By Chris Algiere, FirstNet Federal Outreach Lead
Last month in Ottawa, Canada, the Eighth Canadian Public Safety Interoperability Workshop brought together more than 300 public safety communications leaders and practitioners from around the world to focus on improving interoperable emergency communications both within Canada and internationally.
The theme of this years’ workshop, known as CITIG Eight, was "From Cooperation to Collaboration," and it featured numerous presentations, panels, and breakout sessions designed to support and promote the transfer of best practices and experiences on voice and data interoperability issues. As the CITIG Board members enjoy pointing out, CITIG puts the “work” in Workshop.
Assistant Commissioner Roger Brown of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police kicked off the conference with a powerful keynote presentation during which he outlined the communications interoperability and information management challenges faced during the 28-hour manhunt earlier this year when three members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were murdered and two others were seriously injured. He encouraged attendees to leverage the lessons learned in Moncton and continue to work to improve interoperability in their jurisdictions asking the questions, “What did you know? What did you do about it?”
On Tuesday, Michael Hallowes, who works in the Emergency Management Division at the Department of Justice in Victoria, Australia, talked about his country’s Emergency Alert system for sending out warnings during emergencies. According to Michael, emergency services agencies across Australia have used Emergency Alert almost 1,300 times to send about 11 million warning messages to communities at risk of harm from natural and man-made emergencies. He said Australia supports international collaboration on standards to ensure that national public alerting systems remain fully inclusive to everyone whether at home, traveling or an international visitor.
During my presentation, I had the opportunity to highlight FirstNet’s goal of deploying a nationwide public safety broadband network and discuss how it stands to positively impact response operations. I also had the opportunity to follow up with public safety officials who I met in October during a cross-border workshop in Windsor, Ontario. It was interesting to hear more about the Communications Interoperability Strategy for Canada and how Canadian responders and government officials are moving forward on interoperability issues while looking forward to a national public safety broadband network in Canada.
Thanks to those who organized the workshop for inviting FirstNet. I would like to particularly thank Ottawa Fire Services and CITIG Chair, Assistant Deputy Chief Michael Sullivan; Chief Jeff Brooks; Inspector Brendan Dodd; Eric Torunski, CITIG Executive Director; and members of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the public safety and technology research communities. I look forward to further interactions and collaboration with our partners north of the border.
-Chris
