<DOC> [108th Congress House Hearings] [From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access] [DOCID: f:93427.wais] FIRST RESPONDER INTEROPERABILITY: CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? ======================================================================= JOINT HEARINGS before the SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING THREATS, AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS and the SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS AND THE CENSUS of the COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ NOVEMBER 6, 2003 __________ Serial No. 108-139 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house http://www.house.gov/reform ______ U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 93-427 WASHINGTON : DC ____________________________________________________________________________ For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512ÿ091800 Fax: (202) 512ÿ092250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402ÿ090001 COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER, NATHAN DEAL, Georgia Maryland CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Columbia MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio JIM COOPER, Tennessee JOHN R. CARTER, Texas CHRIS BELL, Texas WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota ------ MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont (Independent) Peter Sirh, Staff Director Melissa Wojciak, Deputy Staff Director Rob Borden, Parliamentarian Grace Washbourne, Professional Staff Member Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk Philip M. Schiliro, Minority Staff Director Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio DAN BURTON, Indiana DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio TOM LANTOS, California RON LEWIS, Kentucky BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER, TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Maryland WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota CHRIS BELL, Texas JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts Ex Officio TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California Lawrence J. Halloran, Staff Director and Counsel Robert A. Briggs, Clerk David McMillen, Minority Professional Staff Member Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida, Chairman CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri DOUG OSE, California DIANE E. WATSON, California TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio Ex Officio TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California Bob Dix, Staff Director Scott Klein, Professional Staff Member Ursula Wojciechowski, Clerk David McMillen, Minority Professional Staff Member C O N T E N T S ---------- Page Hearing held on:................................................. November 6, 2003, panel one.................................. 1 November 6, 2003, panel two.................................. 205 Statement of: Evans, Karen S., Administrator of E-Government and Information Technology, U.S. Office of Management and Budget; Dr. David Boyd, Program Manager, SAFECOM, Wireless Public Safety Interoperable Communications Program, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; John Morgan, Assistant Director, Science and Technology, National Institute of Justice, Advanced Generation Interoperability Law Enforcement [AGILE]; John Muleta, Chief, Wireless Bureau, Federal Communications Commission; and Edmond Thomas, Chief, Office of Engineering and Technology, Federal Communications Commission.................................. 213 Jenkins, William O., Jr., Director, Homeland Security and Justice Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office; Marilyn Ward, chairman, National Public Safety Telecommunications Council [NPSTC], manager, Public Safety Communications Division, Orange County, FL; Aldona Valicenti, National Association of State Chief Information Officers, NASCIO member to PSWN/SAFECOM, chief information officer, State of Kentucky; Marilyn Praisner, councilwoman, Montgomery County, MD, Chair, Telecommunity, Chair, Technology Committee, National Association of Counties, PSWN Executive Board, CapWIN Executive Board; and George Ake, program director, Capital Wireless Integrated Network [CapWIN]..... 32 Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by: Ake, George, program director, Capital Wireless Integrated Network [CapWIN], prepared statement of.................... 92 Boyd, Dr. David, Program Manager, SAFECOM, Wireless Public Safety Interoperable Communications Program, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, prepared statement of..... 222 Clay, Hon. Wm. Lacy, a Representative in Congress from the State of Missouri, prepared statements of................ 25, 279 Evans, Karen S., Administrator of E-Government and Information Technology, U.S. Office of Management and Budget, prepared statement of.............................. 216 Harman, Hon. Jane, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, prepared statements of.............. 11, 296 Jenkins, William O., Jr., Director, Homeland Security and Justice Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office, prepared statement of............................................... 35 Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from the State of New York, prepared statements of............ 30, 295 Morgan, John, Assistant Director, Science and Technology, National Institute of Justice, Advanced Generation Interoperability Law Enforcement [AGILE], prepared statement of............................................... 234 Muleta, John, Chief, Wireless Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, prepared statement of.......................... 249 Praisner, Marilyn, councilwoman, Montgomery County, MD, Chair, Telecommunity, Chair, Technology Committee, National Association of Counties, PSWN Executive Board, CapWIN Executive Board, prepared statement of..................... 73 Putnam, Hon. Adam H., a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida: Prepared statements of.................................. 5, 209 Prepared statement of Vincent Stile...................... 