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PROJECT SAFECOM: MORE TIME, MORE MONEY,

MORE COMMUNICATION? WHAT PROGRESS

HAVE WE MADE IN ACHIEVING INTEROPERABLE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN LOCAL,

STATE AND FEDERAL FIRST RESPONDERS?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION

POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS AND

THE CENSUS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

SEPTEMBER 8, 2004

Serial No. 108–264

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL

RELATIONS AND THE CENSUS

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida, Chairman

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

DOUG OSE, California

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

BOB DIX, Staff Director

SHANNON WEINBERG, Professional Staff Member/Deputy Counsel

JULIANA FRENCH, Clerk

ADAM BORDES, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on September 8, 2004 ....................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Beres, Timothy L., Associate Director, Office for Domestic Preparedness,

Department of Homeland Security .............................................................. 49

Boyd, David G., Ph.D., Director, SAFECOM Program Office, Science and

Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security ..................... 37

Jenkins, William O., Jr., Director, Homeland Security and Justice Issues,

U.S. Government Accountability Office ...................................................... 11

Lischke, Maureen, Senior Executive Service, Chief Information Officer,

National Guard Bureau ................................................................................ 102

Muleta, John, esq., Chief, Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, Federal

Communications Commission ...................................................................... 71

Neuhard, Michael P., fire chief, Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department ............................................................................................................... 121

Stile, Vincent, past president, Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International, Inc. ................................................................. 110

Worden, Thomas B., chief, Telecommunications Branch, State of California, Governor’s Office of Emergency Services ............................................ 128

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Beres, Timothy L., Associate Director, Office for Domestic Preparedness,

Department of Homeland Security, prepared statement of ...................... 51

Boyd, David G., Ph.D., Director, SAFECOM Program Office, Science and

Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 40

Clay, Hon. Wm. Lacy, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Missouri, prepared statement of .................................................................. 8

Jenkins, William O., Jr., Director, Homeland Security and Justice Issues,

U.S. Government Accountability Office, prepared statement of ............... 14

Lischke, Maureen, Senior Executive Service, Chief Information Officer,

National Guard Bureau, prepared statement of ........................................ 104

Muleta, John, esq., Chief, Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, Federal

Communications Commission, prepared statement of ............................... 74

Neuhard, Michael P., fire chief, Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department, prepared statement of ........................................................................ 124

Putnam, Hon. Adam H., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Florida, prepared statement of ................................................................ 4

Stile, Vincent, past president, Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International, Inc., prepared statement of ......................... 112

Worden, Thomas B., chief, Telecommunications Branch, State of California, Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, prepared statement of ..... 131

(1)

PROJECT SAFECOM: MORE TIME, MORE

MONEY, MORE COMMUNICATION? WHAT

PROGRESS HAVE WE MADE IN ACHIEVING

INTEROPERABLE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN LOCAL, STATE AND FEDERAL FIRST

RESPONDERS?

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2004

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION POLICY,

INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS AND THE CENSUS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 p.m., in room 2154,

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Adam H. Putnam (chairman

of the committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Putnam, Miller, Clay, and McCollum.

Staff present: Bob Dix, staff director; John Hambel, senior counsel; Shannon Weinberg, professional staff member/deputy counsel;

Juliana French, clerk; Grace Washbourne, professional staff member, full committee; Adam Bordes, minority professional staff member; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. PUTNAM. Good afternoon, and welcome. This hearing of the

Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census will come to order.

Good afternoon and welcome to the subcommittee’s hearing on

‘‘Project SAFECOM: More Time, More Money, More Communication? What Progress Have We Made in Achieving Interoperable

Communication Between Local, State and Federal First Responders?’’

The purpose of this hearing is to discuss the status and progress

of achieving communications interoperability among the various

first responders and to continue the subcommittee’s oversight of related Federal, State and local government programs. Specifically,

this hearing will review the progress of Project SAFECOM, one of

the President’s 25 Quicksilver e-Government initiatives, in developing policies that encourage State and local agencies to work together to promote first responders communications interoperability.

In its short history, Project SAFECOM has been relocated to

three different agencies, with four different management teams.

Now at the Department of Homeland Security, the initiative appears to be progressively moving forward. In April of this year,

Project SAFECOM adopted the statement of requirements for wireVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:18 Mar 21, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98292.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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less public safety communications and interoperability. What remains unclear, however, is the status of implementation of these

standards.

Interoperable communications is the ability of first responders to

share time sensitive information across disciplines and jurisdictions

via communications systems in real time. On September 11, 2001,

we witnessed a failure in communication not only among differing

first responder agencies, but within the responding agencies themselves. The tragic loss of so many lives was among the most shocking events in our modern history. The tragedy of this event is compounded by the knowledge that the loss of many lives, particularly

those of numerous first responders, could have been prevented had

there been fully interoperable communications.

Interoperability is not only important in managing a terror-related incident, but also critical in answering the call of other emergencies. Federal, State and local governments work together to answer many other types of emergencies. Here in our Nation’s capital, we have the U.S. Park Police, the U.S. Capitol Police and the

Metropolitan Police Department working together on a regular

basis for crowd control at celebrations and demonstrations. The

2003 wildfires in San Diego, California drew response teams from

a number of Federal, State and local agencies, as well as other

States. And more recently, in my home area in Florida, twice in the

last 25 days, numerous Federal, State and local agencies have

worked together to evacuate 47 out of our 67 counties, nearly 3 million people in the State’s largest ever evacuation for Hurricane

Frances, only 3 weeks after evacuating nearly 1 million people for

Hurricane Charley.

The vast majority of infrastructure for these interoperable communications resides in the management of the State and locals.

Consequently, the Federal Government’s role through Project

SAFECOM is that of facilitating the development of the communication across the Nation. Frequently, we have support and response from other States coming in to support local responders in

a major emergency.

Through standards development and implementation, the goal of

Project SAFECOM is to avoid situations in which the only way to

communicate emergency response efforts is by switching a handheld radio between responding agencies. By encouraging the adoption of standards, the hope is that cash-strapped local governments

will not spend tens of millions of dollars on communications systems that prove to not be interoperable with surrounding counties.

For instance, in the San Diego, California example, in October

they were hit by the most devastating wildfire disaster in their history. Three major fires raged across the county, killing 16, leaving

more than 390,000 acres burned and 2,700 residential or commercial buildings destroyed. The comprehensive study of that firestorm

declared that better communication was necessary. Not all firefighters had uniform ability to communicate, first because while

county fire agencies used spectrum in the 800 megahertz frequency, State and Federal agencies use a VHF system.

Further, some officials report that in that incident, their $90 million regional communication system proved to be ineffective, or at

the least it performed sub-par in this and other major catastrophes.

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The system was first used in 1998 and was meant to enable 80

county, local and State government agencies, such as sheriffs, deputies and firefighters to communicate during emergencies.

But during the firestorm of 2003, the system was plagued by

busy signals, 38,000 in the south county and 68,000 in the east

county. While fire administrators and many county officials say the

system is better than what they had before, that’s not good enough

given the state of technology and the state of perpetual danger

today. We can and must do better.

With the interoperable communication and homeland security

grants available to State and local governments, now centralized

under DHS within the Office of Domestic Preparedness, it appears

that the Department of Homeland Security has the carrot to persuade State and local governments to adopt the standards developed by Project SAFECOM. This appearance may be an illusion,

however, because the grant money is awarded in the form of a

block grant with few opportunities to follow up to ensure that the

standards tied to those grants are actually adopted or implemented.

Last November, this subcommittee held a joint hearing with the

Subcommittee on National Security and Emerging Threats to discuss the challenges of achieving first responder interoperable communications. Today’s hearing is an opportunity to examine those

continued efforts to measure the progress and to determine the

next steps in not only Project SAFECOM but other Federal, State

and local efforts.

As several offices still play a role in achieving communications

interoperability, this hearing also provides an opportunity to examine cross-agency coordination in this effort. We have two very distinguished panels of witnesses today, the first comprised of representatives from the Federal offices working on communications

interoperability, and I am eager to hear about the current state of

their efforts in achieving an interoperable communications network

of first responders.

Our second panel is comprised of a number of Federal, State and

local officials who either work on the government side of communications interoperability or who have first-hand disaster management experience, involving multiple response teams. One of our

panelists, Larry Alexander from Polk County, FL, was prepared to

give us first-hand disaster management expertise but he is still

managing a disaster with multiple Federal, State and local agencies as we speak, as part of the recovery operations center in the

aftermath of Hurricane Frances and in preparation potentially for

Hurricane Ivan.

We look forward to the expert testimony of those who are able

to join us today. I’m pleased to be joined by our distinguished ranking member, the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Clay and our distinguished Vice Chair from Michigan, Ms. Miller. At this time, I

would yield to Mr. Clay for any opening remarks he may have.

You’re recognized.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Adam H. Putnam follows:]

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Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman for calling this hearing on

what is a critical issue to our national welfare. Let me also say

that we’re glad to see you back here in one piece, and to know that

your family and constituents are safe from the two hurricanes that

occurred in Florida and from what we hear, an expected third one,

and let you know that we are glad you are here.

This is not the first time our subcommittee has addressed the

issues of communication and interoperability and substandard

management within the organizations that our citizens depend on

in times of crisis. It is my hope that our efforts today will aid all

stakeholders in establishing long-term policies and mechanisms for

improved communications when we need them. To begin, I am dismayed by the recent findings of GAO with regard to the lack of cooperation among Federal agencies having responsibility for both financing and operations of Project SAFECOM. As a starting point

for its troubles, the program has undergone various changes in

management and oversight since its creation 3 years ago, having

been assigned and reassigned among three different agencies and

four separate management teams. Although management of the

multi-agency project now permanently resides in the Department of

Homeland Security, past efforts have been ineffective for managing

a program that is designed to coordinate the efforts of our Nation’s

first responders.

Further complicating matters is DHS’ failure to secure operational and financial agreements among several of its partnering

agencies on SAFECOM initiatives. While DHS has placed significant effort into its role as managing partner of SAFECOM, it cannot hold the system together without the cooperation and financial

support of other stakeholders throughout the Federal, State and

local bureaucracy.

Until such financial and operational mechanisms are agreed to

among SAFECOM stakeholders, the project will continue to be underfunded on an annual basis, fail in its attempt to define and implement national standards for wireless interoperability and lose

the confidence of all other stakeholders in its mission as a central

coordinator for responding to local and national crises.

Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this hearing and I

look forward to the testimony from the witnesses.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you, Mr. Clay.

The gentlelady from Michigan, Ms. Miller.

Ms. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly want to tell

you how much I appreciate you holding this hearing and how very

much we all appreciate you actually attending, considering what

you have just been through. As Mr. Clay mentioned as well, I think

the audience needs to recognize our chairman just literally got off

the airplane. He’s too modest to tell you that, but about 20 minutes

ago, because that hurricane hit his county very, very severely, Polk

County and in that immediate area. And I know that all the members of both chambers were very happy to authorize additional expenditures for the State of Florida. They’ve been so hard hit with

these two last hurricanes and another one coming. So we appreciate your attendance here today and your commitment and your

dedication to that. Certainly our thoughts and prayers are with everybody in Florida and hopefully Ivan doesn’t get there. But in the

interim, having this hearing today I think is very appropriate, very

timely as we discuss this particular issue.

Our Nation’s war on terror has certainly placed our Nation at a

pivotal moment in history, quite frankly. Brave men and women

are fighting for our freedoms across our entire globe. But our

enemy seeks to take the fight to our homeland as well. And first

responders, of course, as often, and we certainly witnessed that on

September 11, are the very first line of defense.

Historically, we’ve considered, of course, police and firefighters as

our Nation’s first responders. But with today’s threats, individuals

such as health care officials and utility workers and others as well

are also now going to be called first responders. I think they will

certainly be called to duty in the event of an emergency. And it’s

vital to support these individuals in order to recover quickly from

an urgent situation and to minimize its impact.

Project SAFECOM is one aspect where the Federal Government

can offer a considerable amount of support to State and local governments as they prepare their first response teams. Interoperable

communication between Government agencies and organizations is

vital to emergency response, it has to be done very quickly, especially with the availability of new technologies. We need to be able

to utilize those technologies.

State and local government support the necessary infrastructure,

but the Federal Government, our role certainly is to offer them all

guidance and set some standards. Upon reviewing the written testimony of today’s witnesses, I am cautiously optimistic that Project

SAFECOM is on the right track, and I certainly look forward to the

testimony that we’ll have from our panels today.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much, Ms. Miller.

At this time we will move directly into testimony. I would ask

our first panel to please rise and raise your right hands, and anyone accompanying you who will be providing information for your

answers to be sworn in as well. Please raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. PUTNAM. I note for the record that all the witnesses responded in the affirmative. And we will move directly to testimony,

beginning with Mr. William Jenkins. Mr. Jenkins currently serves

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as the Director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues within the

U.S. Government Accountability Office. In this position, he is responsible for issues regarding emergency preparedness and response, elections, Federal Judiciary sentencing and corrections and

bankruptcy. Prior to joining GAO as a faculty fellow in 1979, Mr.

Jenkins was a professor of political science. He has also served as

an adjunct professor to the American University. His principal

areas of concentration include budget policy, defense, administration of justice and homeland security. He is a graduate of Rice University and received his M.A. of political science and Ph.D. in public law from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

We have a room issue, we will be doing everything we can to

move the hearing along, and we would ask all of our witnesses to

please abide by the 5-minute rule. Mr. Jenkins, you are recognized

for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM O. JENKINS, JR., DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY AND JUSTICE ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT

ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

Mr. JENKINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee.

I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to discuss our work

on wireless interoperable communications for first responders.

First, it’s important to note that interoperable communications is

not an end in itself and is not primarily a technology issue. Rather,

it is a necessary means of achieving an important goal, the ability

to respond effectively to and mitigate the effects of incidents that

require the coordinated actions of first responders. Interoperable

communications is but one important component of an effective incident command and operation structure.

Achieving effective interoperable communications for first responders requires the successful integration of people, processes

and technology. The technology needed flows from a comprehensive

assessment of needs and the incident management structure in

which the technology will be used.

In our July 2004 report and November 2003 testimony before

this subcommittee, we outlined three challenges in achieving interoperable communications that remain the principal challenges

today. They are, one, clearly defining and identifying the problem;

two, establishing performance goals, requirements and standards;

and three defining governmental roles and addressing the problem.

These are primarily people and process issues.

The single biggest obstacle to achieving effective interoperable

communications has been and remains the lack of effective, collaborative, interdisciplinary and intergovernmental planning. The cultural and turf barriers for achieving this are deeply rooted and

longstanding.

Second, Federal, State and local governments all have important

roles to play in developing standards that can be used to assess

interoperability requirements, identify gaps in the current ability

to meet those requirements and develop and implement comprehensive plans for closing those gaps. The Federal Government

could provide the leadership, focus and long term commitment

needed.

12

For example, it could take leadership in developing a set of baseline requirements, a national data base of interoperable frequencies, a national standard nomenclature for those frequencies,

and a governance and funding structure that supports State efforts

to develop and implement statewide interoperable communication

plans.

Moreover, only the Federal Government can allocate public safety spectrum. With support from the Federal Government and broad

participation and input from local and tribal governments and first

responders, States can serve as the focal points for statewide interoperability planning and implementation. The FCC has recognized

the States’ importance by providing the States authority to administer the interoperability channels within the 700 megahertz spectrum. Some States are working to develop statewide plans, but

there is no established structure or funding to support such efforts.

Nor is there any guidance for States on what should be included

in such plans. Such plans would need to encompass cross-State

interoperability issues in such areas as New York, Philadelphia

and Cincinnati, where metropolitan areas cross State boundaries.

SAFECOM was established as the umbrella program for coordinating all Federal initiatives and projects on public safety interoperable communications. According to SAFECOM, there are more

than 100 Federal agencies and programs involved in public safety

issues. SAFECOM’s ability to provide the needed Federal leadership and coordination has been hampered by its dependence on

other Federal agencies for funding and cooperation. DHS has recently created the Office of Interoperability and Compatibility to be

fully established by November 2004. However, that office’s structure, funding and authority are still being developed.

The status of current interoperable communications capabilities

nationwide, including the scope and severity of any shortcomings,

has not yet been determined. To assess these capabilities, a set of

requirements is needed that can be used to assess what is compared to what should be. In April 2004, SAFECOM issued a document designed to serve as a set of baseline requirements, expects

to complete its baseline assessment of current interoperable capabilities by July 2005, but is still refining its methodology for developing that baseline.

Third and finally, the fragmented Federal branch structure for

first responders limits the Federal Government’s ability to provide

consistent, effective guidance and support for State and local planning and implementation efforts. SAFECOM has developed recommended grant guidance for all Federal grants whose moneys

could be used to improve interoperability But cannot require consistent guidance be included in all Federal first responder grants.

Moreover, some grants do not support long term planning efforts.

For example, they do not require interoperable communications

plans prior to receiving funds or have a 1 or 2 year performance

period that may encourage a focus on equipment purchases rather

than comprehensive planning to guide those purchases.

In addition, Federal and State Governments lack a coordinated

grant review process to ensure that funds allocated to local governments are used for communications projects that complement each

other and add to overall statewide and national interoperable caVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:18 Mar 21, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98292.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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pacity. One result is that grants could be approved for bordering

jurisdictions that propose conflicting interoperable solutions.

We recognize that SAFECOM has made progress in bringing

leadership and focus to the Federal Government’s interoperability

efforts and many State and local officials are working diligently to

assess and improve interoperable communications. Our July 2004

report includes recommendations to the Secretary of DHS and the

Director of OMB for enhancing Federal coordination and providing

assistance and encouragement to States to establish statewide

interoperability planning bodies that draw on the experience and

perspectives of local first responders.

That concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman, and I would be

happy to answer any questions you or other members of the committee may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Jenkins follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much, Mr. Jenkins.

Our next witness is Dr. David Boyd. Dr. Boyd is the Deputy Director of System Engineering and Development under DHS’ Science

and Technology Directorate. He serves as the Director of the

Project SAFECOM program office, and was recently placed in

charge of creating the Department’s new Office of Interoperability

and Compatibility. He is also a member of the President’s National

Task Force on Spectrum Management.

Prior to his work on the civilian side, Dr. Boyd served in the U.S.

Army for more than 20 years, in which he commanded combat,

combat support and training units in both war and peace, and has

served on military staffs from battalion level to the Pentagon. He

has more than three dozen military awards, including the Bronze

Star and the Purple Heart.

Dr. Boyd holds a career appointment in the Senior Executive

Service, is a graduate of the University of Illinois and holds graduate degrees in operations research and public policy analysis, as

well as a doctorate in decision sciences. He is widely published and

we are delighted to have him. Dr. Boyd, you are recognized for 5

minutes.

STATEMENT OF DAVID G. BOYD, PH.D., DIRECTOR, SAFECOM

PROGRAM OFFICE, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DIRECTORATE, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

Mr. BOYD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the invitation to testify before you today.

Mr. Chairman, as you, Chairman Davis and Chairman Shays observed recently in a letter to GAO, ‘‘Effective communications between and among wireless communications systems used by Federal, State and local public safety agencies is generally accepted as

not only desirable, but essential for the protection of life and property.’’

Interoperability is not a new issue for public safety. It was a

problem in 1984 when the Air Florida flight crashed into the Potomac; in New York City when the Twin Towers were bombed in

1993; at the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City; at Columbine and

on September 11. But September 11 put the issue in such stark relief that more effort has now gone into interoperability than at any

time in history.

Since 2001, FEMA and the COPS office have partnered with

SAFECOM to coordinate well over $230 million in interoperability

grants to localities. At least $1.1 billion more has been provided

through preparedness grants to States. Two major interoperability

initiatives have been or are being established at the highest levels:

SAFECOM, established as a Presidential Management Initiative,

and the DHS effort to establish an Office of Interoperability and

Compatibility by the end of this year.

When I testified before you last November, interoperability programs were spread across the Government. The Homeland Security

Act had made three different agencies responsible for interoperability in DHS alone: the Office of Domestic Preparedness, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and even an agency in the

Department of Justice. SAFECOM was under its fourth program

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manager and the Government Accountability Office was finishing

one study of the program and beginning another.

I’m happy to report to you today that while much remains to be

done, and responsibility for interoperability remains diffused across

the Government, our efforts to bring order to the problem have

been validated by the most recent GAO report and by the major

State and local public safety associations, who declared in January

that ‘‘with the advent of the SAFECOM Program public safety, and

State and local government finally have both a voice in public safety discussions at the Federal level and confidence that the Government is coordinating its resources.’’

