February 9, 2007 • Volume 5 • Number 1
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FEDERAL EXECUTIVE FORUM ISSUE ON
WIRELESS & INTEROPERABILITY |
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Sponsored By
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FORUM TRANSCRIPT
Broadcast February 5, 2007 on WFED AM 1050 Washington, DC and www.FederalNewsRadio.com
THE PANEL
Moderator
Jim Flyzik, The Flyzik Group
Panelists:
Dr. David Boyd, Director, Command, Control and Interoperability, Science and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security
Mike Duffy, Deputy CIO, Justice
Paige Atkins, Director, Defense Spectrum Organization, DISA
Joe Ross, Wireless Program Manager, District of Columbia Government
Paul Cosgrave, CIO, New York City Government
Dave Williams, Principal, Booz Allen Hamilton
Jim Payne, President, Federal Telecommunications, Bechtel Systems
Stephen Orr, Senior Consulting System Engineer, Cisco Systems, Inc.
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WIRELESS & INTEROPERABILITY TRANSCRIPT |
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
During today’s show we will discuss Interoperability and wireless solutions in government. I’d like to start by asking you about your involvement in your respective agencies. Let’s start with Mike Duffy. Mike, what is your role with wireless Interoperability at Justice?
MIKE DUFFY, JUSTICE
My involvement is as Program Executive with the DOJ wireless program. This program is focused on assisting law enforcement components at DOJ in collaboration with our partners at Homeland Security and at Treasury to implement tactical communications services for our field agents.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Dr. Boyd, I know that the SafeCom program and you are synonymous, that’s been addressing Interoperability for some time. Can you give us an idea of your role at the DHS on these issues?
DR. DAVID BOYD, DHS
My division even has Interoperability as part of its title. Within the division are the Office of Interoperability and Compatibility established by Secretary Ridge some three years ago now. The SafeCom Presidential Management Initiative is aimed at achieving national Interoperability, and the disaster management Presidential Management Initiative which aims at doing the same thing for information exchanges and message systems.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Great! Dave, we always like to get into industry points of view too. Over at Booz Allen what is your role in trying to work with government to achieve Interoperability?
DAVE WILLIAMS, BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON
Well Jim, at Booz Allen I’ve had a long history of working with all levels of government, Federal, state and local, to help them enhance their communications capabilities. We’ve worked on multiple assets and multiple facets of Interoperability, spanning technical, operations, implementing Interoperability solutions as well as training and exercise programs. We’ve worked with Federal programs at Justice, Treasury, Department of Homeland Security and Defense, among others.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Terrific! Paige Atkins from DISA, I know that DISA/DOD has a lot of major issues around spectrum and Interoperability and trying to achieve Interoperability. Give us an idea of your role Paige over at DISA?
PAIGE ATKINS, DISA
The DOD obviously has been focused on Interoperability for many, many years. My role at the Department of the Defense Spectrum Organization is really one of an enabler. Our organization is really the DOD center of excellence for spectrum engineering and management, which obviously plays a key role in the Interoperability concerns and evolution. We have a multifaceted team to address all facets of the problem including policy, planning, technology, acquisition and operations across all DOD mission areas (and we support DHS and other civilian.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
That’s quite a scope of responsibility. I’d like to hopefully come back to explore a lot of those issues on today’s show. Steve Orr, at Cisco Systems: what is your role with wireless Interoperability?
STEPHEN ORR, CISCO
Thanks Jim. What we are doing at Cisco is we are trying to break down the barriers of the proprietary radio systems and enable collaboration and Interoperability by placing the different LAN mobile radio nets over a common infrastructure so that we can enable Interoperability between cellular, voice over IP (VoIP) and then wireless media on one common backbone.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
We are going to come back and explore that too, just where we are going down the road bringing those divergent communications together. Paul Cosgrave is someone who has the experience at the Federal level here in Washington DC and now is a commissioner and CIO in New York City. You’ve seen challenges from a number of different vantage points, so tell us a little about your involvement in New York City with wireless Interoperability.
PAUL COSGRAVE, NEW YORK CITY GOVERNMENT
Hi Jim, it’s good to be back here in DC. As Commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications in New York, I have the overall responsibility for coordinating communications among our various agencies. It’s a big job in New York.
One of the specific things that I do is I chair the New York City Interoperations Communications Committee. We were responsible for producing operations plans which have been approved by the Department of Homeland Security. And we coordinate activities not only among our various city agencies, NYPD, Fire Department of New York, but also the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the NTA and also for Westchester County.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Jim Payne, you’ve been involved with telecommunications here in the DC area for quite some time and now over at Bechtel. Can you tell us a little about your involvement over there Jim?
JIM PAYNE, BECHTEL
Bechtel has played an important role as a construction and deployment partner for many of the technology providers in the industry. We also vet and test many of the new and emerging technologies in our lab up in Frederick Maryland. That partnership has become an important part of the deployment of the wireless assets.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Joe Ross, Wireless Program Director. I know we’ve heard a lot about wireless programs in the District of Columbia. Can you give us an idea of your role here Joe?
