WASHINGTON-The Department of Homeland Security needs to step up and do a better job of coordinating public-safety interoperable communications, said Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), chairman of the House Government Reform national security subcommittee.
“The Homeland Security Department is clearly responsible,” said Shays. “I think DHS has to assert authority just like the court did 50 years ago and then wait for someone to say they don’t have it.”
Shays seemed quite disappointed at a hearing Tuesday when a panel of government witnesses could not assure him that the country would be further along in its goal of public-safety interoperable communications in five years. “I don’t want you back here in five years saying the same thing,” he said.
When John Muleta, chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, said he was a “glass is half-full optimist” and that planning for public-safety interoperable communications will be completed in five years, Shays said that simply completing planning was not enough. “It has to be more than planning in five years,” he said. “I don’t think the glass is half full. I think it is a quarter full.”
The Government Accountability Office-formerly known as the Government Accounting Office-released a report at the hearing that said that while the government has been working on the lack of public-safety interoperability for 15 years, there is still no baseline data.
“Reports have shown that when first responders cannot communicate effectively as needed, it can literally cost lives of both emergency responders and those they are trying to assist. Thus, 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. Public-safety officials generally recognize that effective ‘interoperable’ communications is the ability to talk with whom they want, when they want, when authorized, but not the ability to talk with everyone all of the time,” said GAO. “The current status of wireless interoperable communications across the nation-including the current interoperable communications capabilities of first responders and the scope and severity of the problems that may exist-has not been determined.”
A second panel of witnesses focused on New York. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who had requested the panel, said the radios that failed Sept. 11, 2001, are still failing today. “The radios that didn’t work on Sept. 11, still do not work today,” said Maloney.
