist attacks to the most recent
hurricanes. In Michigan our ``tests'' have included a flood in the
Upper Peninsula, civil unrest in Benton Harbor, the blackout of 2003,
and most recently mobilizing our Emergency Operations Center in
response to Katrina. We have, fortunately, experienced the unexpected
and responded well. Still, Michigan, like every other state, faces
challenges.
My testimony will describe the interoperability and communications
challenges facing the Michigan State Police (MSP) and all of our
state's 75,000 first responders. In my 24 years of law enforcement
experience, I have come to learn first hand that effective,
coordinated, and accessible communications between first responders is
critical to the public safety mission.
Michigan has the largest geographically-based public safety
communication system in North America. Our Michigan Public Safety
Communications System (MPSCS) is a Motorola 800 MHz trunked radio
system and is Association of Public Safety Communications Officials
(APCO) 25 compliant, providing statewide coverage for public safety
users. We have studied, conceived, and built a state of the art digital
standards-based interoperable radio system with significant audio
capacity and potentially enormous public safety transmission capacity.
Since 1995, Michigan taxpayers have invested $221,000,000 in the
construction of this statewide system. The state is currently investing
another $19,000,000 in 2006 to upgrade our operating system statewide
and to enhance our microwave backbone capacity in Southeast Michigan to
accommodate the growth in local users. Governor Granholm has also set
an ambitious goal--that by 2008 all first responders will have fully
interoperable communications. She has also created an advisory board
charged with developing and implementing a plan to achieve this goal.
Michigan has been recognized by the Public Safety Wireless Network
(PSWN) and other knowledgeable industry and user groups as visionary in
its approach to interoperability. No other state in the union boasts
such a system, but even with this success, Michigan still faces
critical funding and other challenges in its quest to achieve the
required level of public safety communications interoperability.
the interoperability challenge in michigan
On August 17, 1987, Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed a mile
from Detroit Metropolitan Airport killing 154 of the 155 people on
board. Public Safety personnel responding to this disaster site could
not communicate effectively with each other, which hampered rescue
efforts. Today, 18 years after this incident, our communications
capabilities have improved dramatically, however, public safety
agencies in our state still lack the necessary equipment to ensure the
required level of interoperability and thus a coordinated response.
There are four interrelated challenges facing public safety
agencies in Michigan pursuing communications interoperability:
1. Limited and fragmented funding--Funding is not available to replace
and update equipment; different communities at different levels
of government have various funding schemes and budget
priorities. Basically, there are many interests competing for
scarce dollars. Stove pipe solutions have tended to be the
norm, which has contributed significantly to the
interoperability challenges public safety faces in this country
today. We do believe that the movement toward the requirement
for regionally based solutions to qualify for federal homeland
security funds will have a positive impact on communications
interoperability. Further federal guidance on jurisdictions
working together as well as funding assistance would definitely
help move along the goal of interoperability in our country.
2. Limited and fragmented radio spectrum--Public safety radio spectrum
is a scarce and valuable resource. Exacerbating the situation
is that public safety radio spectrum is not contiguous and is
scattered throughout the length of the frequency spectrum.
Public safety frequencies in Michigan also face geographic
limitations due to our shared border with Canada and other
states. Additionally, public safety frequencies are under
assault from commercial wireless interference. Public safety
agencies also compete with each other for scarce radio
spectrum, creating significant problems among jurisdictions as
they scramble to acquire as many frequencies as they can to
meet their own needs. In Michigan, this has created challenges
in our efforts to add larger jurisdictions such as the City of
Detroit to the state's communication system. The lack of
available frequencies in the 800 MHz band in Southeast Michigan
has made it difficult to ensure that this region would have the
adequate spectrum resources available for the number of users
in that geographic area of the state. The bottom line is this
impacts public safety.
3. Limited and fragmented planning coupled with lack of coordination--
Achieving interoperability only works when there is
coordination and cooperation. Indeed, the foundation of any
effort to achieve interoperability is to create a coherent and
cooperatively developed and shared plan. Currently, public
safety agencies are racing to different solutions that
exacerbate Michigan's ability, both regionally and on a
statewide basis, to meet the interoperability challenge. This
is not unique to Michigan, but rather typical across the
nation. Effectively partnering with local responders and
jurisdictions and breaking down barriers to interoperability is
a priority for our state, and must be a priority for our
country. Governor Granholm has called for interoperable
communications among first responders by 2008 and created the
MPSCS Advisory Board this year to develop and implement
Michigan's interoperable communications plan and to advise on
best practices for implementing interoperability; future
trends; and coordination with local, regional, and statewide
mutual aid agreements, 9-1-1 dispatch operations, and incident
command systems. Again, further focus from the federal
government on coordination and shared plans in states and among
regions is crucial.
4. Incompatible and aging communications equipment--One key challenge
with achieving interoperability in Michigan is the age of
communications equipment. Many jurisdictions have equipment
that is at least 20 years old. Clearly, these instruments are
either obsolete or will become obsolete in the near term
because manufacturers will no longer support these systems.
Additionally, equipment used by various jurisdictions is aging
at different stages in their lifecycle, making it difficult to
coordinate and collaborate among jurisdictions to acquire
common radio infrastructure and equipment. The result is
agencies are communicating across different frequencies with
different types of radios, analog and digital, using
proprietary based systems that tend to inhibit communications
interoperability. We need more federal assistance to address
this problem, as many local governments just do not have the
resources to modernize their systems.
the need for first responder access to 700 mhz spectrum
Although coordination and planning for interoperability is
essential, public safety access to the 700 MHz spectrum, both in
Michigan and across the county, is critical for the safety of our
citizens and first responders. This issue has become apparent in public
safety responses to major incidents that have occurred since the
terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The 700 MHz band is the only
dedicated spectrum allocation where public safety can further develop
interoperable voice communications and implement advanced mobile wide
area systems that bring high speed access to databases, the internet,
imaging and video to first responders out in the field. Congress and
the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allocated 24 MHz of
spectrum to public safety in the 700 MHz band in 1997 for additional
voice/data capacity, but there are still a small number of TV stations
in that spectrum that currently prevent public safety access in most of
the major metro areas. Congress must address the loophole in the 1997
legislation that failed to set a firm date when TV stations must vacate
this spectrum. Congress needs to enact legislation that mandates such a
date without exception. Public safety desperately needs the 700 MHz
spectrum today.
While addressing this most critical public safety responder issue,
we must not lose sight of the potential impact on citizens who may be
dependent on these 700 MHz analog broadcasts for their public
information during time of emergency. We urge Congress to fashion an
equitable solution to assure that no citizens are left without access
to public information during a crisis.
near-term interoperability initiatives
In addition to our statewide planning for interoperability,
Michigan is pursuing several initiatives to address our short term
interoperability needs to enhance public safety first response.
1. TACNET--The Michigan State Police is pursuing implementation of
a mobile digital-cross band radio repeater system integrated directly
into our patrol car electronics. While there are a number of similar
technologies, this particular application, offers several unique
aspects which have appealed to our officers in pilot tests. Because
TACNET is fully integrated into a patrol car's electronic system,
patching together as many as five disparate frequency bands is
accomplished easily on a touch-screen mounted on the dash. Any patrol
officer can do this. While preplanning the frequencies to be
coordinated is important, a major advantage of this approach is that
we--and other first responders--do not need to acquire new radios or
equipment. TACNET simply ``controls'' existing radio equipment, mounted
in the trunk, in a seamless and effective way.
2. The Michigan State Police has been involved in interoperability
solutions between the MPSCS and local public safety communication
systems since 2000 when the department deployed the first
interoperability ``patch'' with Clinton County, Michigan. Since then,
Michigan has deployed patch radios interfacing local radio systems with
the MPSCS in 20 counties across Michigan.
3. The Michigan MPSCS and the Ohio MARCS system are involved in a
pilot project involving dual programming of MPSCS radios and Ohio MARCS
radios for interoperability with the Ohio Highway Patrol, Ohio National
Guard, and the Ohio Department of National Resources. In addition, Ohio
is installing an MPSCS radio connected to a Raytheon ACU1000 pointed at
the Michigan system and interfaced with the Ohio system which will
allow communications between Michigan dispatch centers and Michigan
units operating in Ohio. Ohio will have the same communications
capability with units operating in Michigan. Joint exercises will be
conducted with appropriate agencies when this solution is operational.
