Two Democrats, including incoming House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), wrote in a letter Dec. 8 to Chertoff that his 2008 goal "demonstrates a misunderstanding of the challenges and scope of achieving interoperability among federal, state and local levels of government. The reality is that interoperable communications systems will require a complicated and expensive process that cannot be executed without real knowledge, leadership and funding on the federal level."
The letter, also signed by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), added that it is a "disappointment that it has taken five years since the attacks of Sept. 11 for the administration to finally turn its attention to this [interoperability] issue."
The Democrats also asked Chertoff for a meeting to clarify his Nov. 28 remarks at a conference where interoperability was discussed. Chertoff said then that his agency will ensure that the highest-risk cities will have interoperable emergency communications by the end of 2007 and that all states will have it by the end of 2008. Chertoff also said that the cities in his department's Urban Areas Security Initiative grant program will receive interoperability scorecards by the end of the year to help them decide how much money to seek in upcoming grant applications.
The DHS has provided more than US$2.1 billion to state and local governments for interoperable communications since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has created the SAFECOM program to provide research, testing and evaluation of interoperable wireless communications systems, according to a DHS statement.
The DHS also announced on Dec. 8 the results of a nationwide survey of 6,816 emergency response agencies, which showed that about two-thirds already use radio interoperability to some degree. Of those surveyed, a third use interoperable communications in day-to-day operations, with another third saying they use it only for extraordinary events. The 6,816 agencies that responded came from a group of about 22,400 police, fire and other emergency response agencies from whom comments were solicited.
"The survey reinforces that interoperability is achievable," Chertoff said in a statement. "That technology works today and is available. The willingness of emergency response leaders and local officials to make this issue their priority is what will continue to drive progress on one of 9/11's most important lessons."
Chertoff's office was asked repeatedly to react to the Democrats' concerns, but a spokesman could not be reached for comment.
Lowey is sponsoring a bill that would require the DHS to develop a national strategy for interoperability and that calls for a $5 billion fund to pay for new interoperable technology for first responders, an aide said.
Craig Mathias, a wireless industry analyst at Farpoint Group in Ashland, Mass., said the survey result showing some level of interoperability in use by two-thirds of the respondents is encouraging. "The effort has been a fairly recent one, starting with 9/11, and a good deal of consciousness-raising has occurred," he said. "Some cities and regions have taken on the problem to work among themselves."
But Mathias also said that nationwide interoperability is "still an immense problem ... that will take decades" to achieve. "Twenty years is not an unreasonable amount of time to expect for true interoperability ... where a firefighter is patched through to talk to a doctor in a hospital."
Another analyst, Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates in Northboro, Mass., said interoperability might be achieved sooner than 20 years, but called the Chertoff goal of end of 2008 "unrealistic. ... I don't know where he got that number." Gold predicted it will take at least three to five years for widespread interoperability, assuming massive funding of new systems is available. Even if new systems are put in place, it will take a long time to install and test equipment, he said.
Even the $5 billion Lowey has proposed will not cover the costs of tackling the problem, Mathias said, adding that brute-force political decisions will also be needed. "What authority is going to take the initiative to force through a single set of technologies across tens of thousands of systems? That's a political question," he said.
Mathias said vendors of emergency radios and back-end systems seem to be cooperating well on interoperability, but cities and towns can't afford to replace expensive systems halfway through a 20- to 40-year expected life cycle. "Somebody will have to pay for the interoperability in the long term," he said. In addition, some older radio systems were created on the basis that they have true separation from their neighbors' systems in order to avoid interruptions, he and Gold said.
The most logical approach is to have interoperability at the backbone through a common switch or server installed in regional locations, perhaps using IP, Mathias and Gold said. That way, a communication system in one community on one radio band could talk to a common server used by other communities on other bands. Vendors are heading this direction already, with some large regions already working on such systems, the analysts said.