NIST Special Publication 1243 

Obstacles to Data Sharing in Public 

Safety Applications Require More 

Than Technical Solutions Alone 

Britta Voss 

This publication is available free of charge from: 

https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.1243
NIST Special Publication 1243 

Obstacles to data sharing in public 

safety applications require more 

than technical solutions alone 

Britta Voss 

Public Safety Communications Research Division 

Communications Technology Laboratory 

This publication is available free of charge from: 

https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.1243 

September 2019 

U.S. Department of Commerce 

Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Secretary 

National Institute of Standards and Technology 

Walter Copan, NIST Director and Undersecretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology 
Certain commercial entities, equipment, or materials may be identified in this 

 document in order to describe an experimental procedure or concept adequately. 

Such identification is not intended to imply recommendation or endorsement by the 

National Institute of Standards and Technology, nor is it intended to imply that the 

entities, materials, or equipment are necessarily the best available for the purpose. 

National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 1243 

Natl. Inst. Stand. Technol. Spec. Publ. 1243, 25 pages (September 2019) 

CODEN: NSPUE2 

This publication is available free of charge from: https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.1243
This publication is available free of charge from: https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.1243 

i 

Abstract 

First responders today can leverage large quantities of multimedia data from a variety of 

sources within and outside their agencies, and the scope of this data sharing is growing 

rapidly. This expansion in capabilities comes with several technical challenges, such as the 

need for new interoperability standards and software tools that can make sense of the deluge 

of data. But many of the challenges facing public safety agencies using or considering 

implementing such technologies are not primarily technical in nature. In areas of governance, 

policy, and funding, new data sharing technologies exacerbate existing obstacles, such as 

resource limitations, and create new ones, such as legal risks of cybersecurity vulnerabilities. 

Through an analysis of responses to structured interviews with first responders across the 

United States, we summarize the key non-technical challenges facing public safety use of 

emerging data sharing technologies. Based on the experiences and concerns shared by these 

first responders, we conclude that addressing these challenges with research and development 

on technical solutions may help ensure that these technologies deliver maximum benefit for 

emergency response applications. 

Keywords 

Communication; interviews; policy; public safety; telecommunications; data sharing. 

 
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Table of Contents 

1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1

2. Methodology ..................................................................................................................... 2

3. Results ............................................................................................................................... 4

3.1. Governance .................................................................................................................. 4

Silos between public safety agencies, jurisdictions, and disciplines ................................. 4

Silos between public safety and external partners (private businesses, other government 

agencies, private ambulance services, hospitals, nonprofits, and courts) .......................... 6

3.2. Risks ............................................................................................................................ 8

Legal liabilities associated with data collection, use, or misuse ....................................... 8

Difficult to meet policies/best practices of data management ......................................... 10

Privacy concerns .............................................................................................................. 12

3.3. Budgets ...................................................................................................................... 13

Technology implementation can be cost-prohibitive ...................................................... 13

Difficult to coordinate funding across disciplines and jurisdictions ............................... 14

Shortage of proficient technical personnel ...................................................................... 15

4. Conclusions..................................................................................................................... 17

4.1. Governance ................................................................................................................ 17

4.2. Risks .......................................................................................................................... 18

4.3. Budgets ...................................................................................................................... 18

References .............................................................................................................................. 19

List of Tables 

Table 1. Subset of the NIST “Voices of First Responders” codebook .................................... 2

Table 2. Keywords used to annotate first responder interview data. ....................................... 3

Table 3. Frequency of keywords applied to first responder interview quotes. ........................ 4

 
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List of Acronyms 

CAD Computer Aided Dispatch 

COMMS Public Safety Telecommunications 

DOL Department of Licensing 

EMS Emergency Medical Services 

FF Firefighting 

HIPAA Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act 

IT Information Technology 

LE Law Enforcement 

MDC Mobile Data Computer 

NIST National Institute of Standards and Technology 

NPSBN National Public Safety Broadband Network 
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1. Introduction 

In this paper, we describe the issues and concerns first responders shared surrounding the use 

or potential use of emerging data sharing technologies such as mapping and location tracking 

tools, health and environmental sensors, networked video cameras, and many other 

applications, as well as analytics platforms that turn large quantities of data into actionable 

intelligence. While these technologies have already provided significant operational benefits 

to some agencies and promise to become increasingly powerful in the coming years, many 

challenges are emerging that may significantly impede the adoption of new technologies and 

the realization of maximum utility from these tools. 

The public safety community traditionally consists of five core disciplines: firefighting (FF), 

emergency medical services (EMS), law enforcement (LE), and public safety 

telecommunicators (COMMS). For a given incident, beginning the moment an emergency 

occurred, to the 911 call, to arrival and response of first responders, to long-term monitoring 

or investigation, many other entities outside of FF, EMS, LE and COMMS may exchange 

information with first responders. Thus, the effectiveness of communications technologies 

depends not just on the actions and processes of first responders, but also on those of 

numerous public safety partners, including other government agencies, hospitals, courts, 

schools, nonprofit organizations, private businesses, and many others. 