4. DOJ Cities Project/High Risk Metropolitan Areas--Michigan is
finalizing a communications interoperability plan between federal,
state, and local authorities in the Detroit Metropolitan area utilizing
the MPSCS as the backbone for communications interoperability between
law enforcement agencies.This plan also involves the installation of
repeaters in Detroit to facilitate communications with other 800 MHZ
radio systems (such as Oakland County) who may need to work in Detroit
during a major incident.
5. Michigan has developed a microwave link between the MPSCS and
the State of Wisconsin for the installation of a telephone ``hot line''
between the Michigan State Police Negaunee Regional Dispatch Center and
Wisconsin State Police Dispatch.
6. Talks are underway with the State of Indiana for an
interoperability solution between Indiana's 800 MHZ Motorola trunked
system, which is under construction, and the MPSCS.
conclusion
Communications interoperability for first responders is an
important life safety challenge. The Michigan State Police commends the
Committee's leadership in addressing this urgent issue. Michigan has
been committed to enhancing public safety interoperability prior to the
heightened awareness placed on this issue as a result of the terrorist
attacks on September 11, 2001. Additional funding and spectrum are key
to Michigan and other states reaching our goal of public safety
interoperability. And we do urge Congress to assign a date--as soon as
possible--for the spectrum transition so that the 700 MHz bandwidth can
be available for public safety use.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I would be pleased to
answer any questions you may have.
Mr. Upton. Thank you.
Mr. Botterell?
STATEMENT OF ART BOTTERELL
Mr. Botterell. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and
distinguished Members of the Committee.
My name is Art Botterell and I am an independent consultant
on public warning and emergency information systems. In my
career, I have served at the municipal, county, State, and
Federal levels of public safety and emergency management, and
as a consultant to agencies in the U.S. and abroad. I have had
the opportunity to experience first hand a broad array of
emergency communications technologies and practices and it is a
privilege to share a few observations with you here today.
Having been through these review exercises after just about
every major disaster of the past two decades, I will suggest
that there are some things that we as a Nation cannot and need
not afford anymore. First off, we can no longer afford to build
separate infrastructure for different modes of communication.
The question is not voice versus data or wired versus wireless
or satellite versus terrestrial. The question is how to
leverage digital convergence to get the most capability,
reliability, and reach for all our modes of emergency
communication.
Second, we can no longer afford to treat the radio spectrum
as though it were real estate. We have much more efficient ways
of organizing, identifying and prioritizing our communications
than by the fixed long-term allocation of blocks of spectrum.
The sooner we begin the transition to dynamic spectrum
management, the sooner we will realize its benefits.
Third, we can no longer afford to rely on vendor driven
design of our emergency communications infrastructure.
Businesses are responsible for maximizing shareholder value not
for protecting the public welfare. We need independent sources
of information and planning for our future emergency
infrastructure lest we continue to get updated versions of the
same old thing.
And finally, we can no longer afford an intermittent series
of post disaster quick fix programs for emergency
communications. The development of telecommunications is a
continual process of incremental improvement. It requires a
consistent program of implementation as well.
So how might such a program be established? First, we have
to acknowledge that the problem is not just technical
facilities, it is also procedures, human resources, and
organizational constructs. Then we need to draw three lessons
from the Internet. The first is the end-to-end principle which
holds that networks should be as simple and transparent as
possible so that functions and features can be negotiated and
improved in an unfettered market of innovative products and
services. The second is the power of judicious standards. The
Internet has no architecture, instead it provides a foundation
of simple, elegant, enabling standards upon which or which an
agile ecology of innovation has grown continually,
incrementally, and exponentially. And third, improved standards
processes. The process used to create the Internet standards
has had a profound influence on other standards organizations
and the results have been better, more robust standards
developed and deployed faster than by the more traditional
standards process.
And then we need to learn how to harness the energies of
the academic, non-profit, and open source communities. It has
been said that free is the one price Government does not know
how to pay. I have watched several generations of volunteers,
amateur radio operators and many others develop and deploy
innovative useful communication technologies only to be turned
away by the agencies that might benefit from them because they
only knew how to adopt new technologies by means of cumbersome,
commercial procurement processes.
The highly successful common alerting protocol standard is
one of the few such non-commercial initiatives that have
succeeded in breaking through this bureaucratic glass ceiling.
CAP as it is called, offers an example for harnessing the
creative energy of the non-profit and open source communities
for the public benefit.
The Federal Government can play a vital role in this
process. By encouraging procurements based on open, non-
proprietary standards through grant guidance to State and local
agencies and to its own acquisitions, by expanding independent
research and education of operating and procurement officers by
academics and non-profit organizations so that those officials
are no longer solely dependent on vendors for their information
about communications and information technology. By providing
micro grants, counseling, recognition, and other support for
innovators from the volunteer academic, non-commercial, and
open source sectors to help them bring their good ideas into
public service.
Most importantly, the Federal Government can commit to
increasing the robustness, reliability, and adaptability of our
national communications infrastructure as a continual process
of improvement with clear year-by-year goals and measurable
usable deliverables in order to apply these lessons that
disasters teach us time and again.
I will be pleased to respond to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Art Botterell follows:]
Prepared Statement of Art Botterell, Emergency Information Systems
Consultant
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the
Committee. My name is Art Botterell and I am an independent consultant
on public warning and emergency information systems.
In my career in emergency communications I've served in public
safety and government at the municipal, county, state and federal
levels, and as a consultant and advisor in Asia and Europe. I've also
been involved in international standards development for emergency data
exchange, and in advocacy for improvements in public warning and
emergency public information.
It's been my good fortune to accumulate first-hand experience with
a wide array of emergency communications technologies and practices,
and it's a privilege to share a few of the patterns I've detected with
you here today.
introduction: the four layers of communication
Obviously the number one problem identified after 9/11 and again
after the Katrina response was ``communications.'' But what does that
really mean?
For many years I've used a four-tiered ``layer cake'' model to help
tease apart the various issues that get lumped under the broad rubric
of ``communication problems'' or, more recently, ``interoperability'':
Organization--Structures, goals, objectives and metricsHuman
Factors--Capabilities, training, stresses, personal attitudes
Procedures--Patterns of interaction and problem solving
Technologies--All the hardware, software and networks
(There's actually a fifth layer on top--Culture--which in most
tactical contexts is a constant, but which definitely comes into play
in cross-cultural and international applications.)
Over time I noticed two things about this formulation: The first
was that problems, or at least the perceptions of problems, tend to
propagate downward through the stack . . . so that a lot of non-
technical issues wind up being framed as technology failures. The
political or bureaucratic benefits of this depersonalized reframing are
fairly clear, as is its attractiveness to vendors and other technology
proponents, but it leads to a lot of what might be called ``Groundhog
Day'' experiences, as succeeding generations of technology are blamed
for the same breakdowns.
In two decades of emergency response field operations, I can
truthfully say that I cannot recall any occasion when I felt the
available technology was being fully utilized. In almost every case, I
found it possible to substantially enhance the performance of
communications by interventions at the procedural, human-factors or
organizational levels.
The other interesting thing, which I came to appreciate more
slowly, was that change tends to propagate upward through the stack.
New technologies require and enable new behaviors, requiring new skills
and triggering new stresses, and creating new forces to which
organizations ultimately adapt themselves. This is a continual
evolutionary process, and that has important implications to which I'll
return in just a moment.
For now, the first insight is that a lot of the interoperability
and data-sharing challenges we face aren't technical problems, and just
painting over them with a fresh layer of technology won't necessarily
solve them.
prices we don't need to pay
A couple of truisms here: Nothing is so permanent as a temporary
solution, and nothing takes longer than a quick fix. Having been
through these review exercises after just about every major disaster of
the past two decades, I'll suggest that there are some things that we
as a nation cannot--and need not--afford anymore. I'll suggest answers
in a moment, but allow me a moment to review the problems first.
First, we can no longer afford to build separate infrastructure for
different modes of communications. The question isn't radio versus
computers, or voice versus data, or wired versus wireless. The question
is how we can complete the process of digital convergence to get the
most capability and reliability for all modes of emergency
communication.
