Michael Britt brings more than two decades of Information Technology experience to his job as the Arizona FirstNet Program Manager. In the latest State Spotlight feature, Michael talks to FirstNet about how his background working for a national overnight express company – which relied on an interoperable nationwide system – is helping him prepare Arizona for the nationwide public safety broadband network. He also talks about his approach to conducting statewide outreach and education about FirstNet.
Tell us about your background – both private and public sector experiences and how they are helping you with planning for the public safety broadband network?
My private sector background includes corporate Information Technology (IT), including 20 years working on major systems for a national overnight express company. I am familiar with national roll-out of networks, and it is serving me well in terms of thinking through and looking forward to what we will need to provide FirstNet so they can build us an effective network. Plus, for large system planning and design, you have to make sure you have not only the technical, but also the policy and training and education and impacts to existing processes.
With the overnight express company, the entire operation was run out of IT. As the packages are coming in, you work on load balancing for the airplanes that are going to be loaded that night. I focused on the customer devices that actually brought the package data into the system to begin with. There are many lessons learned and synergies with planning for and building the nationwide public safety broadband network, especially with regard to loading.
In addition, I have been with the Arizona Statewide Coordinator’s (SWIC) office for about four years and helped develop the statewide interoperable channels plan for Arizona. That was a great learning experience for key questions such as ‘how is this really going to work?’ and ‘how do you address interoperable issues?’ I also worked on the state’s implementation of the National Emergency Communications Plan (NECP) goal assessments, which we did in each county here in Arizona. That was probably the best learning curve of how [National Incident Management System - Incident Command System] NIMS ICS works on a real life basis, along with the planning and development of good public safety policy around planned events.
What got you interested in public safety?
I’ve always been drawn towards things that are really hard to solve. The public safety broadband network is definitely one of those. I gravitated towards FirstNet as a solution that, if done correctly, will be a solution for a lot of the interoperability issues that public safety faces. It’s also a little bit of ‘pay it back’ – I can apply my skills to something that will benefit the public and the public safety community.
What kind of strides have you seen towards interoperability and where are there still challenges?
Some of the biggest advances we have made were the result of the NECP assessments. The SWIC office had been establishing policies and procedures – the white paper style documentation - and it wasn’t until we tried to apply those to real world events for the NECP assessment that people started to realize, “Oh, we did talk about that, I remember now. This makes it a whole lot easier than the way we used to do it.”
We had numerous instances where we used a regular annual event for the NECP assessment, and applying NIMS ICS to it was new way of thinking. It really made people rethink how they were working through the issues and problems. In many cases, the event planners developed solutions that they never had before to make things a lot safer.
We still run into issues with state and local not being able to interact along the border, including encryption issues. If we design the public safety broadband network right and make it viable as a means of communication amongst state, federal, tribal entities– all across the board, that should help out.
Conducting outreach across a state or territory is a key focus for planning for the network now. What are some of the most important lessons learned and best practices in your state?
You always have to ask the question, “Who’s never heard of FirstNet?” When 80 percent of the audience raises their hand, then you really have to get your mind right about going back to step one in the discussion. Fundamentally, you need to go through it from the beginning, even though the people that are paying attention are tired of hearing it. Regular one-on-ones and a lot of preparation with the attendees in terms of making sure you work the phones and get commitments of people to come is effective.
One-on-ones are very important, especially around rural Arizona because it’s that handshake and eye to eye contact that works best. Once you do one or two one-on-ones and face-to-face meetings, then you can shift over to webinars much more easily because they can still apply the face to the name. We continue to push that approach and are focusing mainly at the agency level.
In addition to “one-on-ones,” what other kind of tools are you using for outreach?
We are in the beginning stages of building out our online and social media presence. We stood up our website recently and then added our Twitter account. We are currently hosting a series of county and local kickoff meetings and have completed all 15 Arizona County briefings. We have a three hour session walking through the national network and the Arizona plan and the possible impacts. I would expect the website and social media to become more impactful as we move forward in the process, especially as we get into the more detailed collection of data around the mobile data survey tool or data collection for shared infrastructure.
Arizona has many tribal considerations. What approach are you taking to coordinate with Indian Country?
We are always looking for an opportunity to work with Tribal communities. Arizona is fortunate to have several recognized tribal telecom operations in the state. We’ve been invited to the tribal telecom meetings, and most of them are held in Arizona because the majority of tribal telecom operations are located here, so that means it’s going to be well attended. We’ve been very successful going through that avenue since that covers six of the 22 recognized tribes in Arizona.
There is a wide range of possibilities to coordinate with Tribal communities and learn about their communications uses and needs. For example, Gila River Indian Community owns builds and manages all of their own fiber, backhaul and microwave, everything. And then there are other tribal entities that outsource most of it out.
How do you see public safety using mobile applications in a FirstNet environment?
During our recent road trips, we were surprised to hear about all the air-card usage for mobile data terminals in rural towns. We always ask that question and have the discussion about who’s using it. I’ve learned that air cards are not just a Phoenix and Tucson phenomenon; they’re being used by small towns all around, mostly for computer aided dispatch (CAD) in their day-to-day operations.
During a recent round of talks we brought up PulsePoint, an application that if you are certified in CPR you can join in and be available for CPR assistance. It’s basically just like crowdsourcing for CPR. It turns out that they are using it functionally in Arizona. We got a report from one of the counties that are looking at it and Tucson is already using it. I’m looking for the killer app just like everybody else – something that enables you to say: ‘if we had this, everything would be great’.
