State of emergency

The Association of Public Safety Communications Officials’ Bob Smith explains the technological and human challenges facing emergency responders.

“In truth, some of the most significant challenges we're currently facing aren't technological, but human”
-Bob Smith

These are interesting times in the emergency response space. Some of the current computer aided dispatch systems are starting to add things that in the past were optional bells and whistles into their base models. We’re seeing computer aided dispatch systems that are coming standard with AVL systems with mapping and GIS components, even with some level of records management, whether it’s a typical law enforcement records management or a prison or corrections records management system.  We’re seeing more case systems now that are all encompassing. Things that have been done in the past as bits and pieces are now becoming part of the basic package. It’s a good thing because it’s more cost effective for the Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), but more importantly, it streamlines the operations.
 
One of the biggest hurdles that we’re challenged with right now is interoperability when it comes to computer aided dispatch systems and data. We’ve had people beating the drum for radio interoperability for years, but people are just starting to realise that data interoperability is just as important. For example, if a CAD system can’t talk to a CAD system in another PSAP, then they’re potentially not as effective as they could be, so we’re seeing some CAD systems that are starting to tackle this by incorporating other components into their basic system. 

There are more standards being proposed and developed as well, and once the technology is in place we would be able to enable a huge amount of improvements. An example would be, if you are in PSAP A and you take a wireless call from someone who happens to be in the next county but because of the technology of mobile telephones, the call bounces into you. Rather than taking their information and calling another PSAP or transferring that caller, with this new technology you would actually be able to enter the data into your own CAD system and push it through to the correct PSAP. There it would immediately be displayed as a call logged into their system. 

A further example would be that if you are in PSAP A and you have an incident where you need mutual aid from PSAP B, rather than taking the time to call that other PSAP and say, ‘We need the fire department or the ambulance service or this many police officers to go here and this is what we’ve got going on’ you would be able to push that data out to PSAP B, straight into their CAD system. Again this populates the field on the dispatcher’s end as a call already in their system and then they just dispatch it, just as they would if a call taker took the call on their end. With that standard out there and other standards being developed, it’s just a matter of time before we are able to achieve these things.
 
In fact I think we’re looking at no more than a couple of years before we achieve this because, as CAD vendors improve their systems, put their new products and newer versions and additions on the market, they’ll start to incorporate these things that the public safety side has determined that we need. It’s a proactive approach versus reactive where we’re pushing out to them saying, ‘this is the kind of thing we need to develop and work on,’ rather than them coming to us and saying, ‘here’s what we’ve built and we will sell it to you.’ This change is really important. For years it’s always been the commercial side of the industry who have been pushing things. They have had a baseline concept of what PSAPs need and they have had historical data they have collected and put into a system. Now the roles have shifted.

As there are more and more CAD vendors on the market now, everyone is striving to come to the top. But in order to do that they’re getting much more intimate with the PSAPs and learning more about what we need and what we are doing. The result of that is the PSAPs are starting to dictate what CAD systems should and shouldn’t be able to do.

In truth, some of the most significant challenges we’re currently facing aren’t technological, but human. The biggest thing right now is bodies in seats. We have a tremendous staffing and retention crisis in public safety communications.  In the United States, for example, the shortage of nurses and teachers is fairly well known; by contrast the public safety communications industry is experiencing a 19 percent turnover rate, which means we are in an even greater crisis, but fewer people know about it. The problem with that is that there are PSAPs around the world are training people that may not stay with them more than a year or two; and what happens is that a tremendous amount of time and money can be invested in this person just to see them turn around and leave. But more importantly, the greater impact is you’ll have PSA’s that have an entire staff with less than two to three years’ experience in their position. 