We have created the Federal Interagency Coordinating Council

to coordinate funding, technical assistance, standards development

and regulations affecting communications and interoperability

across the Federal Government. We have published a statement of

requirements which, for the first time, defines what it will take to

achieve full interoperability and provides industry requirements

against which to map their product capabilities. We have issued a

request for proposals for the development of a national interoperability baseline and will make an award in October.

We have issued a request for information to industry to tell us

what technologies they had or were developing to help with interoperability which produced more than 150 responses. We have accelerated the development of critical standards for interoperability

and developed a framework for defining a national architecture.

We have created coordinated grant guidance and implemented it

in the FEMA and COPS interoperability grants last year, and in

the COPS interoperability grants and ODP State block grants this

year. We have established a joint task force with the FEDERAL

Communications Commission to consider spectrum and regulatory

issues that affect interoperability. And we’ve created a model methodology with the State of Virginia for the development of statewide

communications plans supported at every level within the State.

Since we know neither terrorists nor natural disasters will wait,

the Secretary has directed the Science and Technology Directorate

to provide assistance to 10 high threat urban areas through a program called RAPIDCom. We found that most of the 10 urban areas

have the technical capability to achieve a basic command level of

interoperability, but lack many of the operational elements required to actually achieve interoperability, so that, in some cases,

equipment provided by the Federal Government is still not integrated into the local system. We have been working for several

months now to help fill those operational gaps, since technology, as

our interoperability continuum displayed on the easel before you illustrates, is only one of the elements needed for successful interoperability.

Earlier this year, the Secretary of DHS directed the Science and

Technology Directorate to establish a new Office of Interoperability

and Compatibility to address relevant equipment and training as

well as communications. We have already identified more than 60

different programs in the Federal Government that deliver equipment or training to first responders.

We still have much to do, but we have laid a firm foundation.

Never before has a Presidential Management Initiative existed that

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addresses communications interoperability issues at all levels of

Government. Never before has Congress made so much grant

money available for States and localities to improve their interoperability.

Never before has common grant guidance been applied across the

entire Federal Government. Never before has a national statement

of requirements for interoperability existed.

We are confident that with your continuing support and the assistance of our many local, State and Federal partners, we can ensure that lives and property are never lost because public safety

agencies cannot communicate. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Boyd follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much, Dr. Boyd.

Our next witness is Timothy Beres. Welcome to the subcommittee, Mr. Beres. Mr. Beres is the Associate Director of DHS’ Office

of Domestic Preparedness, with responsibility for the State and

Local Operations Division. He has been with ODP since its inception.

During his tenure at the Office of Domestic Preparedness, Mr.

Beres led the effort to establish the Center for Domestic Preparedness, an emergency responder training center, for the management

and remediation of incidents of domestic terrorism involving chemical weapons. Additionally, he was responsible for developing ODP’s

national training program, developing ODP’s assessment and strategy development process, and developing and implementing the

pre-positioned equipment program.

Mr. Beres received his bachelor’s degree from Virginia PolyTech

and State University in 1991. Welcome to the subcommittee. You’re

recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF TIMOTHY L. BERES, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR,

OFFICE FOR DOMESTIC PREPAREDNESS, DEPARTMENT OF

HOMELAND SECURITY

Mr. BERES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. It is with great pleasure that I come and speak to you today.

Thank you very much for having me.

As you know, the Secretary recently established the Office of

State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness, of

which ODP is now a key component. On behalf of our executive director, Suzanne Mencer, and Secretary Ridge, it is my pleasure to

appear before you today to discuss briefly the current status of our

program, specifically our work on interoperable communications.

The Office of Domestic Preparedness is responsible for preparing

our Nation against terrorism by assisting States, local jurisdictions,

regional authorities and tribal governments to prevent, respond to

and recover from acts of terrorism. Through its programs and activities, ODP equips, trains, exercises and supports State and local

homeland security personnel, our Nation’s first responders.

During fiscal year 2004, ODP’s record of service to the Nation’s

first responders continues. All the 56 States and territories have

been awarded their fiscal year 2004 funds. These awards represent

$2.2 billion in direct assistance. ODP’s two primary sources for assistance to States and local communities requires them to assess

their risks, capabilities and needs, which includes requirements relating to interoperable communications. Since 2002, $1.2 billion in

grant assistance has been used by States and local jurisdictions to

improve interoperability.

On December 17, 2003, the President issued Homeland Security

Presidential Directive 8, or HSPD–8. Through this HSPD–8, the

President tasked Secretary Ridge, in coordination with other Federal departments as well as State and local jurisdictions, to develop

a national preparedness goal and readiness matrix to improve the

delivery of Federal preparedness assistance. ODP is leading that

effort for the Department.

ODP has developed and is currently implementing the Interoperable Communications Technical Assistance Program, or ICTAP.

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ICTAP provides onsite technical assistance and training at no cost

to first responders in conjunction with communications equipment

purchased with grant funding. The program is not limited to a set

time period, but focuses on quickly and thoroughly meeting unique

interoperability needs and requirements of jurisdictions across the

country.

The ICTAP technical assistance team works closely with the

Sates and regions to provide onsite support from an initial assessment and inventory of what currently exists to live operation of the

new system. This process covers four phrases: identifying requirements, identifying an appropriate solution, implementing the solution and followup and transitioning to the new system. ICTAP has

received requests for assistance from 32 of the 51 participating

urban area security initiative jurisdictions as well as 8 States and

3 U.S. territories.

With regard to some specific examples of work we’re conducting,

in South Florida significant attention is focused on the difficult policy issues of developing standard operating procedures and mutual

aid agreements to address incompatible systems in that region’s

largest jurisdictions. In Central Florida, the immediate issue that

we’re working on with that region is to document what equipment

is placed throughout the region. In Kansas City, Missouri, ICTAP

is working with an organization called the Mid-American Regional

Council, which represents city and county governments on regional

issues. Working with the MARC representatives, ICTAP has proposed an interoperability solution known as the Regional Area

Multi-Band Integrated System, which is a radio system that will

provide interoperability between disparate radio systems.

As we are well aware, there are a number of different activities

both within the Department of Homeland Security as well as with

other departments that involve interoperable communications

issues. As you will hear about these activities from other witnesses,

I will simply state that the role of ICTAP is to fill the operational

communications needs of States and regions by responding to the

requests coordinated through the States. ODP looks to SAFECOM

to provide standards and conduct research that can help our jurisdictions develop a better interoperable communications program.

As an example, earlier this year, we adopted the SAFECOM-developed Guidelines for Interoperability as recommendations for use of

funds. In addition, ODP supports Project RAPIDCom with technical experts and is a member of the Federal Interagency Coordinating Council which seeks to avoid duplication.

In closing, DHS’ mission in the area of improved interoperable

communications among first responders is critical. ODP fully recognizes the specific and vital role we must play. We will strive to fulfill our mission and meet our responsibilities in an effective and efficient manner. We will, to the best of our abilities, continue to

identify where and how we can improve. This concludes my statement, and I am happy to respond to any questions the committee

might have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Beres follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much, and before we take our final

testimony, I would like to welcome to the subcommittee our newest

member, Ms. McCollum, the gentlelady from Minnesota. We will

move forward with our testimony.

Our final witness on panel one is John Muleta. Mr. Muleta

serves as Chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau within

the Federal Communications Commission. Prior to his appointment

as Chief, Mr. Muleta served the FCC in various positions, including

Deputy Bureau Chief in the Common Carrier Bureau and Chief of

the Enforcement Division of that same bureau. In the private sector, he began his career at GTE Corp. and later worked at Coopers

and Lybrand Consulting. He received a B.S. degree in systems engineering at the University of Virginia School of Engineering and

Applied Sciences, and his J.D. MBA also from the University of

Virginia. Welcome to the subcommittee, sir. You are recognized for

5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF JOHN MULETA, ESQ., CHIEF, WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS BUREAU, FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS

COMMISSION

Mr. MULETA. Good afternoon, Chairman Putnam and other members of the subcommittee.

I’d like to note that I’m sitting beside my colleague from the Department of Homeland Security, one of the few times University of

Virginia has been behind Virginia Tech. That’s a little aside there.

[Laughter.]

I want to thank you for this opportunity to appear before you on

behalf of FCC to discuss our work on facilitating interoperability

between the Nation’s public safety communications systems. On

July 20th of this year, I appeared before the committee to discuss

our work on facilitating interoperability. On that date, GAO had

released its comprehensive analysis on Project SAFECOM and testified as to the challenges that are inherent in fostering interoperability on a nationwide scale. During the past month, the Commission has taken several steps to further its efforts in this area. First,

the Commission released its decision regarding public safety interference on the 800 megahertz band, which will go t a significant

way toward alleviating and ultimately eliminating instances of interference to public safety in that band, while simultaneously freeing up additional spectrum for public safety use, including for

interoperability purposes.

Second, the FCC’s Homeland Security Policy Council report to

the Commission on the FCC’s overall efforts to ensure that our regulations and policies promote public safety interoperability, enhance 911 implementation, network security and reliability and

other vital homeland security goals. In addition to our initiative,

the 9/11 Commission released its report with its recommendations

that may impact telecommunications policies.

Before discussing these important matters, however, I’d like to

review the FCC’s background and history in dealing with interoperability and public safety spectrum issues. The Commission’s experience working with public safety entities and stakeholders is expansive and far-reaching. Today there are more than 40,000 spectrum

licenses designated for public safety systems under the CommuVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:18 Mar 21, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00075 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98292.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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nications Act. The FCC has the unique role of providing the spectrum that States and local governments use as an integral part of

these systems.

Under the leadership of Chairman Powell, the Commission has

intensified its effort in this area and designated homeland security

and public safety issues as one of the Commission’s six core strategic objectives. As September 11th vividly demonstrated, the ability

of public safety systems to communicate seamlessly at incident

sites with minimal onsite coordination is critical to saving lives and

property. The FCC is therefore committed to using all of its resources to promote and enhance interoperability of the thousands

of other safety systems that make up a critical part of our homeland security network.