Second, we can no longer afford to treat the radio spectrum as,
effectively, private property. We have much more efficient ways of
separating, securing and identifying communications channels than by
the fixed allocation of blocks of spectrum to either public or private
licensees or services. Certainly this transition from the traditional
approach will take time, and it will have financial implications, but
the sooner we start the sooner we'll realize the benefits of dynamic
spectrum management.
Third, we can no longer afford to rely on vendor-driven design of
our emergency communications infrastructure. I make no criticism here
of business doing business. The problem arises when government fails in
its complementary role as steward of public resources and champion for
the public interest, thus leaving the competitive forces of the
marketplace unchallenged and unconstrained by any higher values. The
phenomenon of government program managers whose mastery of technologies
is limited to what their contactors tell them is, alas, a commonplace
of federal and, increasingly, of state and local government. Businesses
are responsible for maximizing shareholder value, not for maximizing
the general public welfare. We need independent sources of information
and planning for our future emergency infrastructure, else we'll
continue to get updated versions of the same old thing.
And finally, we can no longer afford an intermittent series of
post-disaster quick-fix programs for emergency communications.
Emergency managers are sadly aware of the ``window of opportunity'' for
funding and legislative interest that opens, all too briefly, after
every major disaster. It forces them to undertake impulsive, piecemeal
procurements of whatever can be delivered quickly, because they know if
they don't move quickly they'll soon be back near the bottom of the
spending priorities list. The development of telecommunications is, as
I've mentioned, a continual process of incremental improvement. It
requires a consistent program of implementation as well.
So how might such a program be established?
how to fix it
The first task is to frame the problem properly. The problem isn't
just technical facilities; it's also procedures, human resources and
organizational structures. We need to involve social scientists,
economists and human factors engineers as well as electrical engineers
and computer scientists. The goal isn't increased communication or
enhanced information sharing; those are means, not ends. The goal is to
increase the resilience and robustness of our society and our economy,
even as increasing efficiencies squeeze out the slack resources we used
to count on to buffer us against unexpected events.
The second task is to learn three lessons from the Internet:
The ``end-to-end principle''--Simply put, this holds that the network
should be as simple and transparent as possible, so
applications and features can be negotiated and improved over
time by the end users. (One implication of this is a
distinction between the ``user interface,'' e.g., a handheld
radio, and the underlying network, which might be of various
types without the user noticing any difference.)
The power of judicious standards--The Internet has no architecture.
Instead, the Internet is the spontaneous expression of a fairly
simple set of enabling technical interface standards, upon
which a rich and agile ecology of commercial and non-commercial
innovation have been built, continually and incrementally.
Likewise, the challenge for designing emergency communications
capabilities is not to develop a global top-down architecture,
but rather to identify and promote the key enabling standards
that will allow technologies to interact, cooperate, compete
and improve for the benefit of investors and the general public
alike.
The revolution in standards development--One quiet impact of the
Internet has been on the processes by which technical standards
are developed. The process used by the Internet Engineering
Task Force stresses open participation, open non-proprietary
interfaces, and a requirement that standards must actually have
been implemented and tested by multiple users prior to
formalization. This open, iterative approach to standards
development has spread to other standards organizations, and
the result has been better, more robust standards being brought
to use faster than by more traditional industry standards
processes.
The third task is to learn how to harness the energies of the
academic, volunteer and Open Source communities. It's been said that
``Free is the one price government doesn't know how to pay.'' I've
watched several generations of communications volunteers develop and
demonstrate innovative and useful communications technologies, only to
be frustrated by government bureaucracies that only knew how to adopt
technologies by means of lengthy and complicated commercial procurement
processes.
The highly successful open standard called the Common Alerting
Protocol is one of the few such non-commercial initiatives that have
broken through this bureaucratic glass ceiling. ``CAP,'' as it's
called, offers a pattern for harnessing the creative energy of the
academic and open-source communities for the public good. Of course,
success has a thousand fathers, and so I hope the process that led to
the creation of CAP will be studied carefully before its product is
fully absorbed into common process.
the federal government's role
The federal government can play a key role in this process. The
federal government can stimulate the development and adoption of open,
non-proprietary technical standards by encouraging procurements
requiring such standards through its grants to state and local agencies
and its own procurements.
The federal government can also support independent research and
educational outreach though academic and non-profit organizations, so
that officials at all levels of government are no longer so dependent
on vendors for information about communications and information
technology options and trends.
And the federal government can provide micro-grants, counseling,
recognition and other support for volunteer, academic, non-commercial
and open-source innovators--through the Small Business Administration,
perhaps--to help them push their good ideas across the gap into broader
use.
Most importantly, the federal government can expand its leadership
role in approaching the robustness, reliability and adaptability of our
national communications infrastructure as a continual process of
improvement, with discrete year-by-year goals and objectives, and in
tearing down some of the traditional barriers--between disciplines and
agencies, between voice and data, between emergencies and day-to-day--
that have kept us from applying the lessons that disasters teach us
time and again.
I would be pleased to respond to your questions.
Mr. Upton. Thank you.
Mr. Trujillo?
STATEMENT OF TONY TRUJILLO
Mr. Trujillo. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, on
behalf of the Satellite Industry Association, I would like to
thank you for holding this hearing today. I would also like to
express my thanks to Chairman Martin, Commissioner Abernathy,
Adelstein, and Copps, and the staff of the FCC. Their efforts
greatly assisted America's satellite companies in restoring
telecommunication services to the Gulf Coast Region.
Satellite communications played a critical role. When the
land based telephone and broadcast networks went down,
satellites remained on the job. Satellites provided redundancy,
ubiquity, and resiliency that were unavailable from land-based
networks. Satellites first warned of the impending danger.
Afterwards, satellites connected emergency personnel and other
first responders. Satellites reunited families. Satellites
reconnected communities. And satellites enabled the world to
witness the devastation of these disasters and also the many
acts of heroism.
Although the performance of satellite systems was
impressive, their use was often limited by lack of preparation.
Had satellite systems been more effectively integrated into our
emergency communications network, many of the communications
problems that occurred in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and
Texas recently and New York City after 9/11 would have been
substantially mitigated. As Chairman Martin recently stated, if
we learned anything from Hurricane Katrina, it is that we
cannot rely solely on terrestrial communications. And if I
leave you with only one thought today, that satellites can
guarantee redundancy. And as we learned in New Orleans, the
importance of redundancy cannot be overemphasized.
The satellite industry was not as affected as land based
networks were by the hurricanes. While the outages on land
based networks surged in the days following the hurricanes,
satellite networks were also experiencing a corresponding surge
in demand for capacity. Even during Hurricane Katrina, those
with mobile satellite phones along the Gulf Coast found that
their phones had a dial tone when other networks were silent.
FEMA, The National Guard, and Red Cross, utility workers,
people in search of loved ones and even local phone companies
were among those using over 20,000 mobile satellite phones and
terminals provided by Globalstar, Iridium, Mobile Satellite
Ventures, and Inmarsat.
Likewise, the fixed satellite service providers also
stepped in quickly to provide emergency voice, video, and data
communications. For example, Hughes Network Systems immediately
reestablished Wal-Mart's satellite communications network
creating one of the life support systems for local communities
starting to rebuild. Intelsat reconfigured capacity and donated
service to help cellular providers reestablish their networks
and to provide capacity for the Department of Homeland Security
and FEMA. PanAmSat donated capacity to the Red Cross to provide
communications to about 40 of their sites and especially
equipped Red Cross mobile units. SES AMERICOM and AMERICOM
Government Services donated capacity to enable high speed ship
to shore communications for the USS Iwo Jima. The ship carried
disaster relief teams within amphibious construction equipment
and medical personnel and supplies to the New Orleans area
following the flooding.
The satellite broadcast community also played a role with
both XM Satellite Radio and Direct TV providing FEMA and the
Red Cross with a 24/7 dedicated broadcast station for
disseminating hurricane related information. XM's emergency
alert channel tracked the storm, reported on evacuation routes,
and now provides updates about storm clean up, road closures,
school closings, and other vital information.
