HOMELAND SECURITY OFFICIAL SEEKS ‘COHERENT’ WIRELESS STRATEGY
Federal govt. must be more vigorous in deploying additional wireless technology to effectively support homeland defense efforts, White House official said Tues. at E-Gov Homeland Security 2002 conference in Washington. Although several public safety-related initiatives are underway to deploy secure, interoperable wireless- infrastructure, Dept. of Justice (DoJ) “is making a strong argument for a more coherent strategy” to acquire and distribute such equipment, said Office of Homeland Security Infostructure Dir. Lee Holcomb in morning keynote. New Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) will play key role in coordinating such wireless deployment programs in conjunction with DoJ and Treasury Dept., he said.
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For example, Wireless Public Safety Interoperable Communications Project (Project Safecom), which established wireless interoperability as public safety priority after Sept. 11 attacks, will come under umbrella of DHS next month, he said. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which currently administers Safecom, also is being migrated to DHS.
FEMA earlier this year took over lead for Project Safecom, which was created to be single point of contact for all federal wireless communications efforts for public safety. Project was designed to examine policy issues such as spectrum availability for interoperable communications among public safety agencies (CD Sept 11 p3). As result of move to give Project Safecom role of coordinating existing federal wireless programs, other efforts such as Public Safety Wireless Network (PSWN) have become div. of Safecom. PSWN is supported by Justice and Treasury Depts.
Wireless industry is poised to respond to govt.’s call to upgrade and expand nation’s law enforcement and homeland security communications infrastructure, CTIA spokesman said: “Effective homeland defense will require a nationwide, interoperable communications network for first responders. In about 2 years we could build an interoperable 21st century wireless system that could support every first responder in the nation and then some.”
Holcomb confirmed that little-known land mobile radio (LMR) joint program office recently created by DoJ and Treasury was correlated with Safecom initiative. LMR Integrated Wireless Network (IWN) project, which is in its earliest planning stages, involves design of very high frequency infrastructure that will use encrypted security capability known as “over-the-air-rekeying” (OTAR). First phase of nationwide IWN project is expected to be deployed in Pacific Northwest. Joint program office said it would release formal solicitation for IWN next month (CD Dec 4 p4).
Although Holcomb declined to elaborate on scope or cost of IWN initiative, he said DHS would prioritize wireless interoperability and deployment for federal, state and local law enforcement: “We think there is a crying need to move more aggressively in this area. We will build on the efforts that Justice and Treasury have under way.”