Our experience indicates that a holistic approach is the best

method for fostering interoperability. Achieving interoperability requires a focus on more than spectrum, technology and equipment

issues. It also requires a focus on the organizational and the personal coordination communications that are necessary to make it

available at the times of our greatest needs. For its part, the Commission directed its efforts toward providing additional spectrum

for public safety systems, to also nurture technological developments that enhance interoperability and also providing its expertise and input within the limits of the statute to interagency effort

such as SAFECOM to improve our homeland security.

With that said, it’s important to understand that despite all its

efforts, there are limits to what the FCC can do. The FCC is only

one stakeholder in the process, and many of the challenges facing

interoperability are a result of the disparate governmental interests, local, State and Federal, that individually operate portions of

our national public safety systems. Each of these interests has different capabilities in terms of funding and technological sophistication, making it difficult to develop and deploy interoperability

strategies uniformly throughout the country without initiatives

such as the ones that SAFECOM and DHS are now implementing.

Regardless of these problems, we at the FCC continue to advance

policies that enable all of the stakeholders to do their best in maintaining a strong and viable national public safety system.

Moving on to the actual spectrum that’s available for public safety, the Commission currently has designated throughout the country approximately 97 megahertz of spectrum from 10 different

bands for public safety use. The Commission has also designated

channels of these public safety bands specifically for interoperability, including 2.6 megahertz in the 700 megahertz band, five

channels in the 800 megahertz band, five channels in the 150

megahertz band which is commonly known as the VHF band, and

four channels in the 450 megahertz band, known as the UHF band.

In addition, starting next January, the Commission will require

newly certified public safety mobile radio units to have the capacity

to transmit and receive on a nationwide public safety interoperability calling channel in the UHF and VHF bands in which they

operate.

In recent years, the Commission has also made additional spectrum available for public safety use. First, consistent with the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, the FCC identified and allocated 24 adVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:18 Mar 21, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00076 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98292.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ditional megahertz of spectrum in the 700 megahertz band for public safety use. In particular, it’s important to note that the FCC

designated 2.6 megahertz of the spectrum for interoperability purposes. Given the central role the States provide in managing emergency communications and in concert with what my colleague from

GAO has reported on, the FCC also concluded that States are well

suited for administering the interoperability spectrum and that

State level administration would promote the safety of life and

property through seamless coordinated communications on interoperable spectrum.

Second, the FCC designated 50 megahertz of spectrum at 4.9

gigahertz for public safety users in response to requests from the

public safety community for additional spectrum for broadband

data communications. The 4.9 gigahertz band rules also foster

interoperability by providing a new and innovative regulatory

framework where traditional public safety entities can pursue strategic partnerships with others, such as a critical infrastructure industry, that are necessary for the completion of their mission.

Most recently, in our July agenda meeting, the Commission

adopted by unanimous and bipartisan vote a solution to the ongoing and growing problem of interference based in the 800 megahertz public safety radio system. In addition to providing a means

to abate such interference, the Commission’s decision will ultimately result in the availability of additional 4.5 megahertz of the

800 megahertz band, which is the most heavily used band for public safety and critical infrastructure licenses. We are hopeful that

public safety organizations will take full advantage of this additional spectrum to advance interoperable communications goals.

Moving on to the coordination efforts that we carry on, the Commission staff also routinely confers and does outreach with critical

organizations, including the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials, the National Public Safety Telecommunications

Council, the International Association of Fire Chiefs, International

Association of Chiefs of Police. Moreover, the staff is working closely with the Department of Homeland Security SAFECOM as we

both share the common goal of improving public safety communications and interoperability. We are continuing our collaborative efforts to develop a strong working relationship, both formally and

informally.

Dr. Boyd and I also continue to work together at a personal level

to promote and ensure effective coordination regarding homeland

security issues. As I mentioned in July, Dr. Boyd and I are committed to establishing an informal working group comprised of representatives of our respective staffs to meet on a regular basis to

focus on interoperability issues of mutual interests. I am pleased

to announce that we have taken steps to this end, and just recently, representatives of our staff have initiated this effort. I am

encouraged by this action and confident that this interagency cooperation will prove beneficial to all the groups involved.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify in front of you on this

important issue, and I will be glad to answer any questions you

might have. Thank you, sir.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Muleta follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much. I know that there will be

a number of questions. We will begin with 5 minute rounds. The

Vice Chair of the subcommittee will begin, the gentlelady from

Michigan, Ms. Miller.

Ms. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciated all of you coming today and your testimony is very

interesting. One of the more emotional debates I think that we had

this year on the floor of the House was when we were debating the

Department of Homeland Security budget. There was an amendment that just about everybody had something to say about, where

they were talking about whether or not we should be expending

more funds in the State of New York, in the city of New York rather than spending funds in Montana or Wyoming. This is not a new

debate. I think the entire Nation has engaged in it. In fact, I noticed recently one of the networks had a story about this. I forget

the numbers numerically, but I think they were saying that some

of the less populated States were getting almost $50 per capita,

States like New York, etc., were in the $20 range or something.

Again, I’ve forgotten the numbers, but quite a discrepancy there.

So I have a question about the dollars as well, and how we actually are expending the dollars. I think Dr. Boyd and Mr. Beres both

mentioned a little bit about the dollars. Whether or not, I think Mr.

Boyd said there was quite a bit of money that we had never before

authorized so much money for the DHS and for the various programs. I think Mr. Beres mentioned the $2 billion amount.

But I’m just wondering, first of all, how much actually has been

authorized by Congress in regards to SAFECOM and how are you

actually granting the dollars? Especially I guess my question goes

to, how are you actually working with the States or localities? It’s

been my experience in Michigan that it’s almost exclusively with

the State of Michigan rather than the individual counties. I’m just

wondering if that is true or my observation is correct, and are you

then working with the States, each one of the States of course is

responsible to have their respective department of homeland security assessment, their State assessment? How is all this working?

Mr. BOYD. I think we probably ought to answer that in two parts.

Tim Beres manages the actual grant funding. Let me talk a bit

about how we’re approaching the States and what we think it requires to make things work in the States.

We’re convinced that for any statewide plan to work, and we

think you need a statewide plan, it has to be one that’s built from

the bottom up, that includes the small counties and the small

towns. When we worked with the State of Virginia to help them develop a statewide plan, we intentionally started the effort in

Wytheville, VA, a very small place, and then worked our way

around the State. In fact, that statewide plan is attached to testimony that you will be hearing in the next panel.

We believe you can’t make interoperability work unless you start

at the local level and work your way up. Because interoperability

isn’t something that’s isolated to a single city or a single place, if

we’re going to have real interoperability you have to be able to take

it to all levels. For example, when urban search and rescue teams

deploy, no matter where it is they go they come from a variety of

jurisdictions. They don’t just come from big cities; they often come

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from volunteers in smaller counties, from a combination of groups

from around the United States.

It’s important when they arrive that their communications equipment be fully interoperable. The way it’s handled now in many

cases is exactly as the chairman has pointed out, by exchanging radios. They either bring extra radios with them, or the agency that

they’re coming to support has to provide them radios. We need to

be able to do a much better job than that, and we think that means

you have to start with a collaborative effort that includes all of the

players at the very lowest level of government all the way up to

the very highest level. It’s our experience that no statewide plan

will work unless it’s built this way.

Ms. MILLER. Tim.

Mr. BERES. Thanks. The majority of our funding goes through

the States, as you mentioned before, both the urban Area Security

Initiative funding and the State Homeland Security grant program

does go through the States. Then it has to be, 80 percent of those

funds have to be sub-granted out to local units of government.

The reason for this is to allow the State, a central player, to have

an overall look, strategic look, strategic planning outlook, as to how

to allocate the funds. This is especially important when we’re talking about interoperability, so that we aren’t making individual

grants to smaller communities that aren’t necessarily incorporated

into an overall broader plan or broader strategy for interoperability. We want to make sure that coordination is done at a central level in the State, along with all the communities that would

be receiving funding for interoperability.

Ms. MILLER. You know, if I could followup on that, a big purposes of this hearing today is so that we can continue to fine tune

and do a better job and make sure the dollars are getting where

they need to get. It’s not as though we all just fell off the truck and

now find out that the ability to communicate is a problem. It’s not

as thought it’s inherent to one particular area. It seems to be very

widespread.

In fact, I’ll give you a personal experience, Secretary Ridge came

into one of my counties, and that’s what he said, almost everywhere he went in the Nation, that’s what he was finding, is the

ability to communicate amongst the various first responders and

public agencies, etc., was a big problem that we were having. I’m

wondering whether or not Congress, for instance, maybe we have

made the criteria for the granting too restrictive for you. I have a

county in my area, all politics being local, this is the county that

has the Bluewater Bridge, which is the third busiest commercial

artery on the northern tier, it is the only bridge that is authorized

to transport hazardous material. We have a CN Rail tunnel that’s

immediately under there. We have something called Chemical Valley that runs along, we have a liquid border that we share with

Canada for miles and miles with all these chemical plants, etc.

And yet almost all the money that comes into our State seems

to go into a county that is host to the city of Detroit, because of

these population criteria that we have foisted on all of you. Is there

a way that Congress can make you better able to accomplish your

mission, give you more flexibility? Do you have any comments on

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how restrictive we’ve made it in handicapping your ability to get

the dollars?

Mr. BERES. There’s two different programs that we have, one of

which is the Urban Area Security Initiative program, which is

based on risk primarily, a risk-based formula that really hits to the

highest threat urban areas in the country, one of which is Detroit

and its core county that is around it. Then the other program is

a little bit larger than the Urban Area Security Initiative Program,

which is a statewide program, which is, the purpose of that is to

meet those other areas that are not covered under those high risk

programs.

So we do focus a great deal of our dollars on high risk areas that

have been identified, but then a whole other pot is focused on high

risk areas that the State has identified that aren’t in our original

pot. Some of those can be pushed to those other areas through the

State itself.

Mr. BOYD. We also had some other difficulties as we applied the

common grant guidance. Depending on who it was they were applying to for the grant, and what legislation governed the agency, the

rules for the grants were different. So with SAFECOM grant guidance we tried to create a common set of requirements, but then we

had to tailor them based on what the law actually said, for whether

it was a grant that was coming through FEMA or it was a grant

coming through the COPS office or it was part of a State block

grant coming through the State.

In some cases the grants would permit funding only for equipment. One of the great difficulties with this is that many of these

localities lack the technical expertise, the engineering help, and the

consulting help they needed. But in the case of the COPS grants,

they could spend the money only on equipment. In the FEMA

grants, they had a bit more flexibility and they were actually able

to use these to pay for all the elements of interoperability.

