SPECIAL REPORT: DHS creates bonds among first responders

When first responders across the country have a technology need, they do not turn to vendors for help.

These police, fire, emergency medical services and many others depend on the Homeland Security Department's Science and Technology Directorate's Office of Interoperability and Compatibility (OIC).

Luke Berndt, the office's chief technical officer, says OIC has grown into its role as a facilitator.

"We can bring together communities and help them come up with a good description of what kind of capability they want," Berndt says. "It has to be broad enough to cover the larger community, and allow for different companies to provide the capabilities and allow for the community to have access to those products."

Berndt adds that OIC also provides a common place for first responders and vendors to agree on standards and governance issues.

"Through our Safecom grant guidance, we recommend best practices for procuring equipment and operating it," he says. "We like to unify requests through grants or request for proposals, and then work with industry to meet those requirements."

Berndt says OIC didn't always play this facilitator role, He says at one time DHS and the first responder community thought a one-size fits all approach was best.

"What has been gained is a better understanding of what the problem space is, and what is needed to solve the problem," he says. "It is not necessarily one technology or one training course. It is all of us working together holistically."

One example of this process coming together is OIC's lead role in developing the P25 land mobile radio standard, Berndt says.

"We serve as the technical representative for public safety workers, and we are writing standards in that space," he says. "What we are heavily focused on is different testing standards as a key component in developing successful systems."

Many public safety agencies are buying P25 compliant radios now, in part, to ensure interoperability among different systems.

"We have developed a process which P25 equipment will be tested against by individual labs," Berndt says. "So people procuring systems will have more and better information available to them. They will know it has been tested against different equipment for interoperability and done in standard format."

Berndt says along the same lines is another project, a multi-band radio system, that DHS has a lot of expectations for.

So much in fact that OIC will fund a pilot this fall in several areas-both rural and metropolitan cities-to test a radio that can, with a turn of the dial, be used across different spectrums.

"Now public safety gets assigned to different frequency bands across the spectrum and because of that many radios can't communicate with each other--even if they are following standards," Berndt says. "This type of product can communicate on all different types of frequencies and bridge them just by turning a dial."

Berndt says the goal of the pilot, like many of OIC's programs, is not just to test the technology, but to see if the radio's really meet the first responders' needs.

The office also is working on several other longer term projects that may take three-to-five years to be viable.

Berndt says these include radio over wireless broadband, and the convergence of voice, video and data systems.

"The best and most functional solutions are not developed in vacuum," he says. "We have to consider what technology is currently in place and we have to integrate new technology with what exists already. We know good solutions are not developed in lab, but they are developed by working with users."

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DHS - Science and Technology Directorate's Science and Technology Directorate Command, Control and Interoperability Division

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