Towers of Babel

 

The commonly used definition of insanity is mistaken. Real insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing with no expectation of results.

American public safety agencies have steadfastly neglected the need for communications interoperability since, oh, shortly after the Detroit Police Department heated up the tubes of station KOP in 1922. Failures in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13^th were just another chapter in a long history of that neglect – a neglect born of pitiful arrogance across multiple dimensions.

The angle receiving most attention is that the United States Secret Service (USSS) blew it. Well, from consideration of their clearest mission, that is indisputable. The agency has a well-deserved reputation of arrogance. They may argue that the few presidential assassination attempts in modern history show their effectiveness. We may counter with an alternative and equally difficult to prove theory that there merely have been few. They’re understandably faced both with the traditional policing problem of adequately estimating crimes prevented combined with a unique mission, shall we say “service”, deserving of much secrecy.

Whether born of simple, inbred arrogance or some greater degree of hubris, the Secret Service has earned in our personal experience its reputation for not cooperating with other public safety agencies. Their demonstrated attitude is similar to that in the past of a couple large fire departments: To wit, “We don’t need to communicate with other agencies. We ARE interoperability.” That attitude has invariably, if only eventually, proven expensive to the citizenry covering costs – in taxes, property lost, and even lives sacrificed.

Six shots fired to no observable effect at an assailant within spitting distance, armed with a carbine that even the Viet Cong traded for AK-47s, scoped with the tactical expediency of hose clamps, says a lot.

Back in Butler, reports suggest that the Secret Service once again worked hard to isolate their share of the larger operation. There are many public safety and protective service missions in such an operation, not the least of which benefit hundreds or even thousands of persons at the event. Consider the demands of traffic management, outer perimeter security, and emergency medical care just to name a few. The notion that a true unified command would coalesce all those into a coherent action plan underwritten by an integrated communications plan is considered quaint.

Consequently, shit happens. Not always and rarely at levels this high, but often enough that a pattern has emerged. Thirty years ago. Ignore the principles of incident action planning and comprehensive resource management at your own peril! Or, worse yet, at the protectee and public’s collective peril.

Congressional Task Force on Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump:

Failures in Execution

Why it matters: The fragmented communications structure and lack of timely information sharing resulted in missed opportunities for the Secret Service and its state and local partners to apprehend Crooks and make informed decisions about managing the protectee prior to shots fired.

And the pattern continues with hand wringing and cackling about the sky falling if only the latest-and-greatest round of Next Generation technology cannot be had. Ignore the fact that it is always the next generation that will fix problems of communications interoperability. Or that it will simply add another floor to the Tower of Babel.

The Secret Service is emblematic of a larger, national problem exacerbated by the number agencies at all levels of government tasked with public safety. Would the problem be lessened by involvement of few agencies, if possible? Perhaps, but large agencies demonstrate the same types of insular specialization, smokestacks, and seemingly inevitable hubris. Consider that the USSS is part of the agency, the Department of Homeland Security, tasked with assuring communications interoperability across all levels of government and types of service – an agency that both struggles internally with the same between subdivisions and studiously ignores reports from its own Inspector General of inadequacies in this regard.

Put down the radio and back away from the technology! Nothing will change without serious accountability for command failures.

April Fools?

 National Security Needs Both Futurists and Traditionalists

Technological change is not new. Nor does a focus on technology at this particular moment make one a blinkered “futurist.” Technology is an instrument of national power that feeds and in turn is fed by other elements of national power. With so many technologies with potentially transformative applications emerging at once, focusing on understanding, developing, and leveraging these technologies is well justified, even if it seems myopic at times.

Survivalism - The Emerging Movement (1981)

This monograph was prepared as an independent research project for undergraduate credit. It was subsequently presented to a couple audiences at the behest of my professors.

Some forty years later, the material is curiously topical again.  The sociological focus was sound, as attested to by professors who used the material, recommended it to others, and suggested I use it as the basis for a graduate thesis.  Even in distant retrospect, the amount of work involved was considerable, especially considering that it was produced in an age without benefit of the Internet and word processors.

Survivalism - The Emerging Movement (~28 MB)

A New Leaf

After many years of serving mostly as a means of bookmarking items of interest for myself, this blog is turning over a new leaf.  In the future it will be mostly my original work - some historical, some current.  It will serve as the point of initial publishing of copyrighted works.

    dh

More Calls for FirstNet Interoperability

Public TV Stations Push FCC to Mandate FirstNet Datacasting Interoperability - Broadcasting & Cable:

Datacasting is a novel and potentially valuable adjunct to other forms of public safety communications.

Interoperability 20/20

For over twenty years, the subject of interoperability in emergency communications has consumed much in the way of public discourse and other resources.  To what end, may we ask here at the dawn of a new decade?

Fundamentally a problem of culture rather than technology, emergency communications capabilities are again and again bludgeoned by emerging “solutions” to ill-defined problems of interoperability - the “I-word”, itself, having become vulgar.  “Solutions”, by definition, have price tags and marketers and booths at conferences and lifespans measured in a few multiples of that of mayflies.  Gadflies tasked with solving the intractable problems of communications interoperability speed to the latest bright, shiny object purported to solve all problems: Truly mesmerized. 

“This is a time of unprecedented change in emergency communications!”

How profound!  Yesterday was such a time, as well, before you arrived and tomorrow will be even more so after you’re long gone!  How are we better prepared for that change than we were yesterday?  Or is breathlessness an adequate measure of success?

What hasn’t changed?  The complex, federated world of emergency response and, thusly, communications of, for, and between its components.  What else?  Our lack of understanding or, better yet, lack of ability to analyze the crucial elements of information interchange between otherwise autonomous public entities tasked by their taxpayers with precise missions far removed from the rarefied air of capitols.  What else?  Our ability to develop and evolve systems to meet those information sharing needs over time without becoming mere technological cheerleaders simply starry-eyed and convinced of our own prepubescent prescience.  What else?  Convolution of operability with interoperability to the effect that an agency’s own emergency communications needs (read: funding) become a demand on denizens of every other jurisdiction despite, oddly enough, those jurisdictions’ own funding challenges. 

No more mature since the turn of the century is the public sector’s ability to manage life cycle costs of technology, training, and sustainment of interagency communications capabilities.  The search for Silver Bullets continues.  Interoperability remains moot if only we would all use the same system – ignore those ugly dimensions of governance, policy/procedures, training, exercise, and familiarity through usage that nag regardless of the technological means by which we communicate.

The way forward from here is made more difficult by decades spent neglecting the fundamentals that would prepare the public sector:  Systems designed, deployed, and measured by contextual yardsticks for which they were intended.  Today, we’re left with immensely more complex challenges with no better understanding of underlying interagency business requirements in a world more and more awash in data.

The way forward remains illumined by an understanding of business (emergency response) requirements and the rigorous application of systems design principles to meet requirements, mold technological opportunities, and measure success in preparing for subsequent generations.  As long as interagency communications requirements are articulated in technological terms, rather than those of the business of emergency response, the specter of colossal interoperability failures grows directly in proportion to society’s dependence upon information and expectations that public safety services follow accordingly.

Can CPUC do for cell service what it did for electricity?

Reports Explain Cell, Internet Failure Amid California Fires

"The reports from phone and internet companies, made available Tuesday, help explain why hundreds of thousands of people lost critical communications tools during Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s October blackouts."

Go, Go, Go Godzilla!

No End in Sight for FirstNet Interoperability Debate - Government Technology

"Although more than 9,800 U.S. agencies are now on board with the nationwide public safety communications platform FirstNet, debate persists about the very issue it is designed to solve: interoperability."