One of the points we make, and one of the reasons we developed

the continuum is that technology is only one component of interoperability. You also have to help the jurisdictions develop solid

governance structures, you have to work with them through exercises and training, you have to help them develop standard operating procedures, and you have to be able to provide the technical assistance they need. So it would be useful if mechanisms were made

available, if the legislation didn’t have different requirements to

address the same problem, and if they weren’t so restrictive that

communities couldn’t seek the kind of help they needed in order to

support interoperability.

Ms. MILLER. Thank you.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you, Ms. Miller.

I’d be happy to recognize the gentlelady from Minnesota for your

first wave of questioning.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just had a meeting with the first responders’ representatives in

Minnesota with Congressman Szabo this past month in August.

And there were a couple of themes that came up, and of course

they all had to do with dollars. One of them was just in applying

for the grants, and I noticed in the GAO study it talks about Federal grant structure does not support statewide planning. And anVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:18 Mar 21, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00097 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98292.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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other section of it deals with grant submission, performance period,

time, also presents challenges to short term and long term funding.

One of the issues, and everybody around the table shook their

head, is the supplying online that they’re doing. The system is

down for maintenance quite often on the weekends. These are people who are putting this on top of already a 40 hour work week

that they’re doing, quite often coming in to do this on evenings and

weekends. And the system is down for maintenance, they can’t, I’ll

get you their comments. But they were really looking to having a

system that was user friendly and easy to use. There is room for

needs improvement in this category for our local elected officials.

The other issue was the way that reimbursements were being

held. They have budgets and budget frames in which they work

under for county and local units of government. The Federal budget

frame doesn’t work the same way. And they are not allowed to run

deficits, they have to balance their budget. So they either have to

make decisions that the grant is going to forward and the funding

will come when they submit their budgets to, whether it’s a city

council or the county or the State. Then if it doesn’t come, they’ve

created a deficit, a hole in their budget.

So I hope as we move forward and along with this, we take into

account not only do we need to get our work done for our budgeting

in a timely fashion, that is stay here and do the work, but we also

have to be cognizant of what their budgets are like. And also the

joint powers agreement that many municipalities have to enter into

in order to make their projects cost effective also is causing problems in applying for grants.

So having said that, I’ll move to the two questions that I have.

One is in a document that was prepared for us and it’s on page

three. It talks about the GAO, however, according to the Department of Homeland Security, failed to secure agreements with two

of the key stakeholder agencies in 2003, the Departments of Interior and Justice. Thus, only $17 million of the $30.9 million OMB

allocated through participating agencies was received by

SAFECOM. So my question is, what happened to the other $18

million?

And I also have heard very clearly from my first responders, both

private sector and public sector, that they are very concerned about

interoperability continuing on in the future as technology upgrades

will be happening. First they are trying to get the money to convert

everybody to 800, then they have the challenge of how do we keep

everybody from the National Guard to the smallest township in

Ramsey County current with upgrades? Has there been any talk

about how we’re going to play for the money for that?

Mr. BOYD. Well, let me answer the first question about the partner funding. So far we have agreements in place and have received

the funding this year from all of the partners except the Department of Interior. We continue to talk with the Department of Interior. But all the rest this year has been provided.

Part of the SAFECOM planning makes the assumption that

we’re going to have a variety of different technologies over time.

That’s because technology doesn’t advance in an orderly way and

localities can’t simply upgrade every time something new arrives

on the horizon.

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So for that reason, we believe the development of our standard

strategy and the kinds of help we provide to localities needs to provide what we call a migration path; that is, a rational way to migrate forward to full interoperability while maintaining backward

interoperability with legacy systems. We know, for example, that

software defined radio is on the horizon. We know that increasingly

we’re going to be moving from analog to digital systems. And so all

of those are going to continue to create some of the technology disconnects that contribute to a lack of interoperability.

There are near term ways to get around this, and part of what

RAPIDCom is focused on doing and what we’re trying to help localities with is to put into place near term interoperability solutions,

things like patch devices. We, for example, issued a set of specifications to govern the purchase of patch devices that localities could

use when they issued their requests for proposals from manufacturers.

We think all of those things, together with a standards process

that allows that migration, is going to be essential in order to permit the upgrades to happen in a way that doesn’t lose contact with

the technologies they’re leaving. We’re well aware that a typical jurisdiction that made an investment 8 years ago in an analog system is not likely to be able to afford to spend $11 million or $20

million or $100 million to go to a digital system in the next year

or 2 or 3 years. The technologies we deal with here, and the way

public safety agencies put them into place, means that some of the

systems will last 30 years, even though the technology life cycle is

18 to 24 months.

So all of our planning and all of our standards are designed to

take this into account so we don’t leave behind legacy systems.

There will always be legacy systems with us.

Ms. MILLER. Mr. Chair, I don’t think that answered my question

on how the Federal Government is going to provide funding. Have

we provided long term funding for these legacy systems to continue

the upgrades?

Mr. BERES. The Department continues to request the approximately $4 billion in homeland security grant funds, of which upgrades for interoperability communications planning, the exercises

that Dr. Boyd talked about, all of which are allowable costs. As we

progress down this road of upgrading technologies and looking back

and hanging on to legacy systems, the funding that is currently in

the President’s budget that’s before Congress now provides for us

to look forward to new technologies and increase better interoperable communications at that State and local level.

Mr. BOYD. It’s also important to remember that more than 97

percent of the funding that goes out to the field, even for emergency communications, is provided by States and localities. Federal

money represents only a relatively small part of that.

So one of the things first responders asked us to help them with

was to provide them tools to build a business case that they could

use to take to their county commissions, to their city councils and

their State legislatures to explain why interoperability was important and why interoperability had to be built into new funding

plans, and why you had to think about a life cycle system instead

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of buying a system now and then hoping that it will last 30 years

and then funding a whole new system in 30 years.

One of the things that we believe that a rationally developed set

of standards will help us do is to allow incremental upgrades of

technologies. Right now, one of the unfortunate problems we have,

because of the lack of standards, is proprietary features and proprietary standards that make it very, very difficult for a community

to upgrade pieces of a system in 2 or 3 years that are a little more

advanced.

For example even though you may go buy a device for your computer that’s designed to operate on a version 1.1 bus, it will work

in your new computer with a version 2 bus. That’s not the case

with most of the communications systems now, because of proprietary elements. Typically, manufacturers will design a system and

sell it for about 5 to 7 years, then manufacture parts for it for a

few years and finally stop supporting it. Unfortunately, because we

don’t have the universal standards yet, that we’re trying to put in

place, when it comes time to modernize a system, agencies only

have two choices: either continue to buy equipment with the current technology, which means going to the used market and hoping

there somebody has recently retired a system that they can use for

parts to maintain it; or it means buying an entirely new system,

which usually means a bond issue.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair. As you can see, if

we don’t have a universal system out there, we are going to have

many municipalities making a choice as to what to do, similar to

just throwing a dart at a dart board and hoping it lands in the

right space. So this really needs to be addressed.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much.

Mr. Muleta, you’ve heard your fellow panelists field these questions about the issues that are out there. Could you give us some

sense of what concrete success we have had in improving interoperability since September 11, 2001?

Mr. MULETA. Given that there are 40,000 public safety licensees,

it’s difficult to find one concrete example. I think there are many.

The bigger success has been all of the things that we are talking

about today, which is the focus on long term planning, the focus

on the need for interoperability outside of the sort of narrow context of urban areas, but to look at threat areas and sort of understand that it’s all part of the matrix. I think there has just been

an incredible amount of focus on those issues.

Other areas where I have seen success has been the way that the

public safety community has come together in terms of representing their interests in front of FCC and making sure that we are

focused on addressing interoperability issues. They are not sort of

like small pockets of divided forces, so that the Commission can act

in concert in dealing with these issues.

So for me, it’s very difficult to say here are communities where

it’s very successful.

Mr. PUTNAM. Let me try to narrow it down a little bit, then.

Mr. MULETA. Let me address one community. Alexandria, the

community of interest that follows along the Department of Defense Pentagon building, in Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax County

and the District have a workable system that actually worked on

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September 11th by statements made by other folks. But they had

a coordinated plan, they could react accordingly. They had the

processes in place. That’s a community that was already there. I

think that reflects the sort of threat level that the Pentagon has

as opposed to other communities out there.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you. We have a panelist from the area, too,

in our second panel, so we’ll be able to hear from them.

40,000 licensees, how many options are there? If you have municipality, local fire department puts out an RFP to upgrade their

system, how many choices are there?

Mr. MULETA. By choices, in terms of systems?

Mr. PUTNAM. Yes.

Mr. MULETA. I think there are 10 different bands that can be

used for public safety. So that at least gives you an idea of the size

of the matrix, because the first thing that you do with a public

safety system, you say, what channels are available for use. And

depending on the sophistication of the licensee, what goes into it

is, am I part of a statewide system, am I part of that plan, am I

part of a regional plan, are there channels available and then what

can I afford. Am I having to buy a used system, am I having to

buy a new one, because the price difference is significant.

So I think in terms of technology, one of the issues has been to,

and this is a broader statement than a spectrum issue, that there

needs to be more variation, more ability, more technology available

that’s similar to the computer technology where you sort of have

open standards and you can plug and play, and have different

manufacturers playing in the field.

So there are lots of choices on how you design your systems, but

probably not enough open systems to allow for the sort of mix and

match, plug and play type of environment that we have in the computing world. I think we are in essence in the worst of best worlds,

there are too many choices and not enough choices in other areas.

Mr. PUTNAM. So how many manufacturers are there that are in

this field?

Mr. MULETA. I think it’s sort of a handful of significant players

in the field. A couple of companies have significant market share

in the public safety community.

As Dr. Boyd explained, these systems are being purchased for

sort of 10, 15 year life cycles. And the ability of companies to support that on a proprietary basis limits the universal appeal of this

business. So it’s limited. But we are trying to get into the world

where you have plug and play.

Mr. PUTNAM. Dr. Boyd, let’s pursue that a little bit. Coming out

of the State legislature, we want a 6-year plan or something to get

the highway patrol 800 megahertz trunk systems and undoubtedly

by the time the last batch is purchased in year 6 the folks who got

theirs in year 1 are already up onto something else.