There are many reasons why these problems are happening: obviously you have the typical shift work issues, such as working midnight shifts, weekends, holidays, being away from your family, and all of the things that come with any form of shift work, but the situation of understaffing makes these problems even worse. Today we have a tremendous amount of overtime because the fewer people on staff, the greater the need for overtime and people are working a tremendous amount of overtime to compensate for the fact that their isn’t enough staff. This perpetuates a pretty cycle. Everyone is short staffed and so the people they do have burn out faster. And then they leave.

There’s also the inherent nature of the job. There is a huge amount of stress that comes with dealing with people for up to 12 hours a day who are in life or death situations and knowing that a single number pushed wrong, or one simple word misstated on the radio, could potentially cost someone their life. The fact is nobody ever calls the emergency services because they’re having a good day.

On top of all these issues there are also issues with the industry overall. For example, public safety communications personnel are typically very low paid and the salaries are not commensurate with the workload. Also, they are not very well respected in the public safety industry because, for many years, the telecommunicators were simply secretaries, answering the phone, taking messages and passing it on. Thankfully we are starting to overcome that prejudice with certain levels of certifications and standards and professionalism within the industry, but there’s still a hint of that around.

Beyond that, 911, 999, 112, wherever you are in the world, the problem it is that the communications component of public safety is transparent to the end user. We don’t have the big red fire engines and the flashing blue lights, we don’t have the medical bags and the kits, in other words: you never see us. You may talk to us, but the people that actually come out help you are the people you identify with. We’re completely transparent, so there’s obviously a public education campaign needed there as well. Today though, this transparency, coupled with all of those other factors means there is a real inability to get hold of those highly effective people and then keep hold of them once you’ve got them.

There are a few things that we can do to improve the situation. The easiest is just raising salary levels, but that’s not always feasible, especially in the current economic climate. However, there other things that can be done that are just as simple (and in some cases that are relatively cost effective or even free). Every year in April, for example, we run in the States the National Public Safety Telecommunications Week, an event that is recognized by most states and has received Presidential and Congressional declarations.

It’s all about taking time to appreciate public safety telecommunicators and making them feel the respect they deserve. Through the event we are able to publicize an entire industry of highly dedicated, professional public safety communications personnel. The ability to do that costs next to nothing, but can have a big impact on morale. Beyond that, it’s about reaching out and explaining to people exactly what the telecommunicators do so that it becomes a more attractive career option. You would be hard pressed to find a kid anywhere in the world that says, ‘When I grow up I want to be a emergency services dispatcher.’ Educating them to what we do and how we do it is really important because then we will get more qualified candidates applying for these positions and we that we can rely on them to make it through training, become an effective part of the staff and ultimately stay with the industry for a decent amount of time.

Standard Issue
About a year ago, APCO International partnered with IJIS Institute, a nonprofit organization for commercial information technology corporations. APCO International received a grant from the Department of Justice and launched something called the Public Safety Data Interoperability Initiative.

The concept of the initiative is to bring the commercial providers together with the public safety professionals, allowing them to be more proactive so that, as they’re developing the systems of tomorrow, they’re incorporating safety professionals’ needs. “It’s a large project and we’ve put out 11 standards already that deal with data interoperability between basic CAD systems, records management systems, databases and GIS systems,” explains Smith. “Everything data interoperability-wise is being looked at by this project. It includes public safety personnel, fire service personnel, EMS, law enforcement personnel. We have brought everybody that could be potentially affected by data interoperability together and with the IJIS Institute have brought the value of having the Microsoft’s, the Cisco’s, the Sun Microsystem’s and all the big IT providers out there to the table.”

In fact, the partnership has been in place for almost two years now and is starting to see results in some of the work being done. The CAD vendors are opening their arms and embracing these standards that are being developing. “In fact, says Smith, “It may even speed up the process of having a higher level of data interoperability on the public safety side.”

About APCO
APCO International is the world's largest organization dedicated to public safety communications. It has been around since 1935, which is considerably longer than any other public safety communications association. Today, more than 15,000 members rely on APCO for their professional needs – from examining standards and issues to providing education, products and services.