JOE ROSS, WASHINGTON, DC GOVERNMENT
I have overall responsibility for leveraging wireless technologies for the benefit of government services in the District. In the aftermath of 9/11 there has been a lot of focus on Interoperability and most of my attention -- probably 99% of my time -- is on public safety Interoperability.
We started with our voice radio communications. We improved them and probably have one of the best coverage in the country. We have improved operability, and at the same time Interoperability. The National Capital Region is really far advanced in terms of voice Interoperability so that enabled us to focus more on data Interoperability. We have now launched a major data Interoperability plan and have leadership of that plan for the National Capital Region.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
I’d like to switch over and talk a little bit about progress in this area. I’ve been around this issue for 25 – 30 years. In my days running Secret Service communications, we achieved Interoperability by putting five radios in the back seat of the car and telling agents to pick up that radio to talk to the FBI, that radio to talk to the local police.
It seems like we’ve been battling this issue for a long, long time. Do you think we are at a point where we are making significant progress, breakthrough progress in achieving Interoperability? Let’s start this time with Paige Atkins at DISA. Paige, do you think we are making progress, picking up progress?
PAIGE ATKINS, DISA
Absolutely! I think we are making progress, but I think there is still a lot left to do and I think most of the folks on this panel would agree with that statement. When you look at all the activities to date, whether it is legislation, organizational focus, organizational changes, investments in technology and programs, you see that everyone wants the same goal and that is Interoperability, and wireless systems to enable the mission in terms of public safety for instance.
You can see the tremendous process across technologies. For instance we are looking at spectrum efficient technologies; we are looking at multiple ways from a technology standpoint to integrate capabilities like the ones Steve was talking about, which provide Interoperability beyond the RF, the radio frequency sense.
I think that where we need increased focus perhaps is on the process, the policy, other issues that we haven’t necessarily made as much progress in terms of bringing together the multifaceted challenges that we face to achieve true Interoperability and address things like data standardization and other aspects involved.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
We’ll come back and we’ll talk about some of those constraints too, and some of the challenges we still need to overcome. Dr. Dave Boyd, you’ve been involved since the inception of DHS in working this issue. Do you feel like we are making significant progress? The progress is picking up to achieve Interoperability?
DR. DAVID BOYD, DHS
Yes, I think we’ve made some dramatic advances. Back in 1993 I started the first Interoperability program while I was still in Justice in San Diego County and I remember going into my boss then, who later became a strong supporter, whose immediate response was: you want to do Interoperability?
We are well past that. In fact Interoperability now is a Presidential Management initiative, so it has strong Executive support. Congress has appropriated significant amounts of money, I think at the current time we have invested $3 billion in supporting Interoperability. And at the local and state levels, who have been involved in Interoperability for a lot longer than the Federal government, they have been well aware that there was an issue at their level for a long time.
I think we’ve got some real momentum underway. All of the major associations work with us; they actually help to design the kind of guidance that now goes into every Federal grant program so that we have common grant guidance, which is kind of unique for folks who have dealt with Federal grant programs for some time.
I think there have been some dramatic improvements, in fact the baseline survey that we have just completed suggested that some two-thirds of local and state agencies today engage in interoperable communications on at least some scheduled occasions, so it means that they have identified and established the capability and now the issue is to institutionalize this and recognize that we still have a lot to do.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
That’s great news to hear about that progress. It’s been just recently that we’ve had hearings on the Hill, we have a bill being written on the Hill, we have Secretary Chertoff talking about Interoperability in a number of his speeches, and so it certainly has caught the attention of the public in terms of the importance of this issue. Mike, how about at the Federal level? Do you think the Federal agencies are moving forward with Interoperability?
MIKE DUFFY, JUSTICE
I would have to say yes and would have to echo most of what David and Paige have just said. From our perspective we have real successes, we have real solutions that are in place. Do we have enough? Absolutely not, there’s plenty of work to be done, but we’ve got forward progress and I think we now have a vision and the direction.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
I think the tone of the conversation here has a lot more positive feelings towards this issue than we’ve had in years gone by. I also want to hear from the local perspective, from Paul and Joe, and then from the private sector as to your impressions and perceptions on how we are doing on this.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
We are talking about wireless Interoperability. And when we went to break we were talking about making progress and the fact that we have been working these issues for quite some time. I’d like to get the local perspective from Paul and Joe. Paul Cosgrave, do you feel like we are making significant progress on this issue around Interoperability?
PAUL COSGRAVE, NEW YORK CITY GOVERNMENT
Jim, I would I agree with my Federal counterparts and the fact that we have made a lot of progress. Both Washington DC and New York City had quite a wake up call as you all know back on September 11, 2001, and we haven’t been sitting around, we’ve been working very hard at this, certainly since that period of time.
A couple of things about this issue of Interoperability, it’s not all about technology, a lot of it is about not only the communications aspect but the coordination aspect of it, and New York City has adopted a national management system like many localities and that does an awful lot in terms of the whole coordination aspect of this problem.