This report presents key issues associated with the use of data sharing technologies in public 

safety which are not technical in nature. The National Institute of Standards and Technology 

(NIST) Information Technology Laboratory’s (ITL) Visualization and Usability Group 

conducted extensive interviews with first responders focused on their experiences with 

communications technologies [1, 2]. Many of the challenges described by the respondents 

addressed obstacles and concerns that cannot be solved through technological enhancements 

alone. While more user-friendly or efficient devices and programs may increase the value of 

emerging communication technologies, they are unlikely to make technologies more 

accessible to agencies without adequate inter-agency governance structures or technicallytrained staff. For example, issues with device functionality and ergonomics or network 

reliability are best addressed through continued investment and refinement of existing 

research and development programs by academic, government, and private sector parties. In 

contrast, developing cross-jurisdictional governance bodies, technology policy best practices, 

and new procurement structures calls for comprehensive, public safety-wide strategies. Such 

solutions require expertise and input from stakeholders across the public safety community, 

as well as from partners beyond the traditional boundary of public safety [3]. 

Addressing these kinds of challenges requires a re-evaluation of institutional structures, 

policies, and funding processes. While the Usability Group interviews did not target such 

issues directly, the breadth and consistency of the non-technical challenges articulated by 

first responders provide a foundation for understanding high-priority issues that could be 

addressed to make emerging technologies for public safety as effective as possible. By 

highlighting such issues in a standalone report, this report aims to spur discussion and 

creative thinking among stakeholders within and outside the public safety community and 

accelerate progress towards solving them. 
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2. Methodology 

This report is based on the transcripts of structured interviews with approximately 200 first 

responders conducted by the NIST Usability Group during fiscal years 2017 and 2018 [1]. 

The purpose of these interviews was to learn about first responders’ experiences with 

communications technology: their positive and negative experiences and their desires and 

expectations for future technologies. In responding to the interviewers’ questions, first 

responders identified a wide range of challenges they had experienced using legacy and 

existing technologies and desired functionalities for future technologies [2]. Although policy 

challenges and preferences were not an explicit focus of the interviews, many first responders 

also described experiences of policy successes and failures; they expressed hopes and lessons 

learned regarding policy decisions for future technologies. We therefore re-analyzed the 

interview data through the lens of policy issues in order to identify major themes about the 

interaction of policy and technology in public safety operations. 

Beginning with the dataset of all interview extracts coded for the Usability Group study [1], 

we analyzed extracts tagged with the following codes: 

Table 1. Subset of the NIST “Voices of First Responders” codebook 

Major Code Subcode Code Operationalization 

Information Control Data, evidence, or intelligence related to an incident or to 

work environment/situation: Entity who has the 

ability/responsibility to act or pass on information 

Problems People Identification of issues identified by participants related to 

doing their jobs: Issues with people 

Problems Information Identification of issues identified by participants related to 

doing their jobs: Issues with information (in getting, 

receiving, or producing information; situations where there 

was too little or too much information) 

Problems Policies/ 

Procedures 

Identification of issues identified by participants related to 

doing their jobs: Issues with formal or informal rules and 

operating processes and procedures for how things should 

be, have been, or are being done 

Rules/Politics Priority/ 

Influence 

Formal or informal guidelines that directly or indirectly 

govern the work, expectations, and/or environments of first 

responders: Related to priorities of the administration (e.g., 

station, local government) 

Rules/Politics Policies/ 

Procedures 

Formal or informal guidelines that directly or indirectly 

govern the work, expectations, and/or environments of first 

responders: Formal rules and operating processes for how 

things operate 

Rules/Politics Unspoken Formal or informal guidelines that directly or indirectly 
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Rules for 

Behavior 

govern the work, expectations, and/or environments of first 

responders: Informal understandings of how things should 

be done (for example: radio discipline) 

Wish List -- Things (funding, information, processes, technology, 

devices, or equipment) that would facilitate first responders’ 

job 

We read each extract in this set (N = 3,513), marked them as either “relevant” or “not 

relevant,” and assigned one or more keywords to relevant extracts: 

Table 2. Keywords used to annotate first responder interview data. 

Keyword Keyword Operationalization 

Policy Policies, laws, or practices governing the use of technology 

Politics Differences in outlook, style, or tradition between disciplines, agencies, 

or individuals 

Standards Accepted procedures or metrics governing communication or the use of 

technology 

Interagency Information sharing among different public safety agencies 

Third party Information sharing between public safety agencies and outside entities 

(including private businesses, non-public safety agencies, private 

ambulance services, hospitals, and courts) 

Data management Processes of collecting, disseminating, and storing data 

Access control Processes of selectively providing access to data resources 

Retention Processes of storing data after an incident 

Liability Legal risks associated with collection, dissemination, or storage of data 

Privacy Impacts on privacy of first responders or members of the public 

associated with data collection, dissemination, or storage 

Financial Financial circumstances or impacts on technology use 

Staffing Impacts of technology on staffing needs or capabilities 

Usability Aspects of data sharing or analytics tools that affect how easily they are 

used by first responders 

Obstacle Past or anticipated challenges or concerns about the use of data sharing 

and analytics technologies 

Preference Desires regarding policies, procedures, and usability of current or future 

data sharing and analytics technologies 

Of the extracts marked as relevant (N = 515), these keywords were observed in the following 

frequencies: 
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Table 3. Frequency of keywords applied to first responder interview quotes. 

Keyword Extracts Tagged 

Obstacle 274 

Preference 179 

Interagency 164 

Data management 161 

Policy 157 

Third party 108 

Standards 76 

Financial 66 

Privacy 63 

Access control 54 

Usability 36 

Liability 31 

Staffing 28 

Retention 16 

Politics 12 

Finally, we assessed the relevant extracts through the lens of these keyword categories to 

identify unifying themes and key ideas expressed by first responders. Following the 

convention used in the NIST “Voices of First Responders” reports [1, 2], this report displays 

interview quotes in blue indented blocks of text, attributed with an abbreviation denoting the 

discipline (FF, EMS, LE, or COMMS), geographic setting (Urban, Suburban, or Rural), and 

unique numerical code of the respondent. 