America's satellite industry can do more to aid disaster
relief and recovery. We offer the following four
recommendations. No. 1, satellites should be regarded as an
essential component in all future critical telecom network
planning. No. 2, satellite systems must be pre-deployed to a
cadre of trained professionals. No. 3, satellite personnel must
be credentialed as first responders. And No. 4, satellite
spectrum must be preserved and protected.
With these initiatives, our satellite industry will be even
better prepared to meet America's disaster relief and recovery
needs in the future.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Tony Trujillo follows:]
Prepared Statement of Tony Trujillo, Chairman, Satellite Industry
Association
opening
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, on behalf of the Satellite
Industry Association, I would like to thank you for holding this
hearing today on public safety communications and the lessons learned
from 9/11 and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I would also like to express
my thanks to Chairman Martin, Commissioners Copps, Abernathy, and
Adelstein and the staff of the Federal Communications Commission. Their
tireless efforts have greatly assisted us in supplying critical
telecommunication resources to the Gulf Coast Region.
Satellite communications played a critical role during the response
to these manmade and natural disasters. When the telephone and
broadcast networks went down, satellites remained on the job.
Satellites connected emergency personnel and other first responders.
Satellites reunited families. Satellites reconnected communities. And,
satellites enabled the world to witness the devastation of these
disasters and also the many acts of heroism.
Although the performance of satellite systems was impressive, their
use has often been limited by a lack of preparation. Had satellite
systems been more effectively integrated into our emergency
communications network, many of the communications problems that
occurred in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi recently, and New York
City after 9/11 would have been substantially mitigated. As FCC
Chairman Martin recently stated, ``if we learned anything from
Hurricane Katrina, it is that we cannot rely solely on terrestrial
communications''.
Today, I will highlight;
(1) The diversity and versatility of the commercial satellite systems
operating today;
(2) The role that these satellite systems played in recent manmade and
natural disasters; and
(3) The importance of better integrating satellite systems into future
national security and emergency preparedness communications.
As we discuss how Katrina affected Alabama, Louisiana, and
Mississippi, it's important we apply the lessons we learned to improve
disaster relief and recovery telecommunications in the future.
As of September 21st, nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina
inflicted its damage on the terrestrial communications network in the
New Orleans area, only 60 percent of the cell phone networks were
working properly, 70 percent of the broadcast stations were
functioning, and roughly two million calls were still failing. On the
other hand, and in stark contrast to the failures in the terrestrial
networks, fixed and mobile satellite services were nearly 100 percent
operational on September 21st, just as they were on Aug. 28th, Aug.
29th, Aug. 30th, Aug. 31st, and the hours and days immediately
following Katrina.
There have been calls for a new communications network for first
responders and funding for new technologies and networks that can
withstand such disasters. Satellites can and should be an integral part
of these new networks. The required capacity is available today from
commercial satellite operators and is widely available to corporations,
government users and consumers across the globe. The intelligent
integration of satellite and terrestrial technologies can create the
communication system that our first responders deserve.
terrestrial vs. satellite
Hurricane Katrina's destruction of terrestrial communications
facilities in the Gulf region, and therefore the services upon which
citizens rely, was extraordinary. As we know, almost three million
customer telephone lines were knocked down in Louisiana, Mississippi,
and Alabama. In addition to these wire-line failures, local wireless
networks also sustained considerable damage, with more than 1,000 cell
sites out of service. Approximately 100 broadcast stations were knocked
off the air, and finally, hundreds of thousands of cable customers also
lost service.
The resulting lack of communications infrastructure severely
impeded the ability of first responders and others in their disaster
relief and recovery efforts.
The satellite industry and our satellite network infrastructure
were not as affected by Hurricane Katrina. This is partially because
satellites orbit high above the problems on the ground. In the hours,
days, and weeks following these disasters, satellite networks provide
critical communications capabilities to emergency personnel and a vital
information link for all citizens--whether via satellite radio,
satellite television, or via fixed satellite broadband networks or
mobile satellite telephony.
While the outages on terrestrial networks surged in the days
following Katrina, satellite networks were seamlessly handling a
corresponding surge--in demand for capacity.
And I am happy to report to you today that our satellite voice,
video, and data networks performed exactly as they were designed to
perform--providing reliable and redundant communications solutions in
times of crisis.
I would like to take you through some of the examples of how
satellites performed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
satellite quickly stepped in to provide instant infrastructure
Mobile Satellite Services
Within minutes of the disaster, those with satellite phones along
the Gulf Coast turned to us for immediate telecom access. As those
minutes turned to hours and then to days, more and more first
responders found that satellite telephones provided a dial tone that
other networks simply could not.
FEMA, The National Guard, the Red Cross, state and local first
responders, utility workers, reporters, people in search of relatives,
and even local phone companies were among those using satellite phones
to communicate in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Red Cross
quickly deployed nine specially-designed Emergency Communications
Response Vehicles (ECRV's). Each vehicle was equipped with 10 satellite
phones and portable, tripod-mounted VSAT satellite dishes.
Over 20,000 Globalstar, Iridium and Mobile Satellite Ventures (MSV)
satellite phones and terminals were deployed to the region in the days
immediately following Hurricane Katrina. In just the first 72 hours of
the disaster, Iridium satellite telephone traffic alone in the region
increased more than 3000 percent, while the number of subscribers
increased more than 500 percent. Globalstar service centers activated
satellite phones at an average rate of 1,400 per day (versus an average
of 80 on a typical day). MSV saw approximately a 400 percent increase
in traffic in the region and provided satellite terminals to numerous
emergency responders, including FEMA's Urban Search and Rescue teams.
CNN and Fox News used an Inmarsat mobile satellite terminal as the
hurricane came ashore to provide live video reporting. One CNN van
(Hurricane 1) was crushed by a falling roof after filming the arrival
of the hurricane's eye-wall--fortunately, the crew was not injured, and
the Inmarsat terminal survived intact.
Stratos Global, a reseller of Iridium, Globalstar and Inmarsat
capacity and equipment, also deployed a team to provide free phone
calls home for victims at shelters set up throughout the affected area.
Whether providing critical telecommunications in the aftermath of
Katrina or September 11th, the Mobile Satellite Services or MSS
industry has positioned itself to uniquely provide ubiquitous,
reliable, interoperable, secure, and redundant communications during
times of crisis.
First responders, relief workers, political leaders, news
professionals and others quickly clamored for additional phones, and
despite the impressive statistics that I just cited, for each phone and
terminal provided, countless other requests were unmet. Supplies were
rationed and all of our companies had to beg, borrow and steal every
handset and terminal they could find--both within the United States and
abroad. In fact, many requests, including one from the House Sergeant-
at-Arms office, had to be severely limited.
And while these mobile satellite service providers performed nearly
flawlessly, the one portion of the satellite industry that has gone
virtually unnoticed in these past few weeks, but has proven equally
critical, is the FSS or fixed satellite services sector.
Fixed Satellite Services (FSS)
After Hurricane Katrina, the fixed satellite service providers and
their resellers also stepped in immediately to provide instant
infrastructure and emergency voice, video, and data communications in
the hard-hit areas. From transportable ATM machines to high-speed
Internet access for families to stay connected, the organizations using
these satellite communications ranged from federal, state and local
government agencies to schools, churches and local relief
organizations. Small businesses such as retail gas stations and
convenience stores, and larger businesses such as insurance companies,
financial institutions, and news organizations also used satellite
capacity.
For example, Hughes Networks Systems immediately re-established
Wal-Mart's satellite communications network, helping Wal-Mart become
one of the 'life-support systems' for the local communities during
their recovery.
Intelsat, Ltd. reconfigured capacity and donated service to help
cellular providers such as Cingular, and Nextel/Sprint, and long
distance carriers MCI, and AT&T re-establish their networks as well as
provide capacity for emergency services via mobile vans for relief
agencies, and mobile offices and command centers for the Department of
Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
PanAmSat donated satellite capacity to the Red Cross to provide
communications to about 40 of their sites and deployed an experimental
inflatable antenna at a Red Cross center in Biloxi used by evacuees to
send email messages to family.
SES AMERICOM and AMERICOM Government Services donated satellite
capacity to enable high-speed ship-to-shore communications for the USS
Iwo Jima--which carried disaster relief teams to New Orleans with
amphibious construction equipment and medical personnel and supplies.
