The First Responder Network Authority’s (FirstNet) Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC) is eyeing several new tasks and activities in the year ahead. During the open portion of a PSAC meeting in Houston, PSAC Chairman Harlin McEwen said the new tasks and activities involve addressing local control and identity, credential, and access management and establishing  public safety discipline-specific working groups and a Public Safety Communications Research program research and development project task team. FirstNet will provide the PSAC instructions on the future taskings just after the first of the year, he said.

The meeting also included presentations on the priority and preemption, public safety grade, and user equipment tasks that the PSAC recently completed.

During the December 10 meeting, FirstNet officials spoke briefly about the approval by the FirstNet board earlier in the day of the release of a request for proposals (RFP) .“The PSAC’s fingerprints are all over this effort,” FirstNet Chief Executive Officer Mike Poth said of the RFP.

FirstNet President TJ Kennedy said that now “the real work is going to begin.” He also mentioned plans for more “focused consultation” in 2016, including reaching out to line first responders.

During the meeting, there also was a discussion about the difficulty in deploying public safety broadband services to remote Alaskan Native American villages where, Mr. McEwen noted, “there is little to no population.” The PSAC’s tribal working group is concerned about how the nationwide network will cover tribal lands, he said.

FirstNet board Vice Chairman Jeff Johnson said that “it is challenging at best, even when we get the right tools” to cover remote Alaskan villages. The problem is “physics,” not desire, he said. “The physics are amazing,” agreed board member Kevin McGinnis, who is the board’s tribal liaison. “There are a number of challenges.”

Mr. McEwen also said that there are two vacancies on the PSAC – for the police non-management and fire non-management positions. And he said that Todd Early will now represent the National Council of Statewide Interoperability Coordinators on the PSAC.  Mr. Early is deputy assistant director of the Public Safety Communications Service within the Law Enforcement Support Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety. – Paul Kirby, paul.kirby@wolterskluwer.com

Courtesy TRDaily