How Did DHS Funding for Public-Safety Interoperability Play Out in California?

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[News Flash: W2i is pleased to confirm the participation of the project leader of Northrop Grumman's New York City Wireless Network (NYCWiN) at the day-long professional development seminar and training on wireless-enabled digital video surveillance in Atlanta this month. Mr. Larry Knafo, a former deputy CIO for New York City, will be focusing part of his remarks on the interoperability of the network across jurisdictions and agencies and the challenge of bringing multiple agencies together.]

Public-safety interoperability is a critical, complex and exciting area of wireless government — not only because more and more funding is becoming available at federal and state levels but because it requires regional planning and coordination, is supportive of advanced and emerging technologies, and can catalyze the cost-effective consolidation of existing proprietary networks and applications into multipurpose, standards-based networks.

W2i first began exploring public-safety interoperability — in particular, emerging policy requirements and funding — in late 2007 at a Washington (DC) roundtable chaired Kenneth Boley, Director of Wireless and Public Safety Programs in the Office of the District of Columbia's CTO. After September 11, 2001, the National Capital Region, with its 21 jurisdictions, became a focal point of the interoperability discussion, and expansion of metropolitan DC's Regional Wireless Broadband Network (RWBN) to 106 sites was under way.

Because W2i believes an understanding of the role of states in securing funding and facilitating regional collaboration on interoperability can facilitate local authorities' planning and funding outreach, W2i hosted a second roundtable with Florida's government wireless leaders in Tallahassee, in March. And in May, at the W2i Digital Cities Joint State Briefing in Riverside (CA), Vincent Buehler, project lead for interoperable communications in the State of California’s Office of Homeland Security, talked about his state’s Public-Safety Interoperable Communications (PSIC) application process. The story is useful in showing how significant federal funding paired with a few major requirements can encourage rapid regional collaboration and technological innovation. The following is excerpted from Buehler's remarks:

"The PSIC grant was a billion-dollar grant from Department of Homeland Security that was the result of the auctioning off of the 700-MHz spectrum. The grant came down in 2007, and in regular DHS fashion, they gave us about a three-month turnaround to reel out a guidance based on their federal guidance, gather investments, and submit them. Along with that, they required us to come up with a statewide interoperable communications plan, all by December 3rd, based on the guidance from them from mid-August. it was a lot of things put together in a short time.

"The goal was: (1) to adopt advanced technologies — they wanted to make sure they were being implemented in the most cost effective manner — and (2) to address all hazards mitigation — law enforcement, fire, medical. With those guideposts, we tried to come up with investments. The biggest hurdle is that DHS didn’t want anything submitted that was single agency or single jurisdiction. They wanted everything done with a regional approach.

"In California, we had two separate entities that were required to received funding — the local entities and the state agencies — through the normal 80/20 split. Luckily, we have two separate government structures that work simultaneously toward interoperable communications. The first is the California Statewide Interoperability Executive Committee, made up of four different planning regions; and the second is the Public Safety Radio Strategic Planning Committee, which is made up of 14 key state agencies owning telecommunications infrastructure. There are two agencies that do not, including us — Homeland Security — and the Department of Finance.

"We eventually threw the 80 percent of the $94-million that California received (which equated to around $76M) to the Statewide Interoperability Executive Committee, and 20% to the state agencies, where the decisions were made by the Public Safety Radio Strategic Planning Committee.

"The other big hurdle California had to jump is that we were given 10 investment justifications; $94-million had to be outlined in 10 investment justifications. (This was similar in the other states.) Needless to say, trying to squeeze $94-million across 10 separate investments made you try to take broad brush strokes and gather enough information to justify how we were going to spend these dollars....

Lessons Learned

"When it comes to the federal grants dollars, which are given for broadband and public safety, the federal government is going toward a very regional approach. They don’t really want to see great solutions that work for a single city. And this not only goes for public-safety communications; they’re talking about this across the board for alert and warning capabilities and information sharing. They like to see regional collaboration, growing from the city and municipal size and, even better, to multiple counties.

"What worked best for us is that we have four governing regions that were able to come together and make decisions. While our investment justifications were not that detailed, or did not show exactly what we were going to do or how we were going to do it step by step of the way, they saw that there was a general consensus and that a regional collaboration was involved. Not only does that serve well when we go to invest the dollars that we spend, but when our directors go back to the Hill and talk to the individuals at federal DHS, or go to the legislatures at the state and federal levels, we can say, yes, we have these regional groups, we have these regional bodies, they are taking the dollars that you spend and are effectively using them in such a way that everyone is leveraging existing technologies and infrastructure and efforts aren’t duplicative. Then it gives us a lot more leverage over the dollars we need to pass to local entities.

"The second lesson learned is sustainability. The federal government asks not only for sustainability within its investment justifications, they also want to see a commitment from local entities. They want to see a 20% match on all our equipment purchases, which is small in hindsight, but the reality is that they want to see whether we are investing in advanced technologies, that there’s local buy-in, and that there is also a sustainable funding plan....

"Everyone is probably aware of the E911 tax — 13 or 14 cents a month — that tends to generate funds for E911. For interoperable communications, we decided we were going to propose to the legislature that we add an additional tax on top of that – a 2-3% increase — to generate $100-million a year. This would only be pennies on the bill each month, and all those additional funds would go to interoperable communications. We did a lot of state collaboration — with Florida and New York — looking at how they’re supporting their interoperable communications. Is it bond funding, public-private partnerships, leasing state sites? And this one was the only one that seemed to make sense."