3. Results 

We identified three broad categories of issues expressed by first responders regarding policy 

challenges and concerns associated with data sharing technologies: Governance, Risks, and 

Budgets. 

3.1. Governance 

Silos between public safety agencies, jurisdictions, and disciplines 

Public safety agencies are governed primarily by their local jurisdiction (typically city or 

county). This can create obstacles to communication across agencies of different disciplines 

within the same jurisdiction (e.g., between fire and law enforcement) and across 

jurisdictional boundaries (e.g., local and federal law enforcement). Additionally, most 

incidents to which public safety agencies respond are not large, complex incidents requiring 

support from multiple agencies across a large geographic area. Therefore, even if 

communication silos are not consciously constructed between different types of agencies, 
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first responders are simply less familiar with the policies and procedures required for multiagency response situations. These factors contribute to the difficulties reported by many first 

responders in these interviews regarding sharing data with other agencies. Many first 

responders specifically discussed communication barriers between law enforcement and 

other public safety agencies. 

“We have very little to no communication with our police agency. We are able to 

scan their channel, but I don't think they want us on their channel, and they don't 

come onto our channel. And that's been identified as a huge problem in some of these 

large-scale incidents around the country of, for instance, the [highly publicized 

incident]. There was no communication between the police and the fire on one scene. 

So I think that needs to get bridged. I think that's done through policy and procedure. 

I think the technology is there. I just don't think we utilize it efficiently.” (EMS-S006) 

“And the only time we really ever see Park Police's camera is during major events 

when they allow us access to the video. So it's not something that's immediately 

accessible on a day-to-day basis.” (FF-U-043) 

“[T]hey're trying to create a standard. But to do that all across the United States is 

almost [tough?] because you got to look at data back in the history of years past. And 

you might have done yours in Excel, and he did his in DOS, and I just did mine on 

paper. So there's really no set system... we have different software programs, but 

none of them communicate with each other. So it's just a lot of data entry.” (FF-S022) 

“Most of the agencies out there all have different systems and I think it would be nice 

to have something across the board that had all the functions that are user friendly. 

There are different computer systems out there; like the one that we have currently is 

pretty user friendly; it’s real easy to use, it has kind of a lot of new features, one that 

they might go to if there is a merge with [another jurisdiction], that it is still going to 

go to a different system that is not as user friendly and doesn’t have the features that 

the current one has and we will have to learn a brand new one over again that is not 

going to have the same features, not gonna be as good, in my opinion, because it is 

not going to - we are gonna lose the functionality that we had before that we took for 

granted, like the large database of names and stuff that we already have for the 

downriver area; not in that system anymore, we are not gonna have that anymore.” 

(LE-S-064) 

“[O]ne thing that we could do better on is our governance and risk management 

compliance while adopting new technology. I know most of the organizations in the 

county kind of have a little technology committee or whatever but I don't think those 

committees share information. And I would like to have standardized-- a standards 

committee for technology across the board.” (COMMS-S-001) 

“I guess, if this is all related towards the technology side, is how much control the 

government has to force people to follow processes so that we make sure that we're 

not falling behind the technology curve, or that we're doing the right thing. ... So what 
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kind of checks and balances are the government going to have to force the hand of 

these different cities to do what they need to do to make sure that we are all meeting 

the same benchmarks?” (FF-U-043) 

“Well, and then just the whole movement of transparency and data sharing. I mean, 

so we're all, the whole nation-- I'll just speak for-- we're coming out of years and 

years and years of siloed work. Don't share. Don't share your data; don't share 

verbally; don't share. Don't even share internally, right?” (LE-U-032) 

Summary of quotes: 

 Firefighters and EMS personnel cannot communicate directly with law 

enforcement officers. (EMS-S-006) 

 Park Police only provide local agencies with video data during major 

incidents, not everyday activities. (FF-U-043) 

 Every agency has been using their software systems for many years. Rather 

than standardize them all, data are manually transferred from one system to 

another. (FF-S-022) 

 Merging with an agency using a different data system means giving up the 

preferred features of the existing system and having to learn how to use a new 

system. (LE-S-064) 

 There is a need for county-wide coordination and standards to facilitate 

implementation of new technologies. (COMMS-S-001) 

 Government oversight may be needed to ensure all agencies meet certain 

technology benchmarks. (FF-U-043) 

 The shift towards data sharing and transparency goes against many years of 

information restriction policies. (LE-U-032) 

Silos between public safety and external partners (private businesses, other government 

agencies, private ambulance services, hospitals, nonprofits, and courts) 

Responding to large, complex incidents sometimes involves sharing information with entities 

outside the traditional boundary of public safety. Other government agencies, such as 

transportation, emergency management, education, and health departments, can provide 

valuable incident data to first responders. Law enforcement routinely shares data with 

attorneys, corrections, and other components of the legal system. Fire and EMS regularly 

share data with private ambulance services, hospitals, and non-emergency healthcare 

providers. Private companies and nonprofit organizations can also provide incident data to 

first responders, for example surveillance camera footage, building floorplans, patient data, 

and facility hazard information. These non-public safety entities have their own internal data 

systems that are often not interfaced with public safety data systems. Sharing information 

quickly can therefore be extremely inefficient for first responders. 