On the technology front, we’ve made a lot of investments on spectrum, freeing it up. We’ve been able to take advantage of that by using UHF channel 16 in New York City to truly provide a whole new level of communications capability that didn’t exist prior to 2001.
We’ve made a huge investment in that. I think that one of the areas going forward that needs to be focused on is are a lot of things that we talked about earlier; such as some of the solutions that Cisco talked about allow us to actually interoperate against various different technologies; and if the Federal government is going to try to force us all into a one size fits all that’s going to be a big mistake because working in a big city like New York, we have huge problems in and around building coverage, underground coverage.
We use different spectrum in the City than the 700 megahertz that the Federal governments trying to force everybody to use and it’s just not the right solution for everyplace. So there are different solutions but they can’t all be interoperable.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
The great thing is that we are all sitting here at the table, so that in and of itself is a good sign of coordination when it comes to local and Federal folks. But you are right, there’s a lot more than just technology. If you put everybody on the same frequency, you’ve got a problem there when you all start talking at the same time. You are not going to get a whole lot done are you? Joe how about in the District? Are you making significant progress?
JOE ROSS, WASHINGTON, DC GOVERNMENT
Absolutely! It actually started in 1982 with the Air Florida crash in the National Capital Region and from that day we acknowledged that we needed to be able to communicate more. In the National Capital Region the jurisdictions are smaller and there’s a lot more interaction between the jurisdictions. So in ’82 it really inspired the regions to move forward and collaborate more, and by the time 2001 came around, we were interoperable at the Pentagon.
In fact there were some things that were just happenstance at the Pentagon where Montgomery County was about to launch their new radio network, they were able to take their radios -- a cache of radios -- available to the Pentagon to hand out to additional folks and that also has become part of our standard operating procedures where we have a radio cache in the region. We’ve made tremendous additional strides since September 11th.
We’ve focused a lot in the District of Columbia on operability, on coverage. We now have coverage in our subway system, and we have excellent in building coverage, and we have seamless Interoperability between police and fire despite disparate frequencies. We have a cross-band system and in fact we have a tri-band system that allows Federal agencies to get directly on to our network and communicate directly with a DC dispatcher.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
That’s good to hear. Congratulations on that progress. How about a private sector viewpoint? Jim Payne – you’ve been around these issues. Do you see progress from where you sit at Bechtel?
JIM PAYNE, BECHTEL
(Compare) the late 1980s where Interoperability was almost a throw away phrase -- where people just looked at it and then ignored it -- to now where we have dialogues almost every day. Even the dialogue that we have here, representing Federal, state local, civilian agencies, DOD agencies, I think it’s an important part of this process.
Of course technology is the challenge. I don’t know if we will ever solve any single infrastructure or even offer one, however it’s the dialogue, it’s the individual leadership, and it’s the technology leadership. Focusing on these elements I think will make the process better, and incrementally make this more useful.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Steve, from the Cisco viewpoint?
STEPHEN ORR, CISCO
Thanks. I’m just going to continue based on earlier comments. While we’ve made great advances with systems like P25 and have allocated spectrum in the 700 MHZ range, radio frequency and Interoperability is a small part of the overall solution.
What we are trying to focus on, what we are focusing on is enabling Interoperability between currently deployed systems today. So that if first responders, early responders or public safety go in, we can enable communications between the current systems that they have instead of everybody trying to have the same radio or upgrade concurrently to the same type of radio to enable communications. So we are trying to build in our Interoperability from the onset.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Make what is there today can work together. We’ll talk about that, and later on in the show we’ll talk a little bit about the future too. Dave, what do you think from the Booz Allen point of view?
DAVE WILLIAMS, BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON
Sure we’ve heard a lot of progress, from spectrum, technical resources, operationally, from an additional industry perspective it’s really great to see more parts of the industry taking focus. In the past, what we’ve seen is more traditional land mobile radio providers really paying attention. Today we see Cisco and Bechtel and other folks at the table here which is great for progress.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Yes, terrific. Let’s shift gears. We’ve talked a little bit there about a couple of the issues around ‘it’s not just technology’. There are a lot of other challenges that need to be addressed and overcome. Let’s look at some of those challenges. Are they technical; are they more business in nature? Are they cultural or about coordination? Let’s start with Mike over at Justice. Mike, what are some of the bigger challenges that we need to overcome to achieve the Interoperability that we are hoping to get?
MIKE DUFFY, JUSTICE
I would agree it’s definitely not technical. I think the biggest issue is partnership, and this is a Federal perspective. You look at the Federal agencies’ challenge is to partner with agencies, state, local, other feds across the nation, which means that one size is not going to fit all. This means that we have to go in at each regional or local level and establish partnerships. So that is I think challenge number one. And then the second is to make sure that our operations drive the technology, and not the technology driving the operations otherwise we are likely to implement solutions that actually don’t meet the needs on the ground.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Yes, that’s a great point you need to listen to the customer. I remember back in my days with the Secret Service with these gee whiz radios and I remember the head of the president’s detail in the Secret Service looking at me and saying, Jim, people are going to be shooting at me and you want me to be hitting these buttons here and trying to figure out stuff? You’ve really got to keep in perspective what the customer’s viewpoint is when you are dealing with some of this. Dave what are some of the challenges you face over at DHS?