Where does this really end? Is this just a cat chasing its tail?

What is the end mission? The GAO is quoted as saying that you

will never be fully interoperable, so what is, how do we define success and what is the best way to approach this? What is the ordinary emergency mission that we are using as sort of our model?

And undoubtedly September 11th, I would hope is a bit on the

outlier side of the spectrum, and tornadoes in the Midwest and

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floods or hurricanes on the Gulf Coast or things like that would

probably be the more normal type of multi-jurisdictional emergency.

How will we ever get our arms around this and how do we approach it? Do we approach it for what’s best for a county, what’s

best for a State, what’s best for a region? Help me understand that

a little bit better, please.

Mr. BOYD. Let me do it in two parts. Our philosophy argues first

that localities are not going to be able to use communications

equipment effectively that they don’t use in normal day to day

emergencies. Our perspective is that emergencies are the business

of public safety, that it’s not just the major terrorist event or the

hurricane. It is, in fact, what they do 24 hours a day, 7 days a

week, year round.

So the issue then is scale. Can you handle the incident all the

way from a massive terrorist attack in communications terms all

the way down to something as small as a traffic stop? We maintain

first that this needs to be communications equipment they’re going

to use all the time.

The second part is that we believe the development of a robust

standards process, and trying Federal grants to implementation of

guidance built around those standards is one of the ways to begin

to move in the right direction and to encourage industry to move

that way. In fact, if you had asked me that question in, let’s say,

1980, about whether we’re going to have that kind of issue with

computers, I would have had to say that as things stood then, you

had a choice of CPM, you had DOS, and a long list of other different kinds of operating systems, different networks and even different versions of ASCII, whether it was a proprietary IBM called

EBCDIC or other kinds of digital exchange or digital storage mechanisms. It made it extraordinarily difficult to exchange information.

I think that as the standards came along, they were driven in

large measure by the market, and large buyers like the Federal

Government which said, well, gee, if we’re going to buy these

things they really need to come down to kind of common sorts of

exchange protocols and operating systems and so on. I think the

same thing is going to have to happen in communications. That’s

the way we’re trying to approach things, to try to develop guidance

first, because standards take a little while to produce to get everybody on board, because the law governs how standards are developed.

So we first want to go to guidance that says, look, as you build

your statewide plans, you have to involve everybody in the statewide plan, beginning at the lowest level and bringing all levels in,

or you will encounter, as Ms. Miller has pointed out, the kind of

situation you have in some States where you have a statewide system that only the State police are on and nobody else is, because

they didn’t bring the localities in first.

We think that is the first step, that you have to get everybody

working together along a common set of protocols and develop a

common appreciation of why interoperability needs to be a part of

common planning. Then you can begin to demand compliance as

you develop your RFPs for new systems. You can demand a way

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to ensure interoperability, even if in the early days it relies on a

patch system, something like the kinds of patches that are used in

the national capital region. This way you begin to force an increasing degree of interoperability so that you eventually arrive at what

you’re after.

You asked a minute ago whether there were certain communities

that had already developed some reasonably successful interoperability solutions, and there are. They’re not generally statewide, although South Dakota comes close to qualifying as a statewide solution. It may be a bit easier with a population of 650,000, but they

actually have a statewide system where they helped to buy and put

the systems in place for everybody.

There is a system in the State of Indiana which does not encompass the whole State, but nevertheless began by working with localities to help bring them in. San Diego County was probably the

first real success for an area in the United States when they developed a fairly primitive, but effective solution by developing the first

multi-jurisdictional set of governance agreements, protocols, standard operating procedures and exercises to allow interoperability in

the county. They did this almost 10 years ago under a project that

I was fortunate enough to be involved in while I was still in Justice.

You have a number of such exempts. The State of Virginia now

has a statewide plan that actually starts at the lowest levels, and

works its way all the way up to the Richmonds and the Northern

Virginias in order to bring them all together in a statewide plan.

So there is movement, but this is a big challenge. This is a large

activity. There are, depending on how you count them, somewhere

between 40,000 and 60,000 independent jurisdictions who have to

be a part of bringing all this together.

Making that kind of change is going to take a while. But I think

we’ve really laid a foundation and really attracted attention, in

large measure, because Congress has applied so much attention

and so much emphasis to interoperability over the past few years.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you.

Mr. Clay.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Muleta, do I understand correctly that the FCC relies mostly

on volunteers from input and operations of public safety spectrums? And is the operation of public safety spectrum well funded,

or is the use of volunteers due to a lack of resources?

Mr. MULETA. To be honest with you, I don’t understand the context of the question. The FCC manages the spectrum for public

safety in the sense that we make the allocation and then the assignment of that to public safety licensees, we award the licenses.

There is no use of volunteers in that context.

There are State interoperability committees, regional planning

committees that are composed of public safety officials who get together, based on requests from, as sort of representative licensees

that develop plans, regional plans, statewide plans. I think the

question might be referring to the fact that some of these, there’s

not a specific mandate from the FCC to require State interoperability committees. That’s a recommendation that has been made

by the National Coordination Committee that we established to

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plan for the 700 megahertz, the use of the public safety band in

700 megahertz.

We are considering that option. I think one of the issues that we

have to be careful about is when you mandate a specific requirement on States, on how they can deploy their resources, we want

to make sure that we get all the input and sort of carefully deliberate that issue.

There’s nothing to prevent States from actually putting together

their own interoperability groups. So we believe there is enough

grant resources and things like that to make this a viable approach.

Mr. CLAY. OK, so specifically you rejected, rather the FCC’s rejection of the council’s recommendation for a national planning

committee’s utilization of a data base for frequency coordination,

that was rejected by FCC, correct?

Mr. MULETA. I think a recommendation was made to us. We

have not acted on it. We’re seeking comment and are thinking

through the process of what the requirements would be on establishing a mandate on this States to do things in a particular way.

So we’re seeking comment on those and waiting to see if we can

make a decision. I think we hope to have something on the various

recommendations made by the National Coordination Committee,

which was a Federal advisory committee that we established to

plan for the 700 megahertz. They made a set of requirements. And

I think we’ll act upon them accordingly.

Mr. CLAY. And the FCC didn’t necessarily care for the recommendations, so you rejected them and then you FE

Mr. MULETA. Again, I FE

Mr. CLAY. So then you will come out with a response to them at

what date?

Mr. MULETA. I think the advisory board gave us a set of recommendations and we will review them as part of the normal FCC

process. The commissioners will make choices on which issues can

go forward and are appropriate responses. There is a set of recommendations made, but I think the Commission is reviewing

them and planning to make decisions on them.

Mr. CLAY. Let me get to Mr. Boyd. Dr. Boyd, in terms of technology, can you identify for us any new technological advances that

have the promise of improving interoperable communications

among first responders, or spectrum issues holding back the emergence of new products?

Mr. BOYD. I’m not aware of any special issues that would hold

back the emergence of new products. What I would say is that in

the near term, there are two kinds of technologies out there, those

that can address the issue in the near term and those that are

more on the horizon. In the near term, technologies exist now that

can help, especially to achieve command level interoperability.

These are largely switch systems, systems such as those produced by Raytheon, the ACU systems, the SiTech systems, and a

number of others that you can think of as high-tech computer driven CAT systems that can tie one radio to another. These allow for

interim, emergency based interoperability. It’s not what we want

ultimately, because it ties up a channel on each system, so it’s

spectrally inefficient, requiring twice as much spectrum.

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On the horizon, though, we’re seeing newer digital technologies

coming into play, including radio-over IP, which is a way of using

digital technologies to permit multiple networks to share the same

spectrum as though they were on different channels, when in fact

they are on the same channel. We are able to do this in part because voices can be digitized into very tiny packets. So you can put

a great many in a single channel. There are experiments under

way now.

A second possibility is software defined radio. The Defense Department has a major software defined radio effort underway called

the Joint Tactical Radio System, which we’re monitoring very closely. And there are some private companies that are working on software defined radios. These are radios that are computer driven so

you can tell them to operate on whatever band you want them to

operate on, using whatever wave form you want them to operate

on—digital, analog or whatever—and you can drive this all out of

a single box.

None of these are panaceas, but there are nevertheless technologies which we think are moving very rapidly into this field. In

some respects, radio, even though it’s an older technology, is 10 or

15 years behind the computer revolution. That’s in part because installing these systems has been very expensive, so jurisdictions find

it difficult to simply upgrade tomorrow with a new technology.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you for that response. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you, Mr. Clay, and I regret that we’re going

to have to end the first panel here and seat the second panel. So

we very much appreciate our first panel’s comments. We look forward to hearing from the boots on the ground.

The subcommittee will recess for such time as it takes to seat

panel No. 2.

[Recess.]

Mr. PUTNAM. I hate to do this to our witnesses who just sat

down, but if you would please rise and raise your right hands for

the administration of the oath.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. PUTNAM. Note for the record that all the witnesses responded in the affirmative. We appreciate your being with us today

and look forward to your testimony.

Our first witness to testify will be Maureen Lischke. Ms. Lischke

is a member of the Senior Executive Service and has served as the

National Guard Bureau Chief Information Officer since 1996. She

also serves as the Deputy Director of Command Control Communications and Computers.

Prior to joining the National Guard Bureau as the Program Manager for the Reserve Component Automation System in 1994, Ms.

Lischke worked for the Defense Communications Agency, now the

Defense Information Systems Agency. She also served as the Deputy Director of Program Oversight with the Office of the Assistant

Secretary of Defense for Command Control Communications and

Intelligence. She has been recognized with a number of awards and

recognitions, and she was among the 2002 Federal Computer Week

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demia who had the great impact on Government information systems for that year.

We welcome you to the subcommittee and look forward to your

testimony. You are recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF MAUREEN LISCHKE, SENIOR EXECUTIVE

SERVICE, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, NATIONAL GUARD

BUREAU

Ms. LISCHKE. Thank you and good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and

distinguished members of the subcommittee.

I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak with you

today on this very important matter. In the interest of time, I have

prepared a written statement that I will submit for the record. But

I would like to take several minutes to address several important

points.

As you know, the National Guard lives with one foot in the Federal camp and one foot in the State camp. We are the one organization that is the bridge between Federal and State governments. We

live in a world where we have to communicate with a myriad of

organizations and therefore interoperability is very important to

us.

