SAFECOM partnered with the Commonwealth of Virginia to develop a strategic plan for improving statewide interoperable communications with support from NIJ.
The Commonwealth and SAFECOM created the plan using SAFECOM’s “bottom-up,” locally-driven approach. The planning process included six regional focus group sessions, which culminated in a final strategic planning session. The focus group sessions captured perspectives from numerous local public safety representatives throughout the Commonwealth; these perspectives were used in the final strategic planning session in which recommendations for key initiatives were developed as part of a statewide strategic plan for improving public safety communications and interoperability.
Based on lessons learned from the Virginia planning process, SAFECOM released the Statewide Communications Interoperability Planning (SCIP) Methodology for integrating practitioner input into a successful statewide strategic plan. The SCIP Methodology serves as one approach for states to consider as they initiate statewide communications planning efforts and is organized into 10 phases.
Examples of the phases are:
¨ Phase I – Funding and Establishing Key Relationships
¨ Phase II – Information Gathering
¨ Phase III – Identify Roles and Responsibilities – Project Team
¨ Phase IV – Create Project Plan Roadmap
The SCIPMethodology.pdf is also available in the Find it Fast section of this website.
The SCIP was highlighted in Federal Computer Week. The following link will direct you to that article: http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2005/0124/web-scip-01-27-05.asp
Also see the Online SCIP.