Seybold's take: It's time for public safety to present a unified plan: "While the new administration was being formed, including the new FCC, it may have appeared that not much was happening in Washington D.C. with public-safety communications. But in reality a lot of positive things were taking place within the public-safety community and with commercial network operators."

California Planning Statewide Public Safety Interoperable Communications Network: "On Monday, California's Public Safety Radio Strategic Planning Committee (PSRSPC), that's composed of state emergency responders, held a public meeting to kick off the strategic planning process for a statewide interoperable communications network to connect emergency responders. California's goal is to build a statewide interoperable communications network over the next 10 years that allows PSRSPC members to communicate between themselves as well as with local, tribal and federal partners."

DHS Takes Step Forward on Interoperability: "The first pilot demonstrations of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Unified Incident Command and Decision Support (UICDS) system have been completed, Science Applications International Corporation, San Diego, Calif., an engineering and systems integration firm serving as prime contractor on the project, reported late last week.

The first test demo was held April 29 in coordination with Virginia Emergency Operations Center (VEOC) in Richmond, Va. A follow-up testing event took place in late May.

UICDS, an information architecture blueprint for managing and sharing incident information across state and local jurisdictional lines and with DHS and other federal agencies, is sponsored by the Science and Technology Directorate of the US Department of Homeland Security."

DHS Announces Sites for Multi-Band Radio Pilot: "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate today announced the 14 lead organizations for the upcoming pilot phase of testing and evaluation (T&E) for the Multi-Band Radio project. The pilots comprise the final phase of a three-part T&E process that includes laboratory testing, short-term demonstrations, and pilot projects."