FirstNet News
Last week, Bill Schrier joined FirstNet as a Senior Advisor, working in State Plans. Bill most recently served as the Washington State Single Point of Contact (SPOC) and Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Seattle Police Department. Bill retired from the City of Seattle as its Chief Technology Officer in 2012. He also served as Chair of the Operator Advisory Committee (OAC) to the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST) from 2010 to 2012. Bill has previous experience as a police officer and with the United States Army. He has been a prominent public safety advocate and public commenter on FirstNet through his blog and Twitter. Bill is based out of Washington State and can be reached at william.schrier@firstnet.gov or (202) 480-0854.A
lso last week, FirstNet posted two blog entries, Meet the SME’s- Senior Law Enforcement Advisor Mike Bostic and Capacity is Key for Planned Events with Large Crowds, the third in the series “10 Ways FirstNet Will Help Public Safety Save Lives and Secure Communities”. All blog posts are available on the FirstNet blog at: www.firstnet.gov/newsroom/blog.
FirstNet has now completed 36 state Governance Body Consultation Meetings, meeting with the Wisconsin Interoperability Council last week, during one of its regularly scheduled governance body meetings.
FirstNet held two Quality of Service, Priority, and Preemption (QPP) Consultation Task Team (CTT) meetings in Region IV states last week. Topics included Quality of Service (QoS) (specifically restoration and network maintenance), data management, local control and the workability of QPP across jurisdictions.
FirstNet will have a strong presence next week at two major national conferences. At the APCO 2016 Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida, Mike Poth will give a keynote address at the Distinguished Achievers Breakfast; Mike and TJ Kennedy will hold a FirstNet Town Hall; and FirstNet staff will lead sessions on “FirstNet and 9-1-1” and State Plans. Also next week, FirstNet Board members and staff will be in San Antonio, Texas, for the IAFC 2016 Fire-Rescue International, where they will participate in the IAFC Board of Directors meeting and more than a dozen committee meetings, as well as lead a general education session on FirstNet. In addition, FirstNet will be launching our new 10’x20’ booth, complete with new graphics and video monitors.
On Friday August 12, FirstNet released a draft programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) for the Central Region of the U.S. (Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming). Comments on the draft PEIS are due October 11, 2016 and FirstNet has scheduled public meetings in each of the Central Region’s 16 states, starting in September to explain its environmental plan to the public. The first meetings are both on Sept. 7 in Des Moines, Iowa, and in St. Paul, Minnesota. The official notice published to the Federal Register can be found here: http://bit.ly/2aNQxKw.
This week FirstNet will be participating in the APCO 2016 Annual Conference in Orlando, FL; FCC Tribal Broadband, Telecom, and Broadcast Training and Consultation Workshop in Bothell, WA; Region VII QPP CTT in Osceola, IA; IAFC 2016 Fire-Rescue International in San Antonio, TX; Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI) Tribal Technology & Energy Subcommittee Meeting in Bothell, WA; U.S. Virgin Islands Governance Body Meeting in Christiansted; Meeting with Seminole and Miccosukee Tribes; Federal QPP CTT in Reston, VA; California Ambulance Association in Stateline, NV; Executive Leadership Briefing with Arizona Representatives in Phoenix, AZ; U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade Information Industry Working Group Roundtable on Spectrum Policy in Washington D.C.; and Illinois Executive Briefings in Springfield, IL.
FirstNet has developed a new video about State Plans based on feedback from our consultation and outreach efforts, to outline the key steps and considerations for the States. We hope you find this short video effective in explaining not only the State Plan development process, but also how the public safety community can participate in and impact those discussions. Please feel free to share this video with your associations and first responder colleagues.
Media Watch
*The information provided is copied as-is from the media outlet source and is not edited by the Communications Department.
JEMS 8/9: New Mexico EMS Innovations Conference Highlights Opportunities for FirstNet Implementation (By Brent Williams)
“Innovation in the medical field is all around us. Every day, new solutions are developed that positively impact the ability of medical professionals and technology to save lives and improve patient outcomes. In my years working as an EMS professional, and in communications, I have experienced firsthand scenarios where we could improve patient care using data, technology and innovations that are being used by the general public every day.”
NIST Blog 8/10: NIST’s Rolling Wireless Net Helps Improve First-Responder Communications
“To demonstrate improvements to emergency communications and foster research on systems that can be quickly placed in strategic locations, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has worked with industry partners to integrate commercial technologies into a mobile wireless communications system. The portable system was built to enable research in diverse environments,” said Tracy McElvaney, an engineering supervisor in NIST’s Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) Division. “But it is modeled after FirstNet’s image of a vehicle-borne network system and the public safety community’s vision of a rapidly deployable system to be used when the nationwide network is not available.”
Web and Social Media
FirstNet’s social media presence continues to grow at its normal rate. Twitter gained more than 25 new followers, now at 3,993. Facebook has 352 followers. LinkedIn now has 1,645 followers. YouTube has 309 subscribers.
Do you have something you want to feature in the weekly update, such as a conference date, personnel announcement, or news article showcasing the work of your organization? Please send it to Yancy Edwards at yancy.edwards.ctr@firstnet.gov for possible inclusion in an upcoming update.