In addition, Intelsat, Loral Skynet, New Skies Satellites,
PanAmSat, SES AMERICOM, and other FSS operators provided free satellite
communications and satellite bandwidth to enable Internet connectivity
as well as voice, video, and data channels to field hospitals and
relief and rescue workers on the ground, in the air, and on the water.
Also, without the help of the Department of Homeland Security's
National Coordinating Center and their Telecom Industry Sector Advisory
Committee (ISAC), the satellite industry-government coordination that
was accomplished, especially in those first 48 hours, would have been
substantially more difficult.
Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) and Satellite Radio
In addition to the FSS and MSS sectors, the satellite broadcast
community also played a key role, by helping to ensure there was an
efficient method of communicating critical information to first
responders and the general population within the areas affected by
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Both XM Satellite Radio and DirecTV provided FEMA and the Red Cross
with a 24/7 dedicated broadcast station for disseminating hurricane-
related information. XM's 24-hour channel called XM Emergency Alert
(Channel 247) tracked the storm and reported on evacuation routes, and
now provides updates about storm clean-up, road closures, school
closings, and other vital information including information from the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of
Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security and the
Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Following the storm, XM launched a new channel called Red Cross
Radio (Channel 248) which provides information directly to Red Cross
workers located in the Gulf Coast, as well as Red Cross aid stations.
XM has donated more than 200 radios for Red Cross workers to listen to
the Red Cross Radio channel.
DirecTV also coordinated with FEMA and the Red Cross to offer live
feeds--free of charge--to shelters and command centers throughout the
area.
satellite = redundancy + ubiquity + resiliency
Something that we have been hearing repeatedly in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina is the word ``interoperability'' and the need for
first responders to communicate seamlessly with each other during times
of crisis. We in the satellite industry agree that first responders at
the federal, state and local level need an interoperable communications
system that can be rapidly deployed anywhere in the country. We also
know that such communications networks exist in the form of the
applications we have just discussed that are being offered today by the
mobile and fixed satellite industry.
Moreover, satellite operators are investing billions of dollars in
next-generation systems that will offer new and even better services
for the public safety community.
I believe one of the themes you have seen throughout my remarks
here today is that satellites equal redundancy and ubiquity and
resiliency. The real world examples that have presented themselves in
recent years; 9/11, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi
Freedom, the London Train bombings, and the hurricanes of 2004 and
2005, are a testament to the fact that without satellites there is no
redundancy. And, without the redundancy, ubiquity and resiliency that
satellite networks provide, terrestrial-only networks become useless
following disasters.
recommendations
Despite the tremendous contributions of the satellite industry to
the rescue and recovery efforts in the Gulf region, barriers existed
which prevented the full use of satellite resources.
Satellites should be regarded as an essential component in all future
critical telecom network planning
To enable rapid deployment and/or restoration and truly mobile
communications, the Federal Government should incorporate satellite
services and networks as a redundancy requirement in any communications
network or architecture. The Department of Homeland Security is
currently examining a range of emergency communication proposals,
including proposals to ensure interoperability. Satellite systems
should be emphasized and included in the early planning of these
initiatives.
Satellite systems must be pre-deployed to a cadre of trained
professionals
The US military has long known that, to be effective, you must
``train as you fight.'' In other words, you must prepare for a crisis
with the same intensity and dedication that you will need during the
crisis. Past disasters have shown us that first responders must have
the satellite tools and training they need before an emergency happens.
Today, availability of satellite capacity and satellite ground
equipment for emergency preparedness requirements has been handled
largely by relying on whatever excess capacity exists at the time.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have demonstrated that this type of
reliance is flawed and ultimately dangerous.
In the aftermath of the recent hurricanes in the Gulf Coast, when
many terrestrial communications networks in the region were either
totally or partially disabled, emergency responders were relying on
satellite solutions. These solutions included satellite telephones,
satellite bandwidth, as well as VSAT networks. The problem at that
point was the availability of equipment and bandwidth to satisfy
demands. Satellite phones became very difficult to find. VSAT
equipment, in the quantities requested, was also nearly impossible to
obtain, let alone ensure either timely importation or delivery to
isolated locations.
Satellite handsets and small, modern, pop-up antennas and satellite
phones could have been pre-positioned on-site prior to Katrina and
available for immediate deployment in the aftermath. In the hands of
first-responders this technology could have provided the communications
necessary to deploy safety of life services to those who needed it
without delay.
These products work today. They provide redundancy today. They work
with other communications today. As such, the Government needs to
facilitate a wider pre-positioned deployment of these assets today by
ensuring that satellite capacity and equipment become part of the
comprehensive redundant communications solutions used by first
responders during the planning stages, rather than at the last minute.
Credentialing Satellite Personnel as First Responders
The day after Katrina hit, satellite repair crews were ready to
begin restoring service. Unfortunately, too many of these professionals
couldn't get permission from officials to enter the area.
Given the increasingly critical role the satellite industry is
playing in disaster relief and recovery, satellite service providers
and their engineers should be designated as first responders in the
event of a major disaster and should be included in preparations for
such events. By credentialing such individuals and companies as first
responders we can enable critical satellite infrastructure providers
and others to get into the affected areas to restore vital capabilities
without delay or interference.
Preserve and Protect Satellite Spectrum at Home and Abroad
As discussed throughout this testimony, satellite networks are
uniquely able to deliver redundant, reliable, and resilient
communications services users and meet the unique demands of the public
safety community for ubiquitous and interoperable communications.
The availability and widespread deployment of satellite networks,
however, depends upon the satellite industry's access to sufficient
spectrum. Therefore, the satellite industry believes that 1) U.S.
government policy must ensure that existing satellite spectrum be
preserved and protected from harmful interference both at home and
abroad; 2) the FCC's rules and policies should afford satellite
operators sufficient technical flexibility to continue to meet the
needs of the public safety community; and 3) the US Government should
refrain from taking actions that undercut international allocations of
spectrum for satellite use.
closing--we are an essential part of the solution
Again, to recap our recommendations;
1) Satellites must be an essential component of future critical
communications networks;
2) Satellite capacity and equipment must be pre-purchased and pre-
positioned;
3) Satellite operators and personnel must be credentialed as first
responders; and,
4) Satellite spectrum must be preserved, and protected from
interference.
We in the satellite industry are justifiably proud of the crucial
part we have played in disaster recovery efforts by providing vital
communications to relief workers, government agencies, churches,
families and journalists. However, we have also been frustrated by the
knowledge that we could have done much more. On behalf of the Satellite
Industry Association, I urge this Committee to take steps to ensure
that satellite systems are completely integrated into emergency
planning and preparations so that the unique benefits our services
offer can be fully exploited the next time disaster strikes.
Mr. Upton. Mr. Kramer?
STATEMENT OF HAROLD KRAMER
Mr. Kramer. Thank you, Chairman Upton and Members of the
Subcommittee for this opportunity to testify this afternoon on
the efforts of amateur radio operators providing communications
in connection with Hurricane Katrina.
My name is Harold Kramer. My amateur radio call sign is
WJ1B. And I am the Chief Operating Officer for the American
Radio Relay League, the ARRL which is the National Association
for Amateur Radio. Amateur Radio is a voluntary communication
service famous for providing reliable emergency and disaster
relief communication at no cost to States, municipalities,
disaster relief agencies, and the Federal Government. Radio
Amateurs respond immediately following any type of emergency
with communications facilities and systems manned by
volunteered trained communicators.
Amateur radio operators are probably best known for their
immediate responses to the tragic events on September 11, 2001,
along with hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, fires, snow,
floods and other natural disasters. They are immediately
available during and in the aftermath of such events and
commence their first response communications in support of
public safety and disaster relief agencies along with State
emergency response agencies without any advanced requests. When
communication systems fail due to the wide area or localized
disaster, Amateur Radio has consistently and repeatedly proven
that it works.
Immediately at the onset of Hurricane Katrina an all
volunteer army of about 1,000 FCC licensed amateur radio
operators provided continuous high frequency, VHF and UHF
communications for State, local, and Federal emergency workers
in and around the affected areas in Louisiana, Mississippi, and
Alabama. These communications were provided for several
agencies such as the Red Cross and the Salvation Army and to
facilitate interoperability between and among first responders
such as FEMA, National Volunteers Active in Disasters and other
agencies. Trained, volunteer amateur radio operators also
provided health and welfare communications from within the
affected areas to the rest of the United States and the world.
