Public Safety Communications Policy Page: 31 of 35
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CRS-28
integrated response solution and a national architecture are promised for the future.122
The 2002 milestone of providing a plan to use "existing infrastructure augmented by
available commercial capability" is being addressed if infrastructure is defined as
local radio communications equipment bolstered by cross-patch hardware. It is not
being met, and seems to have been rejected by SAFECOM, if infrastructure is meant
to include wide-area networks, Internet communications backbones and other
regional or national communications capacity that would provide broad-based
communications the support.
In testimony,123 OMB described SAFECOM goals as including the provision of
"interoperable wireless solutions for Federal, state, and local public safety
organizations," that would include "coordination of all Federal interoperability
efforts." In OMB's description of long-term strategic goals, as outlined in the 2003
e-gov plan, there appears to be an implicit assumption that there are redundant
wireless communications infrastructures that can be identified and eliminated. This
planning document describes the SAFECOM initiative as addressing "critical
shortcomings," including two significant points where communications
interoperability is lacking; interoperability between state and local authorities, as
well as interoperability between federal public safety networks. The plan indicates
that some (unidentified) networks would be consolidated to yield costs savings.
Further "Billions of dollars" in savings are presumed by creating a right-sized set of
consolidated, interoperable federal networks, linked to state wireless networks. To
date, there appears to be no information on SAFECOM plans for improving wireless
communications networks at the national or regional level; the focus of the program
on hardware solutions at the incident level would seem to preclude plans for network
interoperability or the establishment of standards for new interoperable technologies
such as mesh networks or cognitive radios. Work at the incident level is primarily
local, focused on short-range interoperability solutions. Wide area networks and
nationwide, end-to-end communications rely on technologies not being tested or
evaluated by SAFECOM at the incident level.
In particular, the build-from-the-bottom-up approach for interoperability,
advocated by SAFECOM, would appear to be at odds with the e-government goal of
achieving efficiencies at the communications network level. Modern networks, with
their incorporation of software programs on chips, other software-programmable
technologies, nanotechnology, and meshed communications systems, to cite some
examples, are generally built out from a common design, requiring some degree of
centralization. In that respect, the goals of the IWN appear to be more aligned to the
original goals of the e-government strategy. Its intentions include the construction
of a national network, the identification and prioritization of end-user functional
requirements, and the use of open standards that would be adapted by other public
safety agencies.
122 Boyd testimony, September 8, 2004.
123 November 6, 2003 Statement of Karen Evans, Testimony before a subcommittee of the
House Committee on Government Reform, 108'h Cong., 1st sess. (Hereafter cited as
November 6, 2003 Evans Statement.)
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Public Safety Communications Policy, report, January 31, 2007; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc811523/m1/31/: accessed April 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.