“Let's say a plane crashed. We have 100 people. If we have that information. I would 

like that we would be able to send it to [the Red Cross] immediately, without-- 
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because the hospitals, you start bringing patients, and then all of a sudden they're 

setting up their own makeshift triage area for these specific victims alone. And then if 

you say that, you put all the information. I'm going to the [local university], and you 

hit tap down, and notify Red Cross, it would be great that that patient information 

would pop up to the disaster coordinator [local university]. So they have it when we 

get there. They know we're coming with that person. And they know that the Red 

Cross has been notified.” (EMS-U-009) 

“Sometimes we'll get a printed out, jumbled sheet of information that a healthcare 

provider-- like, if it's in a nursing home, they'll hand us this jumbled package of 

information about the medication this person's taking, and some basic history, but 

that's about the extent of it, and it's not presented in a way that's standardized or 

useful to us.” (FF-S-032) 

“[I]f we could transmit from the field to the hospital so when we got there all they 

had to do was say, "Oh, Mrs. Jones. Okay. Right. So you're here. You have left side 

abdominal pain. It's been going on for 10 hours. You took a stool softener, nothing 

helped. And your pain is a 5 out of 10." That would be awesome. Right now we have 

to literally repeat everything and then the hospital usually asks it again. So patients 

see it as kind of disjointed, "Oh, I told the ambulance guys that." ... I think we've 

integrated well between fire units, EMS units. Where we haven't integrated well is 

between hospitals and the pre-hospital providers.” (EMS-S-016) 

“[I]t's all about billing. It's because Medicare, specifically, likes to deny. They look 

for ways to deny billing. So they have all these codes, and all these different patient 

types, and all these different things that they want everybody to fit into, and it doesn't 

work that way. People aren't numbers. So there's a lot more drop boxing stuff into 

stuff in order to make it successfully billable. ...and less focus on just making it 

something that I can do that's accurate, legal, but also concise. And I can get it done 

in 15 minutes instead of 25. It makes a big difference.” (EMS-R-007) 

“[T]his one system that we’re looking at actually will allow us to when somebody 

calls in from their cell phone doesn’t know where they are they’re in the back country 

we can send them a text that says push this that says it’s okay for me to look at your 

phone or find your phone basically so it’s a find your phone and then you can zoom 

in on that phone’s location and even track them if they’re moving so and that’s the 

kinds of things that you know we need in today’s society of mobile phones.” 

(COMMS-R-008) 

“It can take 20 minutes to trace a phone because we're going through the cell 

company. The cell company has to then ping the phone it just takes forever you know 

we don't have that ability so even if you're having a life-threatening emergency we 

got to wait 20 minutes for them to fill out their paperwork in order for us to get help 

to you.” (COMMS-U-006) 

“So I also have the third party compliance software called [Software Name]. We 

worked with them and we built a lot of triggers, we also built triggers for the health 

department. So there's things they watch during the year, such as heat emergencies 
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during the summer, cold emergencies. Right now it's narcotic overdoses we’re 

looking at, anytime those things come up, and they'll trigger in [Software Name] and 

they’ll be able to go in and get that data out of our CAD immediately and by going 

through that third party there's no HIPAA data exchanging, all that stuff’s clean...” 

(COMMS-R-020) 

“We're in an active situation or active high-priority situation or high-risk situation, 

and we're like, "We need a description." So if you already have a picture that came 

through, and it gets sent out to all our computers or whoever's on patrol, because 

that's what they'll do is they'll send the DOL photo, drivers license to the MDCs, and 

they'll throw. So we all have that picture. So we kind of have an idea. It might not be 

the picture of him that day, but it's going to be who that person is. So if somebody on 

the street that's called 911 gets a video or photo and can upload it immediately 

somehow and then they have a photo of him that day with the clothing he's wearing, 

that would absolutely be helpful.” (LE-S-027) 

Summary of quotes: 

 There is a need to seamlessly share patient data with the Red Cross and other 

non-public safety agency medical responders. (EMS-U-009) 

 Patient data provided by nursing homes is disorganized and not standardized, 

and therefore hard to use. (FF-S-032) 

 Patient data obtained by fire and EMS personnel should be immediately 

available to hospitals to avoid redundancy and improve patient experience. 

(EMS-S-016) 

 For Medicare billing, patient data needs to be fit into codes that don't 

necessarily match reality, which makes incident record-keeping less accurate 

and efficient. (EMS-R-007) 

 Telecommunicators are interested in the capability to request access to a 

caller's mobile phone location data. (COMMS-R-008) 

 Obtaining mobile phone location data from commercial wireless providers is 

too slow and cumbersome. (COMMS-U-006) 

 Being able to seamlessly share data between the health department, a 

computer aided dispatch (CAD) system, and a data analytics platform is 

useful. (COMMS-R-020) 

 It would be helpful to supplement images of individuals from government 

databases (such as driver's license data) with image or video data provided by 

a 911 caller. (LE-S-027) 

3.2. Risks 

Legal liabilities associated with data collection, use, or misuse 

Many first responders expressed concerns about the liabilities associated with the collection 

and sharing of data, particularly data which was previously not available. If information 

exists about an incident, there may be an expectation that it be properly used for decision-
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making. What are the consequences of ignoring data or applying it inappropriately? Some 

first responders expressed concerns that the adoption of new technologies would require 

them to interpret and act on information that they are not properly trained to handle or cannot 

realistically be expected to process. 