In the days after Hurricane Katrina, the Coastguard, the
Red Cross, and FEMA all put out calls for volunteer amateur
radio operators to provide communications because phone lines
and cell sites were inoperative and public safety
communications were overwhelmed due to the loss of repeater
towers and the large number of first responders in the area.
Amateur radio operators responded en masse. Approximately 200
Amateur Radio emergency service communicators responded
immediately. The number of amateur radio operators providing
communications in the three States who were either deployed or
awaiting relief duty onsite or at the reserve facility in
Montgomery, Alabama swelled to over 1,000 within a week.
The principal reason why Amateur Radio works when over
communication systems fail during natural disasters is that
Amateur Radio is not infrastructure dependent, it is
decentralized. Amateurs are well-trained in emergency
communications. We practice a lot. They are disciplined
operators and their stations are in general both portable and
reliable. High frequency Amateur Radio communications use
substantially in this communications effort requires no fixed
repeaters, cable, or wire lines. Portable repeaters for VHF and
UHF communications were provided very quickly via mobile
facilities in the affected areas.
Specifically, in Mississippi, FEMA dispatched amateur radio
operators to hospitals and evacuation shelters to relay
emergency calls 24 hours a day. At airports in Texas and
Alabama, radio amateurs tracked evacuees and notified the Baton
Rouge Operating Center of their whereabouts so their families
would be able to find them. Amateur radio operators in New
Orleans participated directly in locating stranded persons
because local cell phone calls could not be made by stranded
victims due to the inoperative water line systems in the area.
The Red Cross deployed qualified Amateur Radio volunteers to
250 shelters and food kitchens in Mississippi, Alabama, and
Northern Florida.
Amateur Radio provided a critical link between Coast Guard
helicopters and emergency centers because the ambulance crews
could not contact the helicopters directly. In Texas, Amateur
radio operators worked 24 hours a day in the Astrodome in
Houston, in the Reliance Center next door, and in the Harris
County Emergency Operations Center. In San Antonio at the Kelly
Air Force Base, radio amateurs from Montana provided local and
national health and welfare communications for evacuees. These
examples were repeated throughout the Gulf Coast and in the
southern cities that received a large number of evacuees.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, the Committee should be aware
that this vast volunteer resource in support of public safety
is always at the disposal of the Federal Government and of
State and local Governments. The United States can absolutely
rely on the Amateur Radio service. Amateur Radio provides
immediate high quality communications that work every time when
all else fails.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman and members of the
subcommittee for the opportunity to testify today on the views
of the ARRL and its membership and I would welcome any
questions.
[The prepared statement of Harold Kramer follows:]
Prepared Statement of Harold Kramer, Chief Operating Officer, The
National Association for Amateur Radio
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, for the
opportunity to testify today on issues related to Public Safety
Communications. As Chief Operating Officer of ARRL, the National
Association for Amateur Radio, it gives me great pleasure to provide
this statement for the record to the Committee on the successful
efforts of Amateur Radio operators providing communications for First
Responders, Disaster Relief agencies, and countless individuals in
connection with the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. As has been proven
consistently and repeatedly in the past, long before the 9/11 terrorist
attacks, when communications systems fail due to a wide-area or
localized disaster, whatever the cause, Amateur Radio works, right
away, all the time. This is not a statement of concern about what must
be changed or improved. It is, rather, a report on what is going right,
and what works in emergency communications, and what can be depended on
to work the next time there is a natural disaster, and the times after
that.
Immediately at the onset of Hurricane Katrina, an all-volunteer
``army'' of approximately 1,000 FCC-licensed Amateur Radio operators
provided continuous high-frequency (HF), VHF and UHF communications for
State, local and Federal emergency workers in and around the affected
area in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. These communications were
provided for several agencies such as the American National Red Cross
and the Salvation Army, and to facilitate interoperability between and
among these agencies; First Responders; FEMA, VOAD (National Volunteers
Active in Disasters) and other agencies. Trained volunteer Amateur
Radio operators also provided health and welfare communications from
within the affected area to the rest of the United States and the
world. Amateur Radio was uniquely suited to this task by virtue of the
availability of HF communications covering long distances without fixed
infrastructure. During the week of September 7, 2005, the Coast Guard,
the Red Cross, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency all put out
calls for volunteer Amateur Radio operators to provide communications,
because phone lines, cell sites and public safety repeaters were
inoperative, and those public safety communications facilities which
were operational were overwhelmed due to loss of repeater towers and
the large number of First Responders in the area. Amateur Radio
operators responded en masse: Approximately 200 Amateur Radio Emergency
Service (ARES) trained communicators responded to the Gulf Coast within
a week after the call. The Red Cross, a week after they issued the
call, notified ARRL that they had enough radio operators and Amateur
Radio communications facilities. The number of Amateur Radio operators
providing communications in the three States, either deployed or
awaiting relief duty on-site or at a reserve facility in Montgomery,
Alabama, swelled from 800 to 1,000 in a week. Many more thousands of
radio amateurs outside the affected area regularly monitored radio
traffic and relayed thousands of messages concerning the welfare and
location of victims.
The principal reason why Amateur Radio works when other
communications systems fail during natural disasters is that Amateur
Radio is not infrastructure-dependent, and is decentralized. Amateurs
are trained in emergency communications. They are disciplined
operators, and their stations are, in general, portable and reliable.
High-frequency Amateur Radio communications, used substantially in this
emergency communications effort, require no fixed repeaters, cable or
wirelines. Portable repeaters for VHF and UHF communications can be
provided via mobile facilities (many Amateur Radio groups deployed
communications vans in the Gulf Coast for precisely this purpose) in
affected areas instantly. There are now approximately 670,000 licensees
of the FCC in the Amateur Service, which assures the presence of
Amateur stations in most areas of the country. Emergency communications
are conducted not only by voice, but also by high-speed data
transmissions using state-of-the-art digital communications software
known as WinLink. As Motorola's Director of Communications and Public
Affairs stated earlier this month: ``Amateur Radio communications
benefit us all by having a distributed architecture and frequency
agility that enables you to set up faster in the early phases of
disaster recovery and can provide flexible and diverse communications--
Motorola believes that the Amateur Radio spectrum provides valuable
space for these important communications.''
In Mississippi, FEMA dispatched Amateur Radio operators to
hospitals and evacuation shelters to send emergency calls 24 hours per
day. At airports in Texas and Alabama, radio amateurs tracked evacuees
and notified the Baton Rouge operations center of their whereabouts so
their families would be able to find them. Amateur Radio operators in
New Orleans participated directly in locating stranded persons, because
local cellphone calls could not be made by stranded victims due to the
inoperative wireline systems in the area. The Red Cross deployed
qualified amateur radio volunteers at its 250 shelter and feeding
station locations, principally in Mississippi, Alabama and northern
Florida.
The local 911 operators could not handle calls from relatives
calling in from outside the affected area, so they passed those
``health and welfare'' inquiries to amateur radio operators stationed
at the 911 call centers, for relay of information back to New Orleans
to facilitate rescue missions for stranded persons.
Amateur Radio provided a communications link between Coast Guard
helicopters and emergency centers because the ambulance crews couldn't
contact the helicopters directly. In Texas, Amateur Radio operators
worked 24 hours per day in the Astrodome in Houston and the Reliant
Center next door, and as well in the Harris County Emergency Operations
Center. In San Antonio, at the Kelly Air Force Base, radio amateurs
from Montana provided local and national health and welfare
communications for evacuees. These examples were repeated throughout
the Gulf Coast and in the cities in the southern states receiving large
numbers of evacuees.
The Salvation Army operates its own Amateur Radio communications
system using Amateur Radio volunteers, known as SATERN. In the
Hurricane Katrina effort, SATERN has joined forces with the federal
SHARES program (SHAred RESources), which is a network of government,
military and Military Affiliate Radio Service (MARS) radio stations.