At least 25 of our Adjutants General are also the State emergency management officials, and at least 15 of our Adjutants General have been named the senior homeland security advisor to the

Governor. In order to better coordinate with all these different organizations, we have created standing joint force headquarters in

each of the States, territories and the District of Columbia. We

have representatives from each of the military branches and each

of the Federal, State and local governments in those headquarters.

In order to address the need for better communications, we have

with the strong support of Congress implemented a robust network

that not only connects all of our armories together and our standing joint force headquarters, but also connects us to the Department of Defense and to our State networks. We have built 321

digitized facilities through our distributive training technology

project that we are using for exercise training with our first responders as well as using them for command and control locations

when the situation calls for it. In fact, they were invaluable to us

right after September 11.

We also have fielded 32 civil support teams that have a communications band as part of their suite of equipment. This provides

them with interagency communications. We currently have another

12 teams that are in training and are looking forward to receiving

the resources to stand up the last 11 teams.

The recent GAO report referenced the Defense Science Board’s

summer study that came out in November of last year. In that

summer study, the Defense Science Board captured the requirements of the States for communications. As a result, we have developed a concept that we refer to as the Joint CONUS Communications Support Environment. It’s not a single program, but rather a number of different initiatives to address those States’ requirements of interoperable communications down to the incident site,

as well as being able to pass information up and down to those organizations that need it. It also provides for a joint operations cenVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:18 Mar 21, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00106 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98292.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ter in each of the 54 standing joint force headquarters that are

being manned 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

We are currently running several pilots to determine the solutions that will best meet the States’ requirements. And in our development of the concept of the Joint CONUS Communications

Support Environment, we have been working with David Boyd to

ensure we are all going in the same direction.

Interoperable communications is critical to us, and we feel it is

very important to establish a nationwide strategy. We see

SAFECOM as that program that is addressing this, and we have

been working with them to contribute to their success.

In summary, the National Guard is committed to providing interoperable communications working with Federal, State and local

governments and using our unique status to contribute to the success in this endeavor.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today

and I look forward to your questions.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Lischke follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much. I’m sure there will be a

number of them.

Our next witness is Vincent Stile. Mr. Stile is the past president

of the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International, Inc. He became involved with the APCO association when

he began serving as southern New York State’s assistant frequency

coordinator for police and local government in 1970.

During his tenure with APCO, Mr. Stile served in a number of

positions. He served on the APCO automated frequency coordination board of directors and on the task force that developed the

first in-house automated frequency coordination system.

He is a 40 year veteran of the Suffolk County Police Department

which he currently serves as the police radio communications director, a position he has held since 1985. He budgets, plans, designs

and implements new wireless communications systems for the department, the 14th largest in the United States.

We are looking forward to your hands-on expertise. You are recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF VINCENT STILE, PAST PRESIDENT, ASSOCIATION OF PUBLIC SAFETY COMMUNICATIONS OFFICIALS

INTERNATIONAL, INC.

Mr. STILE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As stated, I am Vincent Stile, and I’m a retired police officer

from the Suffolk County Police Department and serving as a frequency radio coordinator and radio spectrum management counseling for police and local government of southern New York State. I

presently also serve as vice chair of the Department of Homeland

Security Project SAFECOM executive committee.

I am here today to discuss interoperability as it relates to public

safety achievements toward that goal. I would first like to point out

that the goals of interoperability are not new, and the term itself

has taken on a heightened level of meaning since the attack on this

Nation 3 years ago. Interoperability is a daily occurrence for first

responders as they perform their routine duties. Interoperability

first begins in our local communities as police officers, firemen,

EMS workers, along with their 911 dispatchers, all first responders, communicate with each other.

As I pointed out in my written testimony, the APCO homeland

security task force identified six topics that most identified the

needs for putting together responsible interoperability planning.

Recently, prior to the Republican National Convention in New York

City, I brought together a number of public safety communication

specialists from surrounding areas of New York City, including

radio personnel from the New York City police department. I mention this to illustrate that the planning process that homeland security task force identified as steps to putting together a plan, it

was important to have this kind of a meeting.

It is without question that the city planners and New York City

police department and Secret Service all had all the communications concerns well covered for the city. The purpose of our meeting, of the surrounding area communications specialist, was to

make plans in the event of a mutual aid that may be required from

the surrounding police, fire and EMS agencies. We discussed what

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radio channels would be in use to communicate on and who would

be in control of designated radio assignments. This step represents

the planning stage of Homeland Security Task Force recommendations.

We came together to plan what the action would be if necessary

if we were called out. Any call for aid would represent the next

step in the recommendations which was interoperability phase

where radio communications would cross over the boundaries of official jurisdictions.

Next was the selection of radio frequencies that would work and

provide coverage in that area. Servability and redundancy was

built into the planning process as the communications specialists

present all knew the range and coverage to expect from the selected radio channels, as well as what radio systems would be used

or re-used for redundancy. And finally, the training portion of the

task force recommendations occurred as part of the routine testing

that has been conducted in the area up to this point.

The pre-planning of public safety entities is extremely important

and has basically taken hold by many of the local government

agencies due to the help that is beginning to come forward from the

Federal funding sources and guidelines provided through the help

of Federal information sources. Much of this help has been infused

into the Federal programs by State and local government first responders who were sought after to provide input for what was necessary to plan for the interoperability.

The Federal guidelines initiated by the Department of Homeland

Security SAFECOM program are structured to educate, train, provide financial assistance as money becomes available. These programs can be a complete source for guiding State and local government to develop interoperability planning.

Suffolk County and Nassau County in Long Island are developing a bi-county interoperability program with the help of Federal

grants they recently both received. As part of this program, 800

megahertz national channel base stations will be located at vantage points on Long Island to provide radio coverage for first responders throughout most of Nassau and Suffolk Counties. The extension of these national channels will be functional in the five boroughs of New York City under the control of the Port Authority.

Also as part of this grant money, radios will be purchased to

allow Suffolk County police officers that travel through Nassau

County and into Manhattan have continued communications with

a monitoring dispatcher at each end of the dispatch areas.

Interoperability programs such as those mentioned are also possible with the assistance of Federal funding and routine testing

and training on the systems implemented plus ongoing upgrading

of improved communications equipment. Clearly, however, if there

is a lack of radio spectrum for public safety, all the planning for

interoperability will only delay its implementation.

I want to thank you very much again for conducting these hearings and allowing me to appear before you today. APCO looks forward to working with Congress to assure that public safety agencies have access to the needed resources and spectrum that are

needed to protect the lives and the property of the public we serve.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Stile follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much, Mr. Stile. We appreciate

that.

Our next witness is Michael Neuhard. Chief Neuhard is a 27

year veteran of the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department,

where he currently serves as the fire chief and Fairfax County Fire

Marshal. In this position, he directs a staff of more than 1,400, including 1,200 uniformed personnel.

Chief Neuhard plans, coordinate and directs the overall operation

of the fire and rescue department, including fire suppression, hazardous material abatement, emergency medical services, fire prevention, technical rescue and administrative and support services.

He is a graduate of Mary Washington College and the University

of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service Senior Executive Institute.

Chief Neuhard’s professional affiliations include the Virginia

State Fire Chiefs Association, the International Association of Firefighters and the International Association of Fire Chiefs.

Welcome to the subcommittee, sir, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL P. NEUHARD, FIRE CHIEF, FAIRFAX

COUNTY FIRE AND RESCUE DEPARTMENT

Chief NEUHARD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished

members of the subcommittee. We are grateful for this opportunity

to provide you with a local perspective on interoperability.

I have provided you with a complete, detailed set of comments

and I will summarize some of those here today for you in my verbal

comments.

I’d like to take a moment, Mr. Chairman, to indicate to you that

our thoughts and concerns are with your first responders and citizens in Florida. We know what it’s like to live through a disaster,

and we know what they’re going through now. And we hope that

second storm doesn’t come to you like it’s scheduled to.

The Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department serves over 1

million residents, workers and visitors each day in Fairfax County.

We are an all hazards fire department, providing fire suppression

efforts, basic life support and advanced life support emergency

medical services and technical specialties, including rescue and

cave-in capabilities, hazardous materials response and mitigation,

and marine operations. Last year, we responded to over 90,000

calls for service and our call volume continues to grow.

Many of you know us because of our Fairfax County Urban

Search and Rescue Program, which is renowned throughout the

United States and the world, having responded to tragedies such

as the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995,

and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Interoperability is a critical issue for emergency responders.

From a local perspective, where you are in this country will determine how successful you have been in achieving interoperability. It

must be remembered that interoperability is not just about technology. In fact, it has been said that interoperability is really 80

percent communications and coordination in various forms and

only 20 percent technical.

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Critical components of emergency response systems which should

be interoperable but are not necessarily technical in nature including common incident management techniques, common terminology, common policy and procedures, standardized training, compatible equipment, such as protective clothing, metering devices, self

contained breathing apparatus and redundant methods of communication. While it is important to continue to improve upon and advance technical interoperability amongst wireless communication

devices, it must be remembered that they will be useless, confusing

and counterproductive if adequate attention is not given to emergency response systems as a whole in those areas that I’ve just

mentioned.

The Commonwealth of Virginia partnered with SAFECOM to design a locally driven planning approach to enhance communications

interoperability across Virginia.

Mr. PUTNAM. If you want to just, well, by the time I got around

to letting you wait, they quit on us. Please proceed.

Chief NEUHARD. Thank you. I was mentioning the partnership

between the State of Virginia and SAFECOM at the time and their

efforts to enhance communication interoperability across the Commonwealth, which has ultimately resulted in a strategic plan that

we are now implementing. The process included six regional focus

group sessions to capture perspective from local public safety responders throughout the Commonwealth. Key strategic goals include expanding the statewide use of common language and coordinated communication protocols, increasing interoperability capabilities and coordination by maximizing the use of existing communications systems and equipment, and by planning for future technology purchases.

Also, we are attempting to enhance the knowledge of proper use

of communications equipment by providing frequent and routine

training for public safety personnel. The plan is now being implemented by a full time program manager known as the Commonwealth interoperability coordinator.

There are many challenges that remain. We still face the challenge of our computer aided dispatch systems talking to each other

within a region. The capability is necessary so that we can effectively transmit through existing systems amongst jurisdictions

written information and dated field units.