“When I worked at [county] they had that they didn’t know they could track people’s 

speed and stuff and the issue is when you start tracking that you incur a liability with 

that where if you don’t monitor it and then somebody has an accident and you know it 

was issued then you know you can be held liable for it whereas if you never had the 

data to start with you’re not incurring that liability.” (LE-R-048) 

“I think we're getting closer to being overwhelmed. From a liability standpoint, 

there's too many things that we're telling the guys you have to do, that if they forget to 

do one of them, forget to use one piece of technology, and it comes back on them in a 

negative aspect. I guess that's my concern, of keeping it efficient enough and 

reasonable enough.” (LE-R-019) 

“You just have to make certain that at administration level, departments put in good 

policy so administrators can't go on a "fishing expedition" to try and find an officer 

saying something inappropriate or doing something inappropriate.” (LE-S-033) 

“I think that the addition of having such intense technology is intimidating to those 

who were maybe skating by or the thought that now they might be of the mind-set 

where like, "Oh my God, well I could get caught for what if I didn't do that or--?" 

And it makes them fearful. So now that technology is causing anxiety because they're 

wondering, "Oh, am I going to get in trouble? I didn't send that run. They're going to 

know."” (EMS-U-009) 

“I think that being able to mine the data that we already have access to that's public in 

nature to help people is probably one of the good things that I'm seeing. I'm just 

really leery of that because of the civil liberties.” (COMMS-R-016) 

“If you get so far out of your car, or just as soon as you leave your car, the main 

system knows you've exited and it's going to turn on your body camera. Or if your 

lights are on, it can tie into that, and it knows that's probably a traffic stop or high-risk 

thing. I shouldn't have to stop and think, "Oh, yeah. Turn on my camera." As soon as 

I leave my car, the body camera should come on if that's our department policy to use 

body cameras on all calls.” (LE-R-019) 

“[T]hat's the challenge that I see because if you're not sitting in that chair, 

dispatching, taking calls, well we can give that to communications as always a--but as 

you can see out here they have 5 computer screens in front of them. What does the 

technology do? Does it increase their workload, their responsibility, their--and with 

responsibility comes liability? Does it increase that or does it decrease that? Or is it 

kind of a neutral that this is going to be something new but it's going to help you take 

some of that workload off but it's going to replace that so is it going to be a neutral or 

is it going to be something that's going to increase their workload?” (COMMS-R016) 
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Summary of quotes: 

 If an agency tracks motorist speed and an accident occurs, the agency could be 

held liable. (LE-R-048) 

 Officers must monitor an overwhelming amount of information, and if they 

miss something, they could be held liable. (LE-R-019) 

 Policies are needed to ensure that technology is not used to go on "fishing 

expeditions" for bad behavior. (LE-S-033) 

 EMS personnel are anxious about using monitoring technologies that could be 

used to reprimand them. (EMS-U-009) 

 The ability to search publicly available data for public safety purposes may 

compromise civil liberties. (COMMS-R-016) 

 Technology should be able to automatically detect when policy dictates a 

body camera must be turned on. (LE-R-019) 

 New technologies can improve outcomes, but they can also increase 

workloads and create liabilities. (COMMS-R-016) 

Difficult to meet policies/best practices of data management 

Agencies are managing more data every day. Once data are collected, what obligations exist 

for retaining, redacting, or destroying the data? Even if there are clear answers to these 

questions, in many cases, guidance on how to implement such requirements does not yet 

exist. Data management involves difficult trade-offs between saving as much information as 

possible and the cost of long-term, secure data storage. 

“We've had just a couple of officers that use body cameras and then submit their 

video, and it's gigabytes and gigabytes of data that just... and that's just like one or 

two calls from like an hour or two. And then the question is, do you go lower quality 

in order to get more, less storage. But I disagree with that. I think it should be the 

highest quality you can and-- I don't know. And then retention, it comes down to 

retention of how long do you have to keep things?” (LE-S-021) 

“We haven’t had any, you know, but when you talk about, you know, the capabilities 

of the phone, you can take pictures and so forth and you know, although the 

department discourages using your own cell phone for, you know, evidence pictures 

and so forth, you know it sometimes just becomes a necessity.” (LE-R-060) 

“And there's a communication flow that has to happen and it's really challenging. It 

has to go from your very local jurisdiction up to your operational area, and it has to 

get processed and synthesized and say, "Okay, what's the scope of this," right? And 

it's much more detailed information than you would get like, "Hey this building is on 

fire." Okay? "Let's all run and put it out." Well now you've got to go back and you've 

got to have building inspector information. You've got to have-- how much timekeeping that's involved? All these different components of information that make that 
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process a lot more complex. And then you have to account for it, right?” (COMMS-S001) 

“Some of the things talking about videos and pictures with that -- and we know that 

that is coming but I don't think that should be something that is law delivered 

anywhere. You know, I don't care whether it's New York City or Boise, Idaho, and I 

think any of that technology should be something that the person sitting behind that 

console has the option to say -- yes, I want to see this or Ms. Supervisor, I need you to 

view this. You know, I am just talking about the whole mental viewing that -- I don't 

think that that should something that when we answer 911, that there is something 

that pops up in front of somebody's face...” (COMMS-R-019) 

“So if you call 911 because you're having chest pain, and the 911 dispatcher's asking 

you all kinds of questions about where do you live, and what's your address? Where 

are you at in the house? What time did your chest pain start? Just being that 

dispatcher asking questions, those are all same questions that I'm going to have to ask 

when I get there. And I don't know them-- and I don't know them ahead of time. So 

they're already getting them, and they're staring at a computer. I would find it helpful 

if those questions that they asked, when they got put into the dispatch message, that 

they would also transfer...Push to me and also transfer over to my electronic 

reporting mechanism.” (EMS-S-015) 

“Speaker 1: [W]e have an inventory software that we can track when we bought [a 

lifeline rope], and we can track when we throw it away. But the only way to track all 

the stuff in the middle is a piece of paper. 