DR. DAVID BOYD, DHS
Across the board technology remains part of the challenge in part because, as we found in a baseline survey, more than a third of the public safety systems are more than 10 years old. So this is not something that you are going to change overnight.
And I would like to echo Commissioner Cosgrave’s comments that you’ve got to remember that public safety operates on 10 different bands. Federal public safety operates on two other bands. And then when you bring in the military and others, they are on still different spectrum. And there are reasons why you don’t want to put everybody on the same spectrum.
400 megahertz quite frankly penetrates better in high rises. 150 megahertz provides you with greater range if you are in the Pentagon or in Arizona where there are fewer towers. What 700 megahertz offers is it is virgin territory and it’s going to take a long time to get there.
That means we are going to have system assistance for a long time and that means that the biggest of all the challenges has to do with cultural change. It has to do with how you think about governance, how you think about making systems work together, how you create joint SOPs so you are all going to deal together and probably the stickiest of all the problems and that is how are you going to pay for all of this, which means you need the political leadership commitment beyond anything that we had since the Eisenhower interstate program.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Yes, the old money question certainly is looming. But I do see some progress. Bechtel is addressing this as a major priority from the 9/11 report and so forth. Paige, how about at DISA, what are some of the big challenges that you face over there in trying to move forward with your program?
PAIGE ATKINS, DISA
Well, I have to echo many of the comments. Often the technology is the easy part, so there are multiple technologies, as we have heard today and systems that are being fielded today that enhance greatly our Interoperability from the wireless stand point.
We need to leverage those and progress additionally from a technology stand point. However as was mentioned before, there are a whole host of other issues that need to be addressed in terms of governance, in terms of standard operating procedures, training, exercises, how we do things jointly in a different way, in an innovative way to achieve Interoperability holistically and comprehensively.
And I think from our perspective, if we are in a support role as it relates to homeland defense or as it relates to civil support specifically, and we are trying to enable that role in our success and in the public safety success, through cooperation, planning, coordination.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Terrific. Paul, in New York City, I imagine, you’ve got police, you’ve got fire, first responders and medical teams. I imagine that you have some challenges there in terms of coordination. What are some of the challenges that you face to get where you want to go with Interoperability?
PAUL COSGRAVE, NEW YORK CITY GOVERNMENT
Well, I’m going to emphasize the money point Jim because money is a big part of this. New York City has probably spent over a billion dollars already on Interoperability type activities and we are getting ready to spend just over a half a billion dollars just on one program to get a wireless network in place across all the city for data transfer. That technology transfer that will make a huge difference in the way we get all sorts of data and video down to the first responders.
But money is a huge part of it. Congress has this messed up. They passed a law that directed Commerce to allocate over a billion dollars to local entities across the country and it is specifically restricted to 700 megahertz and that is just not what we are building up in the cities; certainly not in New York where we do have high buildings and subways where we do need deep penetration. So maybe Congress needs to rethink a little bit.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Well maybe we can get some brainstorming sessions going. I know ITAA is putting together an Interoperability group to begin looking at some issues and try to find, and put some things on the table. Some good points there I appreciate that. Joe, how about the District of Columbia?
JOE ROSS, WASHINGTON, DC GOVERNMENT
Well, in this region we’ve been collaborating for quite some time, so a lot of the governance issues, the collaboration issues are largely overcome in this region. What we lack is spectrum and money. With spectrum, with the appropriate spectrum to do broadband, 700 megahertz, and with the funding to be able to implement these networks, we can achieve great things.
We have a National Capital Region Interoperability program, where it is focused on data, since we have largely accomplished some of the voice Interoperability challenges. It is a program that looks to deploy a wireless broadband network for the entire National Capital Region, 2500 square miles.
There is a connection of municipal fiber networks together so that in a disaster we are completely self-contained and can share data with great efficacy, and then there’s the data exchange hub program that seeks to allow the different emergency support functions out of different jurisdictions to share data seamlessly as needed.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
That’s great, thank you Joe. Let’s look at some of the private sector view points. Some of the challenges that you see either moving forward within your own programs or supporting government with their programs. Dave from Booz Allen, how do you see the major challenges that need to be overcome?
DAVE WILLIAMS, BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON
Well, there is no shortage of successes, no shortage of challenges either. I’ll just hit on two.
The first one being a Hurricane Katrina-type situation where there is a major loss of existing local infrastructure. I think there is considerable work still to be done there.
The other high level challenge that I believe we have is that there’s a huge embedded base of infrastructure out there. And folks that are on this panel here have to continue to maintain visions on that existing infrastructure while trying to evolve into emerging technologies that are going to help us in the future. It’s a hard path at this point.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Steve, how about the Cisco viewpoints, what are some of the big challenges that you think need to be overcome to get where we need to go?
