Monday, June 29, 2009

Public-safety task force begins 700 MHz work: "A public-safety task force met for the first time last week in an effort to establish requirements for 700 MHz broadband systems that can be used as national standards, potentially providing guidance to the FCC and to metropolitan areas or regions wanting to pursue their own network buildouts in the spectrum band.

Participants in the process include the 15 member associations of the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC), the Department of Homeland Security's Science & Technology Directorate–Command, Control & Interoperability Division, and the technical-support organization at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)."
Emergency response to Metrorail crash shows post-9/11 gains: "First responders' effective handling of Monday's rail accident in Washington, coupled with the smooth rescue after a Hudson River plane crash in January, may indicate that the post-9/11 demand for better, faster emergency response is being met – at least in some of the nation's big cities.

'The regional response that is required during extraordinary incidents (Hudson and Metro being two good recent examples) has, in my opinion, significantly improved since 9/11,' Daniel Kaniewski, deputy director of George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute, wrote Wednesday in an e-mail interview. He served in the Bush White House as special assistant to the president for homeland security and senior director for response policy."

Monday, June 22, 2009

BAPCO help NPIA produce Guidance on Multi-Agency Interoperability: "The National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) has recently published its ‘Guidance on Multi-Agency Interoperability’ having worked with staff from the Police, Fire and Ambulance Services to support the introduction of common practices and procedures to prepare front-line staff for the advances in communications interoperability.

The NPIA wrote to the BAPCO organisation to thank them for their input in helping put the guidance together saying:"