We still have a long way to go to assure that there is adequate

and common command processes, common language and policies

and procedures that ensure seamless functioning on an emergency

scene between multiple agencies. Many localities continue to simply buy new radios, some through Federal grants, without having

the proper training on operation and integration of that equipment

into emergency operations. Exercises of new equipment and procedures at the regional level is still very uncommon. We need to support more regional training and exercises to incorporate interoperability solutions and identify additional gaps.

The Department of Homeland Security, through the SAFECOM

program, has gained the support of all the major associations representing public safety officials, State and local elected and appointed officials. In January 2004, the 10 associations released a

joint statement that declared, with the advent of the SAFECOM

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program, public safety, State and local government finally have a

voice in public safety discussions at the Federal level and confident

that the Government is coordinating its resources.

In conclusion, the key to all interoperability is cooperation among

and between the various agencies and jurisdictions. Maintaining

forward momentum on improving communications and operational

interoperability requires continued actions on multiple fronts, including common command language, local and State level planning,

common policy and procedures, training and technical advances. It

is imperative that interoperability remain a high priority at all levels of Government and with adequate funding, coordination and

support. Failure to do so will allow interoperability to be a passing

fad leading to inefficiencies and poor performance at the next major

emergency requiring more than one agency to respond or more

than one level of Government.

Project SAFECOM is one answer to ensuring it stays focused at

the Federal level. Thank you very much.

[NOTE.—The Commonwealth of Virginia report entitled, ‘‘Strategic Plan for Statewide Communications Interoperability, Fiscal

Years 2005–2007,’’ may be found in subcommittee files.]

[The prepared statement of Chief Neuhard follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much, Chief.

We have three votes pending, one, the clock is running now. Mr.

Worden, we are going to move to your testimony, we will hold people here. We are going to do a very brief, brief round of questions.

I certainly respect and appreciate the distance you all have traveled and your time being here with us, but unfortunately, we are

going to have to cut the second panel short to get to the vote.

So Mr. Worden, your introduction, Chief of Telecommunications

Branch of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services in California, the office responsible for providing a communications structure

for daily operation of the agency. Mr. Worden is a 30 year veteran

of the Air Force, where he commanded airlift control flight responsible for deploying communications and a support group directing

communications information technology and other support services.

We greatly appreciate your being here, and you are recognized,

sir, for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF THOMAS B. WORDEN, CHIEF, TELECOMMUNICATIONS BRANCH, STATE OF CALIFORNIA, GOVERNOR’S OFFICE OF EMERGENCY SERVICES

Mr. WORDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and committee members.

I’ll attempt to avoid repeating much that is in the prepared testimony, skim through here and just hit some highlights, and some

highlights as well observed in the earlier testimony. My perspective

is different. At the State level, the Office of Emergency Services,

we focus on bringing public safety professional together across levels of government and across disciplines to do planning and to effectively use our statewide emergency management system to coordinate during emergencies.

We also do operate as the operator of public safety radio systems

and administer the licenses of several statewide families of channels, bringing together public safety professionals from across the

State, representing the different regions, the different geographics,

the different disciplines and the different political and financial capabilities of the governments they represent.

The plans they wrote have served for decades, and they have

been the model for planning. In the fire services they have risen

to the level of doctrine that drives training and equipment decisions, not only in California but nationwide. That doctrine is what

made the 1,000 vehicle deployment during the southern California

firestorm possible. While we did have some difficulties, we responded to seven major incidents and only on a few did we have

issues.

The worst issues were not, however, in San Diego County. The

limited ability of the San Diego County system to respond in growing areas reflects more the lack of guidelines, established, accepted,

if you will, standards, on how quickly you must expand your radio

systems as communities develop in the suburban fringe and in the

wildland urban interface. We have very well established standards

by which we judge how soon we have to open a firehouse, how

many police cars we need to add, but we do not have those standards in how many radio transmitters we have to add, how many

repeaters, how much more complex to make the system, and yes,

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we did have tremendous problems with calls crashing in the suburban and rural portions of San Diego County as a result of that lack

of standards.

Project SAFECOM, by the way, has demonstrated the understanding that we build all of these programs successfully up from

the local requirement to the region, to the State, and ultimately to

some national standards.

Our most successful regional public safety radio systems, including San Diego, developed out of a need to resolve communications

issues at the local level, lack of spectrum being one driver, the need

to modernize extremely outdated equipment, and finding a funding

mechanism to do so being the other. Again, when cross discipline

committees have come together and cross government committees

have come together, they have come up with the best solutions. We

have yet to see a solution imposed from above which has been effectively implemented.

As the Chief said, technology is a very small part of the problem.

I often tell people that given a reasonable amount of time and a

huge amount of money, my communications specialists can get anybody to talk to anybody. But during a crisis, you don’t have the

time, and in government, we never have an unreasonable amount

of money.

There has been a resistance, however, in the pervious grant programs to deal with the kind of detailed operational planning and

technical analysis that the Chief and others have discussed. It’s

been resisted as time consuming; it’s been resisted as frustrating.

It is both of those, but it is the core of success.

We have been working with SAFECOM on RAPIDCom 9/30 and

we’ve had the opportunity to read the progress reports from all 10

cities. Interestingly, we in California asked SAFECOM and the

ICTAP team to focus on governance documents, on coming up with

the words and phrases that will regulate how the shared frequency

system will work.

We read reports from other cities that are still talking about who

should be coming to the table to discuss who should be on the system. We’re beyond that, but we’re beyond that because in both cities, local government was already beyond that, not because of anything that was imposed on them.

Training is a huge issue. These are complex systems, even the

ones fielded now. And if the public safety responder does not use

those features in exercises, doesn’t use them in daily operations,

they will not use them effectively during crisis. Most of our grant

programs have only now begun to address training as an essential

portion of implementing these systems.

Funding, we’ve already talked about the difficulties for local government in retroactive funding and the need to resolve that. We do

need process controls to make sure that the money is spent well,

but we can protect, I think, local coffers as well as State coffers by

assuming honesty as we develop our programs, rather than assuming dishonesty on the part of local government.

Another area of funding is those joint power authorities that Ms.

McCollum referenced. Often, they require local governments to precommit to year in-year out funding. And when Federal and State

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partners are not willing to do so, it’s very difficult for those to go

forward.

Very quickly, there are two other areas where Federal issues

arise. We are happy to invite the tribal governments, but when

they are unable to sign documents because of liability issues in

those documents or issues that hit upon tribal sovereignty, we at

State and local or regional committees cannot address those issues.

And whether it’s implementing the 800 megahertz consensus solution or other issues, we cannot deal with international border

issues, which severely limit our ability to update in Southern California.

And with that, sir, I ran very quickly through. Thank you for

your time, and we all stand ready for your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Worden follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much. And again, I apologize for

the fact that we’re going to have to cut this short.

I’m going to give everyone the opportunity to ask the question of

the day before I have to run off to vote, we’ll begin with Ms.

Lischke, and I would ask all of you to please keep your answers

to a minute.

What specifically can the Federal Government do, for the short

term, for the State and local governments that you represent, to

improve interoperability?

Ms. LISCHKE. Again, I believe the support for the SAFECOM program helps us in the long term. And in the short term, again, we’re

working with the SAFECOM project and the RAPIDCom project.

But it’s coming up with some of the patch devices that David Boyd

was talking about, that allows us to connect different types of radios together.

And also working with the Department of Defense program that

is putting out land mobile radios, which is a commercial off the

shelf product and provides us some of the interoperability we need

until the long term radio that David Boyd was talking about, the

joint tactical radio, comes out.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much. Mr. Stile.

Mr. STILE. Thank you. I would say that we need to have the

SAFECOM continue with their programs at least to better provide

more of the training, more of the ability to get information out to

the State and locals, local government needs to be funding wise,

needs to come down from the State to the local level. I would actually like to see it go to the regional level, but there is no regional

point that those moneys could be funded to.

So it needs to come from the States to the individual localities.

And I personally believe that it’s necessary for SAFECOM to continue their program, as to what they’ve started out with and what

they’re doing.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you, sir. Chief.

Chief NEUHARD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have three suggestions as to what the Federal Government can do to continue to help

us as first responders. First and foremost, we need continued

grants that not only include equipment but also include planning,

training and exercise money, specifically for interoperability issues.

Second, there is, as you heard today, a real need for continued

facilitation and coordination at all levels of Government. I think

now SAFECOM is on track and we need to see that continue.

And third, finally, we need a long term commitment to see interoperability through. As you’ve learned today, it is not a steady

State. It is going to require continued funding and continued focus.

So at the Federal administrative level, and from Congress, we need

money and focus. Thank you.

Mr. PUTNAM. Money and focus. Thank you.

Mr. Worden.

Mr. WORDEN. Yes, sir. First, the support for SAFECOM and the

recognition that a single agency developing standards is critical.

Second, elimination of duplication and, please don’t get me wrong,

I don’t want to eliminate duplicate source of money, but when

those sources of money come with duplicate guidance, it leads us

off in too many directions.

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Third, cross discipline planning at the Federal level to enable

locals to plan more effectively for the Federal partners who will

join them during events, rather than having to deal with each

agency separately or distinctly different approaches to planning

from the different Federal agencies.

Finally, for all the funders to recognize the multi-year nature of

the funding that’s needed both for planning and for implementation. It is very difficult to plan and fund a well thought out system

in the funding cycles we have, and having to make investments in

one grant cycle with the fear that they won’t be eligible in the next

grant cycle has paralyzed some local operations.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much to all of you. Before we adjourn, I just want to apologize again for the brevity of this, particularly those of you who have traveled. Unfortunately, that’s just the

way the vote schedule works.

I appreciate your knowledge and experience and thoughts that

you and panel one shared with us, as well as the efforts of the subcommittee members and subcommittee staff, particularly Shannon

Weinberg and Felipe Colon, as well as Grace Washbourne from the

full committee.

We’re grateful, terribly grateful for the every day heroes, the first

responders in our communities who put themselves in harm’s way

on our behalf and run into buildings that everyone else is running

out of. We look forward to a nation that is safer and better protected through improved communications capacity and interoperability and also looking forward to saving the lives of those men

and women who do put themselves in harm’s way as a result.

I want to thank everyone who participated in this, and in the

event, and this is certainly the case, that there are additional questions that we did not have time for, the record will remain open

for 2 weeks for submitted questions and answers. We will be submitting those to you, and we look forward to your response.

Thank you so very much. With that, the subcommittee is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 3:55 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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