Pensick
Nebraska is looking at the final stages of establishing Next Generation 911 services but, according to local officials, Platte County is already on the way to achieving it.
“It’s basically an overhaul of the 911 system to try to bring call centers into the digital age statewide,” said Rachel Pensick, communications director at the Joint Communications Center (JCC). “It’s more digital, it helps with getting locations and… developing a digital base system statewide.”
On Tuesday, the Nebraska Public Service Commission (PSC) voted to enter into a contract with Lumen to provide Next Generation Services (NG911). That essentially means establishing a statewide Emergency Services Internet Protocol Network, often known as ESInet, said a communication from PSC. This will allow dispatchers to receive emergency calls via multimedia data, including texts, photos and video, along with identifying the location of calls geospatially.
Columbus Police Capt. Todd Thalken, who previously oversaw operations at the CPD's dispatch center and served as interim director of the JCC before Pensick joined, said that having a network that can handle a large amount of data is important when establishing NG911.
“When you start talking about the rich data that they’re pushing here, you have to have a network that can push that around,” Thalken explained. “In a nine-county regional 911 system, we have communication between our nine counties. But what we get from the state in regards to caller information and location information, it’s a slower communications line.”
In preparation for these plans, dispatch centers around Nebraska were divided into regions, with JCC being in the East Central region, Pensick noted. The JCC serves the City of Columbus, Platte County and Polk County.
Yet, both Pensick and Thalken said that Platte County has been ahead of the game, specifically with text 911.
The Joint Communications Center.
“I’d say about half the state is doing it right now,” Thalken said. “We were one of the first ones in the state; we just got a good 911 system vendor and part of the contract was that any enhances they got in their software came free for us; it was negotiated into the contract.”
Additionally, the JCC also utilizes RapidSOS, which uses technology in smartphones that tracks the user’s actual location. This makes it easier for first responders to pinpoint an individual’s location.
The establishment of NG911 will allow for endless possibilities, Thalken said, such as being able to access video feeds from the schools if and when a call of a school shooter is received. Or, he added, being able to take a photo of an individual who is physically abusing another in public.
“That’s why I said it was pie in the sky; it’s whatever your imagination can conceive of with Next Gen 911,” Thalken said. “But the first thing you’ve got to do is have a good communications network to make that happen.”
So far, having regional divisions of Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) has proven to be a cost-effective measure, Pensick noted.
“What we’ve seen is, it actually helped cost-wise because we have several different PSAPs that are supporting… a bunch of equipment in our region,” Pensick said. “There are five PSAPs in our region that share the costs of our 911 system right now so it’s a more cost-effective way for PSAPs to (operate).”
Pensick said as Platte County started taking steps early on to meet the state’s new model, she believes the JCC will most likely see Nebraska announce baseline protocols and training standards so that practices are uniform across the state.
“That’s honestly what I’m most excited for, for Nebraska to have minimum training standards because right now we don’t have any statewide,” she said. “It varies from PSAP to PSAP.”
A press release from PSC said that the initial contract with Lumen (formerly known as CenturyLink) will cost nearly $815,000 the first year then $1.8 million each of the remaining four years. At the end of the five years, the PSC will have the option to extend the contract for another 10 years.
“This is the next big step in our process,” State 911 Director David Sankey said, in a provided statement. “Once the contract is signed, we’ll sit down with representatives of Lumen to set priorities and a timeline to begin the process of connecting regions of Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) to the statewide ESInet.”
The goal is to have all PSAP regions in Nebraska connected to the ESInet by the end of 2022, the release said.
Hannah Schrodt is the news editor of The Columbus Telegram. Reach her via email at hannah.schrodt@lee.net.
January 06, 2021 at 08:45PM
https://ift.tt/3nfC0Yd
'It was pie in the sky': Platte County ahead of game for NG911 - Columbus Telegram
https://ift.tt/2CPpHAw
Pie
No comments:
Post a Comment