STEPHEN ORR, CISCO
I don’t know if I would say specifically challenges but it definitely is interoperating with current radio systems. And we are preparing a paradigm shift for how to use the information. Right now we have voice communication. But when these networks converge, we are going to have an influx of information. It might not be just voice; it might also be data, video and how to deal with that on the scene. ‘
It’s going to be a retraining and possible information overload in training them how to use that information when once they get it down to a hand held or a local PC because you will have information coming from multiple sources now, not just your incident commander possibly.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
That’s true. Making sure it is the right information and the information needed as opposed to information overload. Jim Payne, challenges from your perspective?
JIM PAYNE, BECHTEL
I’d like to play off the theme that Mike Duffy brought up and that’s operations drive technology. I think the state of the evolution of the technology and the uncertainty of the future forward looking at requirements that allow you to create creative solutions for the agency, but not be dictated by a particular prescription.
A very key part of this is that in longer term relationships you have to evolve technology in Federal, state and local levels. And as emerging technology takes place – don’t lock into one solution and don’t lock out new technologies. That’s the challenge and I think that the agencies are throwing the ball back to us with procurements make sense along those lines.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
That’s terrific. Mike do you have a comment on that?
MIKE DUFFY, JUSTICE
I’ve made the point before regarding one size solutions doesn’t fit all and just listening to the different comments has provoked another thought. This is feeding off of Jim who just fed off me on that operations drive technology; Interoperability isn’t one thing for one set of scenarios.
It’s actually multiple sets of solutions for multiple scenarios and I think that one of the greatest challenges that any agency has is identifying what those scenarios are, probably prioritizing them because resources are constrained, and then building solutions to meet the scenarios.
And I know David’s program has been focusing on this issue considerably and that’s a great credit to the SafeCom program but that indeed I think is going to be from a nuts and bolts kind of program, one of the greatest challenges any agency has to deal with.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Well said Mike, I like that a lot. When we come back we’re going to talk about I heard about 400 MHZ, 700, 800 MHZ but what about broadband up to the gigahertz range. Are there some opportunities there to do certain things? So we’ll pick that up.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
When we left we were talking about a number of the challenges and we talked earlier about 400 MHZ, 700 MHZ, and 800 MHZ and some of the constraints there with the Federal funding. And sometimes I wonder should we be thinking about broadband communications in the gigahertz range?
Would it make sense to carve out some spectrum in that broadband range that we could put emergency communications, first responder, law enforcement, would that make sense to allow things like intelligent video and high speed wireless. Dave Boyd, have you thought about that or has Homeland Security been looking at any of the issues in the broadband wireless?
DR. DAVID BOYD, DHS
In fairness we should point out that the public safety community itself has been looking at these things. It began with voice because given a mile an hour pursuit, a police officer is neither going to read or type anything. A fireman crawling on his hands and knees is not going to read or type anything. Never the less, public safety has a requirement to be able to exchange images, to be able to exchange slide streaming video, so they’ve now looked at two possible areas of approach.
One of them is in the new 700 megahertz spectrum they have proposed that it would be worth looking at giving them sort of a mini-broadband capability, an ability to aggregate some of those channels so that they could achieve a broader band capability than they currently have with the narrow channels.
Then of course two or three years ago, Congress gave to public safety fifty megahertz of spectrum at 4.9 gigahertz. Now that’s real potential broadband space and the public safety community and DHS and others are looking very, very closely at how that might be applied to help public safety particularly at what we might call the commander of emergency operations center level.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Great. Paige Atkins, has DISA been looking at the issues of broadband capability or Interoperability?
PAIGE ATKINS, DISA
We’ve been looking at leveraging technology across the board to satisfy requirements and I think I’ve echoed what has been said before in terms of there is no single solution. Requirements vary and environments vary. In some cases you’ll want broadband access and in other cases you’ll want access in other frequency bands.
There’s a lot that can be done in terms of spectral efficiency dynamic spectrum access, software defined radios and other technologies to integrate across the board and I think we need to look at this holistically and gain the best benefit from the technologies and the spectrum that’s available.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Well said, Paige. Paul Cosgrave, how about New York City, is broadband wireless something that you guys are addressing?
PAUL COSGRAVE, NEW YORK CITY GOVERNMENT
Absolutely Jim, in fact we are doing a lot more than just thinking about it, we are in the process of implementing in the 4.9 range. We are implementing MTS, which is 4th generation technology which is used more in Europe actually than it’s been used here in the States but we will be the first U.S. city that employs MTS technology on a broad scale throughout New York City.
It will be a dedicated network just for the workers in New York City. Many of the types of things that we will be able to do will be to transmit video and data, such as downloading mug shots and fingerprints into police cars. So it’s going to be quite an investment, we are investing over half a billion dollars, in this case it’s going to be a huge program. And I think will be the best practice model for many cities in the country.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Great, we’ll have to get you back down about a year or so from now and tell us about the progress. It sounds exciting. Joe, how about in the District? Is broadband on the table?