“Speaker 2: So once that form fills out, you have no idea every time it was used 

before. 

“Speaker 1: And then there becomes the problem of you have to archive it. So do you 

archive it in a book? Do you archive it as a digital copy? Where do you keep it? 

...And then when the accreditation shows up, or when OSHA shows up because 

there's a problem - somebody fell off a rope or something - now you have to dig all 

this stuff out.” (FF-S-022) 

Summary of quotes: 

 There is a tension between retaining enough data for high-quality video and 

managing huge quantities of data, while complying with retention policies. 

(LE-S-021) 

 Prohibiting the use of personal phones for on-duty work is sometimes 

impractical. (LE-R-060) 

 Detailed building data are needed to understand the scope of a fire and assign 

appropriate resources, and this information is not efficiently organized. 

(COMMS-S-001) 

 Video and image data provided by 911 callers should not automatically be 

presented to 911 call takers. (COMMS-R-019) 
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 All information collected from a 911 caller by a 911 call taker should be 

provided electronically to EMS personnel. (EMS-S-015) 

 There are no formatting standards for equipment records required by federal 

regulators. (FF-S-022) 

Privacy concerns 

Data collected for emergency response can expose both first responders and members of the 

public to privacy risks. Many first responders expressed ambivalence or wariness about the 

prospect of being recorded or tracked while performing their work duties. While many 

acknowledged that such technologies could provide operational benefits, many were also 

concerned about the potential for their use to punish first responders. At least one first 

responder also acknowledged the potential privacy risks to the public as a civil liberty issue. 

The public may be unaware of what data about them or their community are available to first 

responders, and presumably hold a variety of opinions about whether and how such data use 

should be constrained. 

“As I told people when we put the license plate recognition cameras on the cars and 

they had GPS tagging for the photos, everyone thought I was following their cars or I 

was tracking their cars. They were cutting my CAT 5 cables for fear that these things 

would work, and that they would be caught doing something they weren't supposed to 

be doing, which for the most was going outside of their sector or outside of their 

district, not outside the city, just crossing a street into another district. Some would 

say would be a violation of rules and procedure. So they were very reluctant to allow 

a device in the car that would allow me to track that.” (LE-U-011) 

“They've had officers when they had a police shooting, they were using their personal 

cell phones and they subpoenaed to get copies of the entire cell phone. So there's kind 

of the whole privacy thing, which is why I think the department's moving to-- here's 

the department phone. Do not use yours, otherwise anything you have on their, 

personal, private, it can be shared.” (LE-U-024) 

“I think also if there was a way to, on the reverse side, bringing in a patient that we're 

trying to describe what's wrong with them, or how they look, or how concerning they 

are, or how non-concerning they are despite their complaint or maybe one of their 

vitals is abnormal but you're like, "No, this is just drama." And then, but if we could 

show that to the receiving hospital, like, "Look, they're fine," or, "Look, you better 

open up a front room and get a bunch of doctors in there." So I think seeing-- there's a 

privacy thing now where, do I want to be on camera on every single call that I'm on? 

Probably not. Do I want to be on camera on any of the calls I'm on? Probably not. But 

do I run every call like somebody is filming me? Yes, I do, because they're 

everywhere. So it could be useful to see stuff.” (EMS-R-007) 

“Well, the video stuff is always nice to be able to have, just that where-are-they kind 

of a tracking, keeping accountability. It's like all these things come with just privacy 

issues too, though. We're trying to figure out how to balance.” (FF-R-019) 
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“90% of our calls are wireless. So, if they are calling in -- then maybe we would have 

access to their camera. Like, by them calling 911 would grant us access to let's say 

their camera... And that way like that would help us if we are having trouble locating 

-- I don't know where I am at. Okay, well -- let me see where you are at.” (COMMSR-019) 

Summary of quotes: 

 Officers do not want to use technology that they think will be used to monitor 

and reprimand them. (LE-U-011) 

 A police department provides mobile phones, so officers do not have to risk 

exposing their private data by using a personal device for work purposes. (LEU-024) 

 Filming incidents could provide useful information, but also creates privacy 

risks for EMS personnel. (EMS-R-007) 

 Filming incidents provides useful incident data and transparency, but also 

creates privacy risks. (FF-R-019) 

 911 call takers could request access to a caller's mobile phone location data to 

help locate them. (COMMS-R-019) 

3.3. Budgets 

Technology implementation can be cost-prohibitive 

Public safety agencies work with tight budgets. Adopting a new technology at the scale of an 

entire agency is expensive. Agencies often find it difficult to justify technology expenses 

when personnel salary and maintenance of existing equipment are under-resourced. Many 

first responders commented on their experiences scraping funding together and inadequately 

funded technology implementations. 

