Remarks by Sue Swenson
Chair, First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet)
Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) Program
Public Safety Broadband Stakeholder Meeting
San Diego, CA
June 3, 2015

—As prepared for delivery—

What A Year It’s Been to What a Difference a Year Makes!

First of all, welcome to the beautiful city of San Diego - known as “America’s Finest City.”

I hope you’ve enjoyed your time here, whatever you’ve chosen to do and hope our water shortage has not negatively impacted your stay.

I can’t believe that it’s been a year since the last PSCR Conference. Part of me feels like it’s gone really fast but when I look at what we’ve done in the last year I know that a year is not a long time when you think about what we’ve accomplished. Last year it was “What a Year It’s Been.” I came and apologized for some missteps and said it would be better, and I hope we have done that. This year it’s more appropriate to think about it from the perspective of “What a Difference A Year Makes.”

Last year I said that we needed to focus on 4 things

• Execution
• Engagement
• Communication
• Collaboration

I always think it’s important to review one’s commitments and do an impartial assessment on how ones does against them. Today, I’m going to give you my personal assessment – a report card – of how I think we’ve done and rate them either a PASS or a FAIL. I’ll be around for the next couple of days at the PSCR Conference so I’d like to hear from you. Let me know if you think I’ve been accurate in my assessment and, if not, I’d like your feedback.

On EXECUTION we’ve done quite a bit, including:

• We developed our Strategic Program Roadmap in March of last year. The Roadmap contained several key milestones focused on 3 key areas (consultation, public notices, and Draft RFP).

Since then:

• We have issued 3 public notices and comments
• We released the Special Notice and Draft RFP Documents in late April
• We launched our State Consultations - 31 to date with about 18 scheduled for later this year and 7 additional meetings being planned.

From an execution standpoint, I give us a PASS. It is particularly impressive when you think about the magnitude of each of these areas. Every single one of those has been important both in terms of accomplishment and scope.

In the area of ENGAGEMENT, consider our coordination and outreach with these constituencies:

• State Points of Contact (SPOCs) – Our interactions are ongoing, quarterly, and face-to-face. Our SPOC Community is a frankly an extension of the FirstNet team
• Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC) – We have come a long way after a rough start, this week you saw the substantive work and assignments (Device, Priority & Preemption; Hardening) it is involved in. All of them are key areas for the NPSBN.
• Public Safety Leadership – Vice Chair Jeff Johnson and I visited with the leadership of several public safety organizations such as IAFC, FOP, NVFC, and others.
• Public Safety Stakeholder Events - We try to attend as many as we can, and there are too many to mention.
• Vendors – Through our Market Research Meetings & Vendor Day, vendor interaction has been important and will continue to be going forward.
• Federal - POC’s have been set up across the Federal Agencies and provide FirstNet a single point of contact.
• Congress – We have ongoing engagement with Congress and their staffs. TJ, Jeff Johnson, Ed Parkinson, and I look to make visits to the Hill whenever we were in DC.

In addition…

• March Senate Hearing - It was a good session. I’m not sure this could be considered “engagement” but I would tell you that it felt like that to me. I meant what I said when I responded to one of the Senator’s question about whether or not this network would be operational by 2022. When I said “If this is not operational by then, we should be shot if it’s not,” that pertains to all of us – everyone in this room. It is up to us. We all own this – it is a matter of national importance.

I would say we got a PASS+ on ENGAGEMENT and still have a lot more to do.

COMMUNICATE is a 2-way dialogue and involves the sending and receiving of information. We have done a lot of communication through many different avenues, including -

• Website – We launched it last year and it has proven to be a valuable and current source of information. I often go there myself to see what’s going on.
• Social Media activity continues to grow as a valuable way to share information:
• Twitter - 2500+
• LinkedIn - over 700
• YouTube - over 100 subscribers
• Media - I think we are doing much better here in terms of communicating with our key media counterparts, particularly since the subject matter is getting more complicated.