JOE ROSS, WASHINGTON, DC GOVERNMENT
We’ve been on a broadband mission for four years. Four years ago we created the Spectra Coalition for public safety which we chair, it seeks to secure 30 megahertz of spectrum in the 700 megahertz band specifically for broadband public safety state, local, and Federal use.
And one of the things that we feel strongly about, because the Feds are such a strong presence in our own back yard, is we need solutions that are going to address the Federal needs. We think that co-location of frequency is a major way to accomplish that. Two years ago we launched a city wide broadband 700 MHZ network. The first inaugural use was at the Presidential inauguration where with just about 20 users on that initial network we screened about 9 gigabytes worth of data on that single day with just 20 users. We’ve learned a lot over the course of these two years about prioritization about video, especially video use. Most of our traffic is very spiky based on a lot of video surveillance and a lot of video applications.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Great! Mike Duffy, how about at the Federal level? Is there anything you can add to the discussion here?
MIKE DUFFY, JUSTICE
Unfortunately not. All the wisdom has already been imparted. The sum for me is that it’s great technology, it provides us options, but it is not a silver bullet.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
So you need both is what I’m hearing from the audience here. How about the private sector? Jim Payne, is broadband something that Bechtel is looking at?
JIM PAYNE, BECHTEL
Well you really can’t separate voice and data. The announcement this past week at the Consumer Electronics Show that Apple was introducing a phone that can get the video on it, tells us that our next generation consumer is definitely demanding that technology.
Bechtel is very excited this. We were recently asked to host about 90 manufacturers from all over the world to test specifically the Interoperability of this emerging technology. Long before the standard will be developed, the carriers and manufacturers will have the technology, so this kind of public dialogue is really going to foster Interoperability as the technology is emerging.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Steve, anything to add to the conversation here?
STEPHEN ORR, CISCO
Absolutely. We actually see broadband picking up quite a lot of use in the public safety sector. One of the key examples that we use is the architectures that were built for Katrina relief, where it was not one solution or one size fits all, it was a combination of many different architectures or many different solutions where you would have a metro area meshed to provide local access for people in the area. They would backfill the connectivity via Wiremax to an incident area network at an incident command post which would have a Satcom relay to actually provide you with connectivity back to the main base or back to the real world.
That’s an extreme incident where you went in with absolutely no connectivity being assumed, so that’s one perfect case where you could use it and then the other would be what commissioner Cosgrave would be doing in New York City.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Terrific. Dave, anything to add to the broadband discussion?
DAVE WILLIAMS, BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON
Well clearly there are applications in the public safety sector. If I’m not mistaken there are comments due back to the FCC on the 26th of February that will bring in a broader perspective and we will learn more there.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
I think what I am hearing here is that there is a place for broadband and a place for traditional tactical land over radio communications. It’s not going to be one or the other but finding ways to use what’s optimal and given the conditions I think that is the message across here. I’d like to talk a little bit about real examples of things that are going on in the wireless world; things that have been successful. I’d like to jump around with the panelists here who have some stories to tell about things. Mike, can you gives us some examples of things that have been done across the country in wireless, that have worked?
MIKE DUFFY, JUSTICE
Sure I can give you a couple of examples that we have been able to implement in DOJ. One is something that we’ve set up as part of our new integrated wireless network system in Seattle and that’s an Interoperability solution we have with King County and the city of Seattle.
It’s allowed us quite a bit of operational success. We’ve used it for a number of specific operations involving multiple agencies -- Federal, state, and local -- and it’s been proven to be very reliable. In honesty, it’s been used best for planned operations and we have not yet tested it out thoroughly for what we call an ad hoc emergency situation, but based on the success we’ve had to date we have a high degree of confidence in that.
We’ve also had some success with working with state and locals in preparation for national significant events such as Super Bowls and the national conventions. In those cases we are leveraging the combined resources of the state, the local and the municipalities and the Federal agencies in those areas and basically just doing integration – integrating the systems and exploring some of the good technology solutions from our partners in industry and putting something together that meets the specific needs of that situation.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Terrific! I’ve heard a lot about that Seattle as well as the work that had to be done for these special events. Paige, how about at DISA, do have an example of things that you are actually doing that are successful?
PAIGE ATKINS, DISA
Well I’ll actually talk about the department in the whole sense. As a result of Katrina there is a national support environment which provided a bridge between civilian and governmental agency communications so that’s one example of a recent success.
We’ve also done some work – I’ll talk about advanced technologies, I’ve talked about software defined radio and dynamic spectrum access and we’ve done continued development and demonstration of these advanced technologies. We’ve talked about flexibility being the key. In this environment, one size does not fit all, one solution is not the silver bullet, and we see flexibility in these technologies as key to our success in moving forward.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Great. Paul, how about success stories in New York City?
PAUL COSGRAVE, NEW YORK CITY GOVERNMENT
Jim, one technology that we are going to be rolling out as part of our wireless broadband initiative throughout the city that we’ve already been piloting is the automatic vehicle locator technology, or AVL. Any of your listeners might think of it more as GPS technology.