“We've got one design for body cams, we've got one design for in-car cams, we've 

got one design for CAD, and then we've got all these other small things. And they're 

all from different vendors, because of whatever reason. The city was trying to beg, 

borrow, steal these things from different vendors and they didn't want to pay full 

price, so none of them integrate well together, which is a huge issue for us.” (LE-U005) 

“[S]o standardized patient care records, standardize some ability to a common 

footprint, blueprint, means to access information about buildings. But the thing is that 

we're not going to get it from-- I don't believe we're going to get it from the thirdparty system out there that's building it. It needs to come probably from some sort of 

like-- and there's not an economic motivation to just build something like that. Maybe 

somebody could build something that's big enough for everybody adopt it, and then 

you'd have it, but it seems like the more appropriate way is some sort of nationalized 

standard or government funding or something like that.” (FF-S-032) 
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“There’s no money in it for them [cellular device makers]. It’s very expensive for 

them to upgrade their systems and that’s why we currently don’t know where you are 

when you call 911 from a cell phone.” (COMMS-U-007) 

“And they believe that we should be providing a phone or some sort of 

communication to them so that they can communicate easily with their chiefs, and 

sometimes that's difficult on our side because now we would have to supply phones 

for everyone and it's just not; money-wise, it's not going to happen.” (EMS-U-010) 

Summary of quotes: 

 Acquiring the cheapest equipment from a variety of vendors results in a lack 

of integration across technologies. (LE-U-005) 

 Standardization of patient, building, and other data is needed, but vendors are 

not economically incentivized to implement standards. (FF-S-032) 

 The inability to locate a 911 caller's location from their mobile device is due 

to a lack of economic incentive for cellular device makers. (COMMS-U-007) 

 Agencies want to provide phones to responders but cannot afford to provide 

them to everyone. (EMS-U-010) 

Difficult to coordinate funding across disciplines and jurisdictions 

Budgets for public safety agencies, in addition to being tight, are typically restricted to 

expenditures for a specific agency. For agencies wishing to collaborate, this can create 

barriers to cost sharing. Significant budget disparities between agencies can result in a 

hodgepodge of technologies and software versions across a region, which can stymie crossjurisdictional interoperability efforts. 

“Another technology initiative that we saw fail in this valley was the fire several fire 

agencies were trying to get mobiles in their vehicles and right now there’s very 

limited capabilities for fire to see the important information in their mobiles that law 

enforcement sees and again it comes down to just lack of funding and ability for them 

to tie into these calling systems and so I think that interop just isn’t radios there’s 

more to it with these officers, these first responders need to have certain information, 

they don’t need to see arrest records and things like that but there’s a lot of 

information that they crave from dispatch and they just don’t have any way to get to it 

because they can’t have the tools that are funded by the law enforcement side.” 

(COMMS-R-008) 

“Because you got districts in this county, like us, who are pretty well funded. You get 

districts in this county, like [town], they are completely volunteer. Their budget is, I 

mean-- we give them our used equipment because they need it. They have no money 

to spend on anything, so how are you going to apply technology evenly across even 

as small an area as our county and make sure that it benefits everybody?” (EMS-R008) 
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“They try to get the best stuff and everything is-- again, when you do the technology 

upgrade, you have to start and then you have to finish. But you can start, but you still 

have half of the city that is on the old stuff, because it's what? It's budgetary. It's 

money.” (LE-U-012) 

“But I think there's some opportunities in the future as money gets tighter, and that 

you just can't build fire houses wherever you want anymore. You have to figure out 

how can we work together to cover areas on the fringes of your protection area.” (FFS-017) 

Summary of quotes: 

 Lack of interoperability results from the inability to share equipment funding 

across public safety disciplines. (COMMS-R-008) 

 Funding disparities between jurisdictions makes it impossible to adopt 

technologies evenly. (EMS-R-008) 

 Funding disparities makes it hard to keep technologies up-to-date across a 

whole city. (LE-U-012) 

 Jurisdictions must coordinate funding to ensure adequate coverage of an entire 

protection area. (FF-S-017) 

Shortage of proficient technical personnel 

Many first responders commented on the increasing technical requirements associated with 

emerging communication technologies. Public safety agencies often do not have significant 

information technology (IT) support in-house or share IT personnel with other government 

agencies. As the amount and diversity of technologies used by first responders grows, this 

gap will continue to widen. 

“So you want to do this technology, someone's got to monitor it. If you want to have a 

drone that does a windshield survey of every district in the city, that's great, but the 

engine company is gone. They're helping people in the collapsed building. Who's 

going to run the drone? Who's going to look at the video that the drone is producing? 

Who's going to assess that video and rank it and know what to do and who to give it 

to and prioritize what you see on it?” (FF-U-016) 

“[A] lot of our people here are just-- they don't understand what the possibilities 

could be. All they know is what we've always done. They have their blinders on. And 

this is the way we do things.” (FF-U-044) 

“What happens when it doesn't work? What happens when we have trouble with it? 

Who fixes it? Because I can't just call downstairs to IT, okay? I've got a contractor 

that does our IT because we don't have an IT department. They're budgeted two days 

a week, maybe... [T]here's technologies out there that I'd love to use right now but I 

refuse to implement because we don't have the-- I don't have the bandwidth, the 

personal bandwidth, to manage it. For instance, driver monitoring software and 
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hardware is a big deal on the EMS industry... If you get grant money for an 

ambulance, you have to have some kind of driver monitoring system in it. Well, all 

those things are connected technologies. They all have to be downloaded. They all 

have to be analyzed. They all have to-- and that's just one technology. That's not the 

radio system. That's not our patient care reporting system. That's not our scheduling 

system. It's a whole nother system that somebody has to deal with.” (EMS-R-008) 

“So that's probably the biggest key, is do they [IT support] have the capacity to get it 

done, the work capacity? Because we still have to keep the trucks maintained and all 

of these systems... So yes and no. Not really. If I had more staff, it would be quicker. 

Unfortunately, now it's becoming a higher priority, so I might have to kick the can on 

some other stuff, and try to bring this together.” (FF-S-023) 

“I think these are all considerations as they keep adding the stuff and I keep trying to 

tell my administration, "At some point, you will have to add more support staff." You 

can't keep adding more and more stuff... without adding someone dedicated to 

understand how it works and supporting the guys when they have questions about it. 