I’d give us a PASS on communicate as well.

COLLABORATE

In addition to public safety, we continue to collaborate with many Federal agencies - mostly with NTIA and Commerce, but we also work with DHS, OMB, DOJ, the FCC, and other agencies. All of them are critical to our success. The PSCR has been and continues to be a great partner - in fact, I think you know they do a significant amount of work for us

I would give us a PASS here as well, probably more work to do here, too.

“The Year Ahead”

For the year ahead, I would like to preview key upcoming developments in those same four areas:

EXECUTION

The focus will be on the Final RFP and continuing with significant outreach. In addition to the States, outreach will expand to other key constituencies, such as important stakeholders in the States like the Governors and their staffs, the Attorney Generals, the CIO’s, and other key constituencies. We will need more execution here.

ENGAGEMENT

We are entering a New Era involving procurement integrity. The good news is that we’re moving ahead towards a final RFP. The bad news is that it will change the way in which we can interact with one another. We have worked hard to develop relationships and transparency. A lot will stay the same with many of our stakeholders, but the vendor community will see significant change. You all know this better than I because you deal with the Federal Government. It is very different for me and several of my colleagues from the private sector. You are going to have to help us.

We are also at a crossroads between what Congress intended and what Federal Rules allow. This will impact several of the FirstNet Board private sector members in how they can participate in the business of FirstNet. I think this is going to make the project more challenging, but we are working to find ways to make this work and improve that. I don’t want anyone to misread this to think that we are lessening our commitment; it’s just that we have some stringent rules to follow.

COMMUNICATION

I believe we need to step up our efforts to get out the word about FirstNet to the men and women of public safety who are on the street. I believe we’re at a point where we can adequately explain what this network could possibly do and what it could mean to the people who are on the streets everyday saving and protecting lives. We need all of you to help us do that. We can’t do it at FirstNet alone – the PSAC, for example, needs to help. And collectively, we have to do it in a way that is understandable. Let’s work together to get the word out to the people who this is going to make a difference to.

COLLABORATION

Working with others to do a task and to achieve shared goals is critical for FirstNet. While I think the working relationships we have are good, I believe we need to test whether or not we really do have shared goals. If we don’t do this, it is where “collaboration” breaks down and we are not able to move at the pace required to get this job done. So let’s all work hard over the next year to ensure that we have shared goals and to share the sense of urgency and priority that this effort deserves, because it is a matter of national importance. We are going to have to work together around a common purpose. Let’s make sure we are doing this for the right reason; as they say, 'put your money where your mouth is'.

Before I close today I want to be sure to thank all of you for working with us to make the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network a reality.

This is unlike any other effort undertaken at the Federal level. While it has many of the same attributes of other big projects, this one is unique in many ways - from the way the legislation spells out the process to achieve this to the way the procurement is accomplished. We are all going to have to work very hard to make sure that we don’t let this fall into the abyss of doing things as usual and use as much creativity and tenacity as we can all muster to ensure that this gets done right. It’s going to require open minds, shared goals, and a willingness to let go of doing things the way they’ve always been done. If we don’t, this project could fail. This is a matter of national importance and we’re each going to have to put aside our individual interests to do what’s right for our country in order for this to be a success.

I want to close by thanking a couple of folks in particular today…

• Dereck Orr from PSCR, not only for selecting San Diego for this year’s event, but for the great work at PSCR. You and your team are true collaborators and partners.
• I want to thank a couple of folks who help us get out our story and add transparency to our work including Donny Jackson, Paul Kirby, Bill Schrier, Andy Seybold, Ray Lehr, and many others who I am probably leaving out that are helping us get the word out.
• Harlin and the PSAC for the work you’re doing and the input you are providing. It is invaluable.

Thanks everyone and let’s make this coming year the best it can possibly be. It’s a pivotal year ahead for FirstNet.

Thank you.