MARS is an organized network of Amateur Radio stations affiliated with
the different branches of the armed forces to provide volunteer
communications. SATERN, in the Katrina relief effort, received over
48,000 requests for emergency communications assistance, and the
affiliation with the SHARES program allows the Salvation Army to
utilize Federal frequencies to communicate with agencies directly. This
is but one example of the innovative and reliable means by which
Amateur Radio right now provides organized interoperability on a scope
far beyond that now being planned for local and State public safety
systems.
Much discussion has been given in recent years to the issue of
Public Safety interoperability. The Amateur Radio Service provides a
good deal of interoperability communications for First Responders in
disaster relief incidents. This critical role for our Service exists
because, though there are interoperability channels right now in most
Public Safety frequency allocations, those channels, and all others,
become useless where the communications infrastructure of public safety
facilities becomes inoperative. Interoperability, in short, presumes
operability of Public Safety facilities. While some ``hardening'' of
public safety facilities is called for, there is in our view an
increasing role for decentralized, portable Amateur Radio stations
which are not infrastructure-dependent in providing interoperability
communications on-site.
Mr. Chairman, Amateur Radio is largely invisible to both the FCC
and to Congress on a daily basis, because it is virtually self-
regulating and self-administered. It is only during emergencies that
the Amateur Radio Service is in the spotlight. At other times,
emergency communications and technical self-training and advancement of
telecommunications technology occupy licensees' time. For the first
time ever, in recognition of the work of Amateur Radio Operators in
this Hurricane Relief effort, the Corporation for National And
Community Service (CNCS), which provides strategic critical support to
volunteer organizations which in turn provide services to communities,
has made a $177,000 grant supplement to ARRL to support the Katrina
emergency communications efforts in the Gulf Coast. This enables ARRL
to reimburse to a small degree, on a per diem basis, some of the
expenses that radio amateurs incur personally in traveling to the Gulf
Coast to volunteer their time and effort. The CNCS grant is an
extension of ARRL's three-year, Homeland Security training grant, which
has to date provided certification in emergency communication training
protocols to approximately 5,500 Amateur Radio volunteers over the past
three years.
ARRL wishes to commend the FCC's Enforcement Bureau (specifically
the Special Counsel for Amateur Radio Enforcement), for the efficient
and successful effort during the Hurricane Katrina relief in monitoring
the Amateur Radio High Frequency bands to prevent or quickly remedy
incidents of interference.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, the Committee should be aware that this
vast volunteer resource in support of Public Safety is always at the
disposal of the Federal government and to State and local government.
The United States absolutely can rely on the Amateur Radio Service.
Amateur Radio provides immediate, high-quality communications that work
every time, when all else fails.
I thank you again, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee,
for the opportunity to testify today on the views of the ARRL and its
membership. I would welcome any questions.
Mr. Upton. Well thank you.
Thank you all for your very good testimony. We look forward
to you answering some of our questions and again note that some
of members are on other subcommittees that are meeting and we
are expecting votes on the floor soon so we may be sending you
questions like we did with the first panel.
Mr. Roemer, we again appreciated your testimony. Something
I said earlier, you were not here because I know you were not
here for the entire first panel that was here, but it does look
like we have an agreement and not only with the House and the
Senate, but with Republicans and Democrats on actually setting
a date as part of the transition for the DTV Bill that we are
anticipating a move to the House floor as early as next month.
And with that, of course, comes in, once that happens will free
up some more spectrum, which is so important for our first
responders and it really seems to be quite a theme that we have
heard for some time.
As it relates to that, Lieutenant Colonel Miller, I have
seen the TACNET devices in some of our police vehicles back
home. I think it was both in sheriff, county sheriff, as well
as, State Police vehicles. Are those and for those in the
audience, these are little mini computers that are in the squad
car where the officer is able to identify with a license
number, get a history of not only the driver but the vehicle,
all those different things. They are, in fact, do provide what
we need, does it not, in terms of interoperability between the
different departments? Does the TACNET, do those devices have
interoperability with--as it relates to the other first
responders? It provides a shell to communicate with that device
to the State Police to fire and rescue?
Mr. Miller. It does provide that capability, Mr. Chairman,
it is multifaceted technology in the sense that one of the
primary benefits of the technology is it improves the interior
ergonomics and safety of the patrol car. But in addition to
that, they have fashioned the technology to provide the
capability to link up to five disparate systems or frequencies
so that they can communicate within a specific geographical
area.
Mr. Upton. Now does that utilize the 800 megahertz
spectrum, do you know?
Mr. Miller. It can operate at any spectrum level based on
whatever system the agencies within that geographical area are
operating on.
Mr. Upton. Now how is that again? I am making it sort of a
Michigan related question. Our delegation, Mr. Stupak, myself,
others, the Senate, as well, work very hard to get a weapons of
mass destruction team, civil support team which is now based,
as it turns out, in Battle Creek at Fort Custer. I watched some
of their operations as they integrate their personnel with
different first responders in my district but I know they have
been to the Upper Peninsula and other places around. I also
know that they work with other States as part of the Defense
Authorization Bill a couple of years ago. Every State is now
going to have one of these teams and they have a pretty
sophisticated communication device and I think they have five
vehicles, 22 staff, but obviously communications where they can
downlink right into the Pentagon and work, integrate again with
our first responders. Have you worked with that particular team
out of Battle Creek?
Mr. Miller. Our personnel have. Congressman we have a
comprehensive strategy in the State where our military affairs,
Department of Military Affairs, our military have the State
public safety communication system equipment and have access to
that equipment. They are in the State EOC in the case of any
event or any disaster. So they absolutely have the ability to
communicate with public safety and coordinate a response to any
type of incident within our State.
Mr. Upton. And the equipment they have obviously is mobile.
I mean one of the reasons why they are in Battle Creek is that
there is an Air Force installation there so they are able to
use the runways, but it is also on an interstate and they are
actually able to deploy, you know, with relative ease
throughout the State.
Mr. Trujillo, one of the things we heard quite a bit and I
had some private conversations with Chairman Martin earlier
this week and the last couple weeks actually was the great
success of the satellite industry in terms of coming to the
needs of those with Katrina in the ability finally to bring in
literally thousands of devices begin to set up the links
terrestrial with the satellite. Some of that was mobile that
they brought in, but I think some of the firms had literally
one drop. How important is it to have a stockpile of this
equipment to be able to pre-deploy it in a variety of different
places around the country and how active is--what do you see
the needs of the satellite industry in terms of providing that
type of benefit and who should manage it? Should it be directly
our first responders, should it be through the DHS, maybe
through regional offices, should the FCC? What are some of your
suggestions as it relates to that?
Mr. Trujillo. Well assuming the question, Mr. Chairman that
mainly following the disaster that it became clear there was a
paucity of mobile satellite phones in the State of Mississippi
and certainly one of the things we are advocating is the idea
that we ought to pre-deploy some of this equipment to areas
that it can be quickly funneled into the affected areas before
a disaster strikes. So we certainly think that pre-deployment
and credentialing satellite personnel to help with the
infrastructure there is very important.
In terms of at the Federal, State, and local levels who
should be responsible, I think in some of these disasters such
as a Katrina, it clearly would benefit from a Federal
coordination effort in whether it is this new bureau that
Chairman Martin discussed or, you know, an internal agency sort
of set of some kind. The important thing is to secure satellite
capacity ahead of time, secure the satellite equipment ahead of
time and have it pre-deployed so that it is immediately
available when disaster strikes. That would be very helpful.
Mr. Upton. Let me ask one more question before I yield to
my colleague and that is we saw Katrina coming. I mean all of
us that watch The Weather Channel, CNN, a couple days saw this,
you know, giant storm moving its way through the Keys and then
up. At what point did the satellite industry realize that they
needed to come up--that they could really be of true assistance
by providing these devices? Was it after the storm hit? Were
there any preparations made before the storm hit in terms of
assembling caches of these, of this material and be willing to
respond to FEMA and others that--when it was ready? At what
point did you really start hitting the panic button and getting
things ready?
Mr. Trujillo. Well generally speaking, I would say that it
was certainly a case that our commercial customers were much
more sensitized to the impending disaster that was looming on
the television screen and heading toward the Gulf Coast. And we
were already working with our commercial customers and to a
degree also with the Government customers. But the problem was
is that there was not the equipment, the satellite phones, and
that kind of equipment on the ground already or in preset
staging areas that you could truck it in very quickly or fly it
in very quickly. The wonderful thing about the satellites are
that they are 22,000 miles above the earth's equator. They are
impervious to what is going on on the surface of the earth. It
is just a matter of getting the equipment to the right people,
first responders and others.