But we’ve already implemented this throughout the entire fire department in New York and have put it into all of our emergency response vehicles, both fire trucks as well as ambulances. And we’ve actually been able to demonstrate already a 30 second improvement on response times in emergency situations, so it’s been very, very successful.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
That’s great, I like those kinds of stories, it brings it home. That’s what we are really talking about, saving lives. It’s more than technology; it’s the use of technology to save lives. Joe, how about in the District?
JOE ROSS, WASHINGTON DC GOVERNMENT
Well we’ve talked about the radio network where I’m very proud to say that we have excellent coverage. We have a solution where we have leveraged vehicular repeaters where we don’t have in building tower coverage. The public safety personnel in the city are very pleased with the system, it’s really performing well.
Of course we have our broadband pilot that’s been operational and very successful over the past couple of years. We too have deployed automatic vehicle location for the fire department. One additional feature that’s been recently implemented and is paying a lot of dividends is automatic state transition so when a unit arrives on scene, it automatically puts that unit in an on-scene state so that we can have much better statistics to measure the performance of our units, and that’s been very successful as well.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Great. That’s one thing I like about this show, we get to hear these stories about things that are going on and that are really making a difference, a positive difference and that’s exciting. David Boyd, how about over at the SafeCom program, do you have some examples of things that are working?
DR. DAVID BOYD, DHS
I think we have a number of examples, we have a series of rapid communications capabilities in cities that we didn’t have before: Boston, Chicago, Houston, Jersey City, Los Angeles, Miami, the National Capital Region, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco where the localities drove it and we just tried to facilitate things and they were able, using what they had on board, to establish a command level of Interoperability.
You also make your projects and organizations like your community oriented policing services office. The Justice Department has managed a number of very, very successful projects where they required that cities submitting for the grants had to build regional partnership Interoperability plans. You had major efforts to produce state-wide plans and initiatives directed by DHS in places like Virginia, Kentucky, and Nevada. Some really took off on their own and did wonderful work such as in Indiana and in Wyoming and places like that.
But the most important observation to make is consistently the most successful projects are those that are driven from the local level that make sure that they meet their needs. They are the guys who are pointing the stick and are going to do things, and then build them up to larger state-wide types of plans. The least successful are those that are driven hard from the top down and don’t adequately involve localities from the very beginning. And that’s not surprising after all it’s the local guys who own, operate and maintain some 90% of the nation’s public safety wireless infrastructure.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
My days working with Tom Ridge remind me all events start local so you need to remember that when you are building your systems out. We need to take a break and then when we come back, we are going to talk about vision for the future. We’re going to talk about where all this is going and the future world we will be living in.
Break.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
We are talking wireless Interoperability and I want to talk about our vision for the future here. I’m going to ask each of our panelists to give us your one and a half minute vision for the future, where this is all going and what we can expect in trying to address some of these critical national issues. Let’s start with Joe Ross in the District of Columbia. Joe what is your vision for where this is all going?
JOE ROSS, WASHINGTON, DC GOVERNMENT
Well first of all, we feel that first responders need better tools. We need to equip our public safety personnel so that they can do what they need to do with the technology and information. We feel that a broadband interoperable nation-wide network would help facilitate that greatly.
One that is inherently affordable, one that leverages off the shelf technology to the greatest extent possible. We also are focused not on network Interoperability, but on application Interoperability. If you think about where we are with voice today, having patched together disparate systems, it’s far more expensive to do so than to start out in a standardized way from the get go. So if video is something that we feel strongly about that will become mission critical for public safety then we need to be working as a nation on Interoperability standards for video.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Great. Jim Payne, what’s your vision Jim, and where do you see this all going in the future?
JIM PAYNE, BECHTEL
Jim, I see three things happening here. The technology’s going to continue to rapidly evolve and we have to be very mindful of how the landscape looks on an international level, not necessarily only on the domestic level. The broadband deployment is happening very rapidly throughout the rest of the world and the deployment has to happen in a parallel fashion with us.
Another vision I see is that the attitude taken into consideration with the deployment model may change, and perhaps it has. The content providers such as Google may define the technology. Or maybe it’s going to be Starbucks. So we cannot look only to the traditional carriers. That may create a bit more chaos because of the competitive nature there but we have to take that into consideration and the model is evolving rapidly.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Yes, you are right about that. I have a feeling my kids are going to figure out a new model here one day, they seem to be able to figure out things to do with technology faster than we can. Paul, from the New York City perspective from your role as commissioner and CIO, where do you see this all going?
PAUL COSGRAVE, NEW YORK CITY GOVERNMENT
Jim, I’ll pick up on something that Joe Ross just said and that’s video. Video surveillance is just a huge issue today. In a city like New York there are just thousands and thousands of cameras that are already deployed.
Many of them are old cameras, they are analogue cameras, but the ability to take camera feeds and interoperably feed them to where they need to be at command stations, etc, across multiple indices is truly a video network challenge for the next decade that we will be attacking in New York. Just how you get Interoperability across all these different types of video feed, and how you manage the bandwidth is obviously a big issue with video a big part of that.