Or it's going to get thrown in the back of the car and forgotten and just told, "It's 

another project that didn't work," because the support wasn't there.” (LE-R-019) 

“So, you know, and then we were hiring people to take care of that that can really 

hold you hostage because they talk in a language that is foreign to me and I don't 

want to have programmers and people working -- we are law enforcement, so let 

those folks take care of that. Let us do -- I don't need to be hiring those people 

working in Sheriff's Office. I need that to be a service that we hire.” (LE-R-058) 

“For a long time there-- so we were in a period where we had a deputy fire chief in 

charge of IT, and I thought he did a really, really good job of bringing us into the 

future for a lot of this stuff. And they eliminated that position - I don't know how 

many years now - four, five years ago. Maybe more than that by now. I feel like we 

desperately need that...” (FF-U-044) 

“I'm 52 years old and I really don’t want to keep doing what I was doing when I was 

20. So this position came open and I migrated to here because I was really the only 

one that knew the CAD, knew the communications center and all that stuff, so we 

hired a new so I help him.” (COMMS-R-020) 

“It would cost the department not just more money in server space and server upkeep 

they would have to hire probably one or two more IT guys just to man that [bodyworn camera data]. Plus the equipment upkeep, the contracts and stuff like that that 

they would have to have with [company] and with [company] or [company] whoever 

they decided to go to and it just comes down to money really.” (LE-R-045) 

Summary of quotes: 

 Adding more sources of data requires someone to monitor and filter 

information. (FF-U-016) 
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 Existing staff don't have a vision for potential technological capabilities. (FFU-044) 

 Part-time information technology (IT) contractors are not adequate for 

implementing and managing critical modern EMS technologies. (EMS-R-008) 

 More IT staff are needed, but there is no extra staff budget. (FF-S-023) 

 Adding new technologies without increasing the number of technical support 

staff will result in the technologies not being used. (LE-R-019) 

 Communication barriers between IT staff and public safety personnel make it 

hard for the agency to directly manage IT staff. (LE-R-058) 

 Agency budget for staff does not adequately support the personnel needed to 

keep technologies up-to-date. (FF-U-044) 

 Transferring existing staff into technology roles creates staffing needs in other 

areas. (COMMS-R-020) 

 Dedicated staff are needed to manage body-worn camera data, maintain 

equipment, and manage contracts. (LE-R-045) 

4. Conclusions 

In their interview responses, first responders articulated a wide variety of issues that are 

already inhibiting or may in the future inhibit optimal use of modern data sharing 

technologies. Many comments linked their observations of public discussions of technologies 

such as facial recognition and navigation assistants to the obstacles they had experienced or 

anticipated in using these technologies in their work. This report highlights the challenges 

expressed by first responders which cannot be solved through technological developments 

alone. These issues will require cross-disciplinary and cross-jurisdictional discussions and 

strategies to address. Some obstacles may require creative new approaches that can more 

effectively address the challenges of new technologies than the traditional locally-based 

structures of public safety governance and funding. 

4.1. Governance 

First responders across disciplines expressed a need for better cross-agency and crossjurisdictional coordination to get more value out of emerging communication technologies 

and the NPSBN. While this has been true for LMR and CAD communications for many 

years, the limitations of not sharing data and not making collective strategic plans will be an 

even larger obstacle for technologies and networks with no intrinsic jurisdictional 

boundaries. If groups of agencies and jurisdictions make collective decisions about 

interoperability requirements for new technologies, they may be better positioned to enforce 

their requirements and ensure that interoperability is achieved across the full spectrum of 

stakeholders within and beyond traditional public safety disciplines. Stronger cross-agency 

governance structures could also help alleviate disparities between agencies with vastly 

different resources. 
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4.2. Risks 

New data sharing technologies present risks—both existing and potential—that public safety 

agencies are often unprepared to mitigate. The capability to collect and share a wider variety 

and larger volume of information presents potential legal liabilities related to what first 

responders are permitted to collect and what security procedures are required of them. Laws 

and policies have largely not kept pace with the development of these technologies, so 

agencies are often left to determine best practices with limited guidance. Emerging data 

sharing technologies especially raise privacy concerns related to the collection, 

dissemination, use, and long-term storage of personal information of members of the public 

and first responders themselves. As public safety agencies consider implementing new data 

sharing technologies, they could benefit from tutorials and best practice documents 

developed by technical and policy experts and tailored to public safety use cases. Such 

informational and guidance resources could be standardized across the public safety 

community and updated frequently to accommodate the rapid changes in the state of data 

sharing technologies. 

4.3. Budgets 

First responders described how tight budgets, legal constraints, and inadequate technical 

staffing present obstacles to achieving cross-agency data interoperability. Agencies regularly 

struggle with the decision to delay or downscale technology implementations due to lack of 

resources, which risks inadequate and uneven progress towards data interoperability. In 

addition to the capital costs of new technologies, agencies need resources to pay for more 

technical support staff capable of monitoring, implementing, and managing new data sharing 

technologies. Finally, funding mechanisms that prohibit spending on shared resources 

represent an impediment to cross-agency data interoperability. First responders expressed the 

need for flexibility to collaborate and share costs associated with technology implementation. 

Possible approaches to these challenges could include creating state or regional public safety 

funding opportunities to bridge the gap between local and federal funding sources and the 

designation of funding for technical support staff. 

Acknowledgments 

This report was made possible through the generous contributions of time from first 

responders and the members of the NIST Usability Group, especially Mary Theofanos, YeeYin Choong, Shanée Dawkins, Susanne Furman, and Kristen Greene. 
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19 

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