Working Group 1A - Public Safety Consolidation - Best Practices and Recommendations

1. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) Working Group 1A - Public Safety Consolidation - Best Practices and Recommendations

2. Working Group 1A - Public Safety Consolidation - Scoping • Public safety radio systems and communications/dispatch centers were historically built and operated by single agencies for their own users.   • Systems were designed to meet unique local requirements, often led to incompatibility, inefficient use of scarce resources, and higher costs for specialized equipment and procedures with little opportunity to benefit from economies of scale. • Clear trend over the last 20 years towards public safety system consolidation, with radio networks developed to cover counties, regions, and even states.  • Similarly, jurisdictions have merged their communications/dispatch centers across agencies and jurisdictions.   • The consolidation process poses numerous challenges, however, from operational, governance, funding and technical perspectives.  • This Working Group will define these challenges and develop recommended best practices for overcoming them for CSRIC’s consideration.  • A key issue is how to assist agencies in the transition from system operator to system user.

3. Working Group Members 34 Members - 24 Public Safety - 8 Industry - 2 Federal Government

4. Current Events • Kickoff meeting provided overview CSRIC’s mission, members, working groups and the mission of Working Group 1-A. • Agreed that the work plan be broken down into three subgroups: Governance, Technology and Standard Operating Procedures. • Agreed that another management group be created to review documents and provide an integration function. • Members were asked to review the three sub-workgroups and associate themselves with specific areas of interest. • Members were asked to provide their assessment of the top issues relative to the mission of the workgroup, prioritize those and identify what are the driving complexities of those issues in an effort to ultimately formulate recommendations. • Made available organizational tools such as Extranet Data Sharing and Web Meeting. to collaborate and share information within a secure environment. • A proposed timeline was discussed, specifically that the first draft of subgroup findings and recommendations would be due in May with another draft due in July with a final report and recommendations due in August, 2010. • Subgroup leaders meeting to formulate the level of activities, expectations, schedules and the development of a list of recommended subject matter experts to brief the groups. .

5. Proposed Work Breakdown

6. Notional Schedule 2/12/2010 Working group participants finalized 2/2010 Issue scoping and work breakdown 3/2010 Subgroup leadership staffing & kick-offs 5/2010 First draft subgroup findings and recommendations 4/2010 Subgroup briefings, discussion, issue identification 5//2010 Subgroup findings & recommendations 6/2010 Working group roundtable discussions 7/2010 Draft report 7/2010 Working group report development 8/2010 Final report and recommendations