There is technology already out there, like license plate readers, that is going to be huge in terms of giving an edge up against the bad guys. So there’s plenty of things that we are going to be doing with video in the next decade that are going to be very exciting. I’ll just leave with one point, Jim, in solving all this: the adage of think locally but act globally is absolutely critical and we need to keep that in mind.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Yes, that message is coming across loud and clear here today. Steve Orr from Cisco, what’s your vision for the future?
STEPHEN ORR, CISCO
Our vision for the future is more based on interoperable architectures versus interoperable radio systems, having everybody standardize on one frequency or one band or one specific hand set, which is difficult, we want to make sure that the whole architecture from an end to end perspective will be able to communicate whether it’s bringing video down to an early responder or a first responder providing the converged voice data services as well to the user.
Give them as much information to use as possible while not having to rely on any specific hand set or a specific frequency because you don’t want to take away from them being able to perform their duties by making sure that they have the right tool at that scene. You want to be able to have that tool be fully interoperable with whatever incident they may be at that time.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
That seems to match up well with what we have heard with one size fits all and now we’ve got to think about the operations and what’s required to meet the mission. Paige, what is your vision for the future? Where is all of this going?
PAIGE ATKINS, DISA
Well I think from a department standpoint, from a Department of Defense standpoint we’ve been moving towards a net center operations vision and I think that’s largely what we are doing here. Looking at net-centric operations, but in a more holistic sense and I have to echo that it’s not just nationally, we have to be concerned about international environments from a public safety standpoint.
So I think that’s really where we are going. I did want to emphasize a couple of key elements of that. I think the move towards open standards is extremely critical particularly from an Interoperability standpoint. I think we need to seriously pursue dynamic access to technologies and dynamic spectrum management capabilities as part of this process. And something that we didn’t talk too much about today has been security and as we look at interoperable solutions it opens us up increasingly to security risks and we have to appropriately address those from a wireless and Interoperability standpoint.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Good point Paige. Dave Williams, your vision of the future for all this.
DAVE WILLIAMS, BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON
I believe that several very hard working members of the public safety community and leadership like Dr. David Boyd here have helped to provide a pretty clear vision for the future. When an incident occurs, responders and support agencies need to be able to arrive on site and seamlessly communicate with others as authorized, with minimal to no effort of the officer or agent or fireman on their part. The communication equipment really needs to be able to adapt to the infrastructure that’s in place.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Well put. Dr. Boyd.
DR. DAVID BOYD, DHS
Well, I’m going to sign on to the architectural notion but phrase it the way we do, which is we like to focus on working centers; the community is effectively a working center, it is used to dealing with its neighbors, so that’s the first and easiest place to establish Interoperability with folks they know and where they are.
If we can build the culture using grant funding and grant guidance and that sort of thing, that causes them to design Interoperability with their neighbors as they upgrade their systems, then that means that over time you end up with more and more communities that are interoperable beginning to link to other communities as they work their way up.
That will take time. There are systems in the field now that are more than 30 years old. Second, it needs to be bottom up driven and this is what this does. It starts with the community and drives its way up. Third we need a massive national leadership commitment; that is the political leadership has to be committed to the notion that this is important and they are going to be willing to help to make this happen. And finally and perhaps most importantly, the recognition that this is a complicated issue, that it is not something that’s easy to do, but it is happening but it will not happen over night.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
Well put Dave. Mike Duffy, our final panelist here, what is the vision for the future Mike?
MIKE DUFFY, JUSTICE
I have to in essence echo a lot of what I’ve just heard from my co-panelists here. David’s point regarding the incremental evolution of Interoperability, I think that’s key to setting expectations as well as good planning. From a technical point of view I think we are going to see continued convergence of technologies; that convergence is going to make operations and Interoperability a whole lot easier.
And then from an operational point of view, echoing a comment that Paul Cosgrave made, we are going to see a convergence of these issues of Interoperability and the issues of information sharing, that you had a panel on some time ago, and it’s going to be focused at the regional and metropolitan level and then you are going to see it build up and you are going to see increasing participation and quite frankly assistance from the Federal level.
JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP
A few final comments before we wrap up here; I just would note that this model sitting at the table here I think is the right model. We have Mike working Federal issues, Dave looking at how Federal programs can work with state and local, we have Paige from the DOD perspective, and we have Paul and Joe who are here representing what’s going on locally in the cities, as well as some of the key industry players at the table and I think that’s the model for this solving Interoperability, this Federal state and local and private sector all working together and communicating on the issues together.
So I applaud the panelists for all agreeing to do this and to create this type of environment. I agree too that Interoperability is going to be such a key to so many critical programs in the future and if information sharing is really going to work and Interoperability is going to be enabled, it’s going to help it work, and we can’t loose sight of what this is really about and what it is really all about is saving lives and securing our country for ourselves and our children and our grandchildren and generations to come. Thanks to our panelists here and thanks to our audience.
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