[Scan-DC] Interoperability

[Radioman]

Homeland Security Bets Billions on Better Communications-- But Are First
Responders Better Off?
By: Sarah Laskow (Center for Public Integrity) - Monday, February 22nd, 2010
'The Cutting Edge'
(Edited for brevity)


When a cop or a fire fighter pulls out a radio in a television police drama,
his message goes through, whether he's in the basement of a building or deep
in a forest. In the real world, clear communication is rarely so easy,
particularly among first responders from different disciplines and
jurisdictions. This reality was dramatically brought home at the World Trade
Center on September 11, 2001, when crucial observations from the police
department's helicopters did not reach fire chiefs, commanders lost radio
contact with responders who ascended the towers, and brigades in the north
tower did not hear calls to evacuate.

Since then, an unprecedented amount of federal money has been spent on
communications gear and technology, expenses traditionally borne by state
and local governments. The goal is to fix the communication problems faced
on 9/11 - to create "interoperability" that allows first responders from
different disciplines and jurisdictions to communicate. From 2004 to 2008,
the only years for which detailed figures are available, the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) approved more than $4.3 billion in grant money to
improve interoperability among first responders nationwide. DHS officials
have said that more grant money has gone to interoperability than to any
other initiative, and it continues to be a major focus for DHS grant
programs, while also drawing funding from the economic stimulus package. 


Yet for years, results have failed to live up to expectations. In 2004,
then-DHS Secretary Tom Ridge promised that by year's end, it would be
possible for most first responders to talk to each other in a crisis. But in
2005, Hurricane Katrina proved that the country was nowhere near ready to
handle a real disaster. By 2009, DHS officials were still struggling to
convince Congress that first responders could reach basic communications
goals.

"The fundamental question all of us have is this," said Rep. David Price,
whose subcommittee oversees homeland security funding, at a hearing last
March. "Why aren't we making faster progress toward effective
interoperability?"


An Over-Reliance on Hardware

Part of the answer is that early on, Congress directed the vast majority of
DHS interoperability dollars towards hardware: portable and car radios;
"repeaters" that extended a signal's range; antennae and tower systems. But
an array of communications experts and even DHS officials say that equipment
alone cannot create interoperability. 

"There was a lack of understanding in the congressional committees about the
importance of planning dollars, that you could waste money if you don't
plan," says Harlin McEwen, a former police chief who chairs the
communications committee at the International Association of Chiefs of
Police. "They didn't want to spend money on things you couldn't see."

Support for those less tangible needs - sitting down at the table with
counterparts, hashing out plans, establishing command-and-control protocols,
training users - has come much more slowly. And experts say that without
such support, the value of spending on equipment is questionable. A 2007
report from the Government Accountability Office warned that the lack of
coordination was leading to investments in "independent interoperability
systems that do not always support each others' needs."

DHS and Congress have increased support for planning and training. But as
recently as 2008, more than 75 percent of interoperability dollars still
went towards hardware.

The challenges of interoperability could offer lessons for any of the
troubled homeland security initiatives launched after 9/11, from increased
airport security to a "virtual fence" laden with sensors at the Mexican
border. Billions have been spent in an effort to make America safer, but
critics wonder whether the push primarily has benefited a burgeoning
homeland security industrial complex. Perhaps the only hands-down winners
have been the companies that supply communications equipment - Motorola, in
particular. Billions in DHS funding have helped public safety agencies
replace aging infrastructure, but the effects on those agencies'
interoperability capabilities vary widely. While some jurisdictions report
substantive progress, for many of the responders risking their lives, the
communication problems brought into sharp relief on 9/11 linger on.


History's Lessons

September 11 is only the most recent entry in a litany of disasters that
documented the need for interoperability. Among them: the 1982 crash of an
Air Florida Flight 90 into a Washington, D.C., bridge; the 1993 bombing of
the World Trade Center bombing; the 1995 bombing of an Oklahoma City federal
building; and the 1999 shootings at Colorado's Columbine High School.

In each case, as a grab-bag of agencies converged on the scene, precious
time and efficiency were lost. "Many police officers, firefighters, and
emergency medical service personnel working in the same city," wrote a
federal advisory commission in 1996, "cannot communicate with each other."

The challenge is not just incompatible technology, but disparate cultures.
"It's like three high school [sports teams] in a city," explains Chief
Douglas Aiken, communications chair for the International Association of
Fire Chiefs. "They each want to win, and they each have their own funding.
They might see each other and talk in passing, but they each are doing their
own thing."

When public safety agencies first began using radios, in the 1920s and '30s,
their equipment was built into cars and used primarily for dispatch. As
radios became lighter and more portable, responders gradually came to
consider them critical tools. The federal government assigned public safety
departments slices of the radio spectrum - electromagnetic real estate - and
each agency bought a radio system that operated only within specific
frequencies. Systems from different manufacturers could not communicate.

Motorola, based in Schaumburg, Illinois, has long been the undisputed leader
in public safety communications equipment, controlling about 80 percent of
the U.S. market. By 2001 the firm had cemented its good standing with
important groups like the Association of Public-Safety Communications
Officials (APCO). The company often sponsors APCO's state and local events
at the most generous levels - "gold" for the 2009 national conference, for
instance. Motorola has a few competitors - Harris Corporation, based in
Melbourne, Florida, first among them - but local officials consider Motorola
the safe choice.