Mr. Upton. Last question very briefly, how hard was it to
get that XM station literally into a local station that folks
on the ground could listen to? Did they have to get a special
waiver from the FCC?
Mr. Trujillo. No, sir. The issue there really was that if
you were not an XM radio customer, you would not have gotten
access to it.
Mr. Upton. You would not get it.
Mr. Trujillo. Right, that was the issue there.
Mr. Upton. So they had the capacity to add the station?
Mr. Trujillo. Yes, sir.
Mr. Upton. Mr. Stupak?
Mr. Stupak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Congressman Roemer, good to see you again.
Mr. Roemer. Good to see you, Congressman.
Mr. Stupak. You were co-chair on the 911 Commission when
Governor King said after Katrina hit he said ``It is the same
thing all over again. It is a lack of communication, first
responders not being able to talk to each other. It is no
command and control. Nobody is in charge. It is delayed
responses. It is basically many of the things that frankly if
some of our recommendation had been passed by the U.S.
Congress, that could have been avoided.'' And your statement
today seemed to echo those same comments. In fact, the 9/11
Commission said Federal funding of such interagency
communication units should be given a high priority. And do you
think Congress has heeded that advice?
Mr. Roemer. Well Congressman, in my testimony, what I am
very clear about is that we need to do this now not next week,
not 2 years from now, not 4 years from now, as quickly as
possible. Look, we know that we are going to have another
natural disaster. We know Al Qaeda or jihadists are going to
attack us again. We know looking back at 9/11 that lives were
lost because we did not have interoperability and we did not
have access to public radio spectrum. We know in New Orleans
that lives were lost because we did not have this capability.
We need it now. These folks need it now. And we are very clear
about that.
We are also very clear, Congressman as you well know as a
fiscal conservative that we outline in the 9/11 Commission
report, Lieutenant Colonel Miller talked at length about this.
He needs funding for aging equipment. Congress needs not to
spend money, you know, on how pork barrel weighs on Homeland
Security but to respond to a national strategic plan developed
by Homeland Security and Congress that will invest wisely in
things like public radio spectrum, incident command and
control, evacuation plans that are worked, practiced, and
simulated so that we can get people out of the fourth largest
city in the country like Houston. We are not doing that. We
have not done any of those three things yet, incident command
and control, evacuation plans that are tested and simulated for
Federal Funds to be allocated and this public radio spectrum.
So we hope Congress will act right away on these kinds of
initiatives.
Mr. Stupak. Well even if it costs, and I do not believe it
does, but even if it costs $18 billion to make us fully
interoperable, when you pass a budget that has $106 billion in
tax breaks for a limited number of people in this country, I
would think we would cut that back at least $18 billion and get
us interoperable so all Americans can be protected during
natural disaster and a terrorist attack, wherever it might be.
The part that baffles me a little bit is it almost seems
like we use this 700 megahertz spectrum sale which is supposed
to be in 2008 as an excuse not to do anything like nothing can
happen. We cannot do anything because we got to sell the
spectrum and then we will be able to do it. But Lieutenant
Colonel Miller in your testimony, you talk about TACNET and in
fact a question by Mr.--Chairman Upton you talked about patch
and that technology has been around for awhile. And we have Mr.
Trujillo, I am sorry, satellite phones. Why can't we--we knew
that Hurricane Katrina was going to hit. We all watched it. We
knew it was going to--they could tell you the exact time it was
going to hit and we knew that for days. Why could not we put
some TACNET, some patch, code spear, satellite phones down
there? Why couldn't we pre-deploy it? Why couldn't we interface
communication systems with patch or TACNET or some of the other
technologies you are using right now in Michigan?
Mr. Miller. Michigan State Police responded with other
Michigan law enforcement agencies to assist down there. We took
our communications equipment there and we operated out of
Louisiana State Police communication system. We reprogrammed,
the technology is there. It is not something that----
Mr. Stupak. How long did it take you to reprogram it?
Mr. Miller. We reprogrammed those radios probably in
hours----
Mr. Stupak. We knew days before that Katrina was going to
hit. We knew that it was going to be a Category 4 or 5 but no
one thought of it.
Mr. Miller. Right.
Mr. Stupak. You know, I called the guys from Cold Spear and
said could you have done something, could you have interfaced
the communication system in greater New Orleans? They sure, I
said, how much time do you need, just a couple hours. That is
interfacing it through their computer system and I know you are
using it for your emergency services. I know Wayne Gulley is
using it. But aren't you using the same system with Ohio right
now as pilot program?
Mr. Miller. There is some alerting and notification pilots
that we are doing there.
Mr. Stupak. Right.
Mr. Miller. The big issue in my mind as a law enforcement
administrator is you cannot legislate leadership. And a lot of
discussion has gone on today about proper planning, proper
training, proper coordination, proper exercise and Congressman
Roemer mentioned that. The Department of Homeland Security
funds those types of initiatives today. The real issue is
getting people to the table to develop a strategy in ensuring
that the Federal Government requires the State and local
Government to adhere to a standard and to adhere and to develop
a strategy before you fund anything. If you are funding
initiatives that are not cooperative efforts that are not
enhancing interoperability and you are not tying those funding
requirements to that, you are going to continue to have
agencies out there purchasing equipment that is not going to
communicate with each other. And that is really the issue here
is developing those requirements at the Federal level and then
ensuring at a State and local level that there is leadership
that places a proper sense of urgency on this issue.
Mr. Stupak. Sure, I do not dispute that and I agree having
been in law enforcement that there is jurisdictional turf wars
many times when you are doing this thing but I would think when
you have a Hurricane 5, Level 5 bearing down on you, a little
common sense would prevail and you could bring the satellite
phones and get them properly deployed. I think I read somewhere
there was only 200 in all of the Gulf Region when Katrina hit.
Well, why don't we pre-deploy that stuff. Why don't we have
your patch system and others there? Why do we have to wait
until after the fact and then why does the helicopters from the
Coast Guard cannot talk to the people in the boats as we are
all talking about when it could be done if we just pre-deploy,
plan ahead. Someone has got--I mean, the President declared the
Gulf Region a national disaster area before, a day or two
before the storm ever hit, I think 48 hours before. So I guess
maybe it is leadership but I get frustrated sitting here. I
have heard this for so many years.
And someone mentioned the plane going down the Potomac that
was in 1982. I was still in the State Police then. I remember
that well. And then that was the start of the--Congress should
have been alerted then in 1982 since it happened in their back
yard about interoperability and I have heard about this for 20,
30 years since I have been in police work. But it is just sort
of frustrating to sit here and it seems like we always have
excuses below practical common knowledge and we could get some
of this stuff done before it hits. We know that there are
certain cities that are subject for a terrorist attack. Why
can't we pre-deploy right now? We do not have to wait for 700
megahertz spectrum sale.
And I am not going to go to you, Chairman, on that but I am
just--the frustration just continues on and on here.
So I thank all of you for providing good insight to us and
we appreciate everything you have done.
Mr. Upton. Well I share those sentiments and I was looking
forward to supporting the gentleman from Michigan's amendment
yesterday on the Department of Justice Bill that would have
added, I think a half a billion dollars for interoperability
and sadly it was denied as an amendment on the House floor but
I was looking forward to voting for that and was surprised when
it was not allowed.
But I just want to again underscore our thanks to all of
you. It is helpful for all of us. I cannot think of a higher
priority within the Department of Homeland Security as we look
to defend not only our first responders, the men and women that
put their lives on the line every day but in order to do their
job to help all of us non-first responders, they have got to
have that equipment and for the life of me, sometimes I do not
understand some of the priorities within the funding stream of
what their providing when, in fact, here we are 4 years later
and it is the same thing happened again. Who knows that it
would not be the same result that we have been commiserating
about over the last 4 years. So again, I appreciate your
testimony, your work. We look forward to hearing from you in
the days and months ahead and we wish you the very best.
Thank you. We will adjourn the hearing.
[Whereupon, at 3:35 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Additional material submitted for the record follows:]
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