Almost seven years after 911 and six years after Congress mandated it, the Department of Homeland Security released an 83-page plan yesterday to unify emergency response communications in most jurisdictions.
From Federal Computer Week:
The department's 83-page plan released July 31 outlined these goals:
- By 2010, 90 percent of all 60 high-risk urban areas designated under the Urban Area Security Initiative must show the ability to communicate across multiple jurisdictions and agencies within an hour of a multi-jurisdictional event.
- By 2011, 75 percent of all urban areas must be able to demonstrate emergency communications within one hour for routine events involving multiple jurisdictions and agencies.
- By 2013, 75 percent of all jurisdictions must be able to demonstrate response-level emergency communications within three hours of a significant event.
"This is a comprehensive plan designed to drive measurable and sustainable improvements to operable and interoperable emergency communications nationwide over the next three years. It emphasizes the human element and cross-jurisdictional cooperation, going beyond simply buying new equipment," Homeland Security Undersecretary Robert Jamison said in a statement. [From "DHS plans to unify emergency communications" -- fcw.com]
It took seven years to write a plan to do something most bloggers and travelers do already -- communicate seamlessly across multiple municipalities. This is possibly the least difficult lesson from 911 to fix, yet it has taken this long. I don't even want to think about how long the difficult challenges such as airport security are going to take to get right.
Leave a comment