When public safety radios began transitioning to digital technology,
organizations like the police chiefs' and fire chiefs' associations resolved
that they would require manufacturers to provide radios that worked
together. In 1989, APCO, whose membership includes both government officials
and industry players, began working with vendors to design a crucial series
of standards for interoperability, known as Project 25 or P25. Radios that
met the P25 criteria in theory would work together, regardless of vendor.
The standards define eight different interfaces between various parts of a
radio system: the first, for instance, allows two radios from different
manufacturers to communicate directly to each other. On 9/11, though, the
standards were still incomplete.

Few in the federal government had studied interoperability before 9/11, but
in the wake of al-Qaeda's attacks, policymakers were troubled by the chaotic
responses, particularly at Ground Zero, where post-action reports identified
a host of issues, from technical failures to breakdowns in command
procedures. Emergency communications interoperability suddenly became a
national crisis, and Congress turned to the industry and to first responders
for solutions. Many first responders asked that Congress dedicate more
spectrum to public safety. And Greg Brown, now CEO of Motorola, told
Congress in 2003 that the "common, and key, requirements to achieving
interoperability include spectrum, standards, and money."

Money was the first to arrive. After 9/11, Congress began funneling
emergency funds to all 50 states. Those funding streams turned into more
formal grant programs in 2004: the State Homeland Security Grant Program
provided a baseline amount of funding to all 50 states, and the Urban Area
Security Initiative handed out additional money to cities that faced greater
risks. State agencies charged with overseeing homeland security applied to
these and other programs for cash to solve problems, including
interoperability, then distributed their allocation to state agencies and
local governments. These recipients needed new radio systems and Congress
was telling them, go out and buy what you need.


The Missing Link: Planning

Left out of this discussion, however, was one element that everyone now
agrees is crucial: planning. While money began flowing towards
interoperability, requirements to plan and coordinate have lagged badly
behind expenditures on hardware.

"It is as important as the technology," says Bob LeGrande, who headed the
District of Columbia's interoperability development. "One cannot exist
without the other."

Without strong relationships in place, agencies have worked towards
achieving interoperability locally, without thinking on a regional level,
leading to what the GAO has called "the narrow and specific use of DHS
funding." Or they have bought equipment that's incompatible with surrounding
jurisdictions. A 2007 audit of interoperability spending in Colorado
worried: "Without . the context of a regional or statewide plan, it is
unclear how much unmet need will be addressed by these funds." DHS officials
also worry about "islands of interoperability" - places where jurisdictions
have upgraded to new technology without considering how they'll connect with
partners using old gear.

With the right equipment, in theory, every responder could talk to every
other responder. Simple connectivity, though, does not guarantee
coordination. On 9/11, in New York, those police officers and fire fighters
whose radios could connect faced a different challenge. So many people were
using the tactical channel meant for interoperability that it became
overloaded - a cacophony in which important information could not get
through.

The DHS vision for interoperability goes beyond networking first responders'
communication equipment. To DHS officials, interoperability means that
officers will be able to communicate with anyone they need to, but only when
they need to and when they are authorized to do so. To avoid chaos, they
say, public safety officials need to establish strong command and control
protocols, standard operating procedures, and, most of all, trust.

Robert Desourdis, an engineer and consultant who has studied
interoperability, remembers one exercise during which, under pressure,
agencies reverted to using their own systems, instead of using the new
technology that was meant to connect them. As Col. G. Jerry Russell,
director of the Idaho State Police, put it, "Technology without coordination
results in inoperability."

One academic study of DHS grant spending found that strong planning and
coordination correlated with success at creating interoperability, while
simply increasing funding did not. Chicago, for instance, has received more
than $220 million dollars from the Urban Area Security Initiative grant
program. Yet, in a 2007 evaluation of cities nationwide, the city earned
DHS' lowest score on governance, which measured the strength of the formal
agreements that provide a foundation for communications planning. Erica
Chenoweth and Susan Clarke, who conducted the study, concluded that
Chicago's performance "stems from politics rather than resources," citing
problems like disagreements between two neighboring counties, a lack of
clear leadership and accountability, and unfamiliarity with standard
operating procedures.

Building the sort of relationships that yield real interoperability can take
years. LeGrande credits the success of the D.C. area's system - one of the
few to score 100% on the DHS evaluation - to work that began after the Air
Florida crash in 1982. Chris Essid, head of the DHS Office of Emergency
Communications, remembers how long it took for the planning process to start
working well in Virginia, where he became the statewide interoperability
coordinator in 2003. "Our first meeting, you had folks from the localities
that didn't trust the state folks," he says. "It took a while to get these
folks to realize - we have the same problem and we can help each other."

But when DHS started doling out money, a lot of that hard work had simply
not been done. In December 2006, the department reported, "Strategic plans
for interoperability are the exception rather than the norm." 
And the lack of planning showed. "You had different fiefdoms doing their own
thing," says Veronique Pluviose-Fenton, a former aide to the House Homeland
Security Committee. "It was almost like you were throwing money at the
problem without measuring whether or not it was a solution." Another
congressional aide said there was "a lot of money floating around, and if a
project met the right buzzword, it got funded." 
In Georgia, for instance, $11 million in federal funding helped build the
Georgia Interoperability Network. Months after the system was installed,
none of the 81 local dispatch centers connected to the network were using
it, according to a 2008 audit.

In the first years of the grant programs, not all emergency management
departments had the capacity to oversee the money coming in, either. "Many
state and local governments were overwhelmed by the volume of money and the
grant guidance," says Bruce Baughman, a former FEMA official who also served
as the director of the Alabama Emergency Management Association.