FirstNet Making Real Progress After Rough First Year, Board Member Says

"At this time last year, we had no staff,” McGinnis said. “We had to borrow staff from NTIA.” Board members were doing most of the work. Midway through last year, FirstNet hired a general manager and started to recruit other staff, he said. “We now are starting to look like what the organization really should have looked like all along,” he said. “We're really getting there. I think we've turned a real corner."

FirstNet also “turned a corner” in recently adding contractors to support FirstNet staff, McGinnis said. “We're already seeing the proof in value of staff, of very concrete ideas about what things might look like,” he said. He said FirstNet has signed the lease for a headquarters in Reston, Va.

Questions raised about the alleged impropriety of board actions raised by board member Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald (CD April 24 p1) were a distraction last year but “are being addressed well,” McGinnis said. A top priority of the board is making better use of the Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC), which represents public safety, he said, addressing a second criticism by Fitzgerald that the work of the committee had been ignored. “We're seeking network partners,” he said. “It means all of the partners that we're going to need. … It will be potential nationwide and regional partners."

PSAC Chairman Harlin McEwen, an NPSTC member, said two FirstNet board members, McGinnis and Fitzgerald, are also on NPSTC. McEwen said he has been invited to speak before the FirstNet board for the first time at its planned meeting next month in New York City to discuss a PSAC report on the human factor in emergency communications. “That’s significant in the fact that they have finally invited the PSAC to come to one of the board meetings and participate, so I'm encouraged by that,” he said.

McEwen said he has heard from many agencies there’s a continuing misconception that FirstNet will replace the public land mobile radio networks that remain critical to first responders. “This continues to be a major issue in this country and almost every state and local government is struggling with the fact that they have old systems or systems that need to be upgraded or replaced,” he said. “There continues to be misinformation that is spread.” McEwen said no one knows whether broadband will supplant mission-critical voice radios. “You never use the word ‘never'” but “the issue is that we don’t know when or if that will ever happen and we have to continue as a group … to educate state and local officials that this is not something that is in the works in the near future,” he said.

FirstNet emphasizes in its official communications it’s not building a “mission critical voice network, period, end of story,” McGinnis said. “One of these years, maybe."

John McIntosh, who represents the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies on NPSTC, said he has been taken aback by FirstNet board members’ ignorance of rural coverage issues. McIntosh said he was invited to a FirstNet outreach meeting last year. “I was actually appalled by the extreme lack of knowledge of the first FirstNet board members about covering remote areas,” he said. “They really didn’t have a clue.” McIntosh said he believes board members have since become more up to speed on rural issues.

McGinnis said rural coverage is an important part of FirstNet’s mission. “If anybody ever sees something out of FirstNet contrary to that let us know,” he said. “We'll fix it."

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Emergency Communications (OEC) is updating its National Emergency Communications Plan, said Deputy Director Chris Essid. “We've conducted a lot of outreach,” he said. “Over 300 stakeholders have been involved in giving us feedback.” The updated plan will be “more strategic and conceptual” than the initial plan, Essid said. “It’s going to be a little less rigid in places and in places it’s focused on the capabilities that you've identified as essential.” The plan also delves more deeply into the role played by public safety answering points, critical infrastructure providers, emergency management officials and others to “reflect an overall comprehensive approach,” he said. “Today we're capable of doing [what] back in 2008 we simply just weren’t capable of doing, we couldn’t share information like we can today."

OEC is also working with the states and territories to complete the first nationwide update of their individual Statewide Communication Interoperability Plans, Essid said. “The purpose of the ongoing updates is to help states and territories plan for new technologies, including broadband,” he said.