113 Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from the State of Connecticut, prepared statements of......... 22, 206 Valicenti, Aldona, National Association of State Chief Information Officers, NASCIO member to PSWN/SAFECOM, chief information officer, State of Kentucky, prepared statement of......................................................... 64 Ward, Marilyn, chairman, National Public Safety Telecommunications Council [NPSTC], manager, Public Safety Communications Division, Orange County, FL, prepared statement of............................................... 56 FIRST RESPONDER INTEROPERABILITY: CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? ---------- THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2003 House of Representatives, Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, joint with the Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census, Committee on Government Reform, Washington, DC. The subcommittees met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Adam H. Putnam (chairman of the Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census) presiding. Present: Representatives Putnam, Duncan, Janklow, Murphy, Schrock, Shays, Clay, Maloney, Ruppersberger, Sanchez, and Tierney. Also present: Representatives Harman and Weldon. Staff present: Lawrence Halloran, staff director and counsel; and Robert A. Briggs, clerk; Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations. Bob Dix, staff director; and Ursula Wojciechowski, clerk; Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census. Grace Washbourne, professional staff member; John Hambel, counsel; David McMillen, minority professional staff member; Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk; and Casey Welch and Jamie Harper, minority legislative assistants, Committee on Government Reform. Mr. Putnam. This joint hearing of the Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census will come to order. And we are tickled to death to be in a joint hearing today with the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations. This hearing came together at Mr. Shays' invitation. He has been a leader on this issue. I was honored to serve as his vice chair in my freshman term for 2 years with his National Security Subcommittee and delighted that he invited the Subcommittee on Technology to join him in this very important topic. Good morning and welcome to today's hearing assessing the progress being made to ensure interoperability of our Nation's public safety communications systems. We have divided today's activities into two parts for reasons that we will get into in the second part. Our first hearing will focus on our local and State officials who have the responsibility of managing public safety communications. Our second hearing will be the Federal perspective and focus on the efforts being made across the Federal Government to ensure interoperability. More specifically, we will closely examine the SAFECOM E-Government initiative and our radio spectrum challenges. Before we begin, I understand that Congressman Weldon of Pennsylvania and Congresswoman Harman of California have both asked to join us today on the panel for this hearing. By unanimous consent, I would ask the subcommittees allow their participation. Seeing no objection, we welcome Mr. Weldon and Ms. Harman to this hearing. On behalf of the subcommittee that I have the privilege to chair, let me continue to extend my appreciation to Mr. Shays and his subcommittee for their leadership in this very important issue. In a moment I will yield to Mr. Shays for his opening remarks and thoughts from his committee's perspective. I did want to take a moment, though, to convey a few thoughts from the Subcommittee on Technology's perspective that we have been reviewing this year. The Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census has held a number of comprehensive oversight hearings this year on our Federal E- Government initiatives, from E-Payroll and E-Recruitment to E- Records and Federal IT Consolidation. We have also held E- Government oversight hearings to address those specific initiatives whose success is dependent upon coordination and cooperation with State and local officials such as we have here on panel one. During these hearings, we have uncovered billions of dollars in annual savings that can be achieved from E- Government and focused on the vast opportunities we have to provide more efficient services to our citizens. I am pleased to report that despite some funding challenges, most of the E- Government agenda is on target and making progress each day. Conversely, today's hearing on SAFECOM raises some anxiety and concern in terms of progress and our ability to succeed. Let us be frank: the undeniable need to succeed with this initiative makes SAFECOM perhaps the most important of all these initiatives occurring across the Federal Government. SAFECOM is not just about improving Government, but SAFECOM is about the mission and role of our Federal Government. My concern is grounded by the fact that while we have more than enough folks providing suggestions on how to spend our Homeland Security grant money, no one seems particularly interested in taking responsibility for the performance and results associated with that spending, nor will anyone be held responsible if we have another tragedy, this time, perhaps, a tragedy with expensive, new, incompatible, non-working equipment instead of the old, incompatible, non-working equipment. Without stakeholder agreement and results, I think the only thing ``SAFE'' about SAFECOM is that we can safely predict the mother of all finger pointing. That is why this hearing is so crucial. We must determine the role of each stakeholder and create an atmosphere of accountability and responsibility for results. We cannot achieve a half-a-loaf on this initiative; we cannot claim small wins; we must succeed with SAFECOM in its entirety. So what is the current atmosphere for preparation and prioritizing our spending for first responders? First, our Homeland Security grants have very few strings attached that require interoperability of equipment across regions and States or with the Federal Government. Our SAFECOM managers have no authority to require the FCC to reorganize or designate additional bandwidth for emergency needs. Therefore, we may well be spending billions of dollars on new equipment that will then not work properly once the power switch is flipped on. We must not forget our State and local elected officials who are doing their best to secure any money they can for their jurisdictions, notwithstanding a lack of bandwidth or an inability to become interoperable with adjacent jurisdictions. We must also not forget Congress' role in both creating and solving this chaos. Given congressional oversight responsibility, Congress legislatively joins the FCC in allocating the limited and fragmented radio spectrum between commercial communication entities, television broadcast companies, and our State and local governments. And as we appropriate funds, every Member of Congress is seeking his or her fair share of grants for their district or State, regardless of communications standards or regulations created inside the Beltway by the good people managing the SAFECOM initiative. In addition to the challenges and pressures facing each stakeholder to perform, the SAFECOM initiative has the added pressure of having to produce concrete results with little time to coordinate standards. As tax money builds up in accounts intended to purchase equipment once standards and frequency questions are resolved, enormous pressure builds to push that cash out the door as quickly as possible and deal with the details later. Unfortunately, the devil is in those details when it comes to interoperability. Adding to that challenge is the interagency role SAFECOM plays to develop interoperability standards and integrate our own Federal agencies. SAFECOM's challenges are enormous. From the FCC perspective, we will no doubt hear today of the details related to separate frequency bands used by first responders and how they cannot be bridged by systems equipment. We will also hear the particulars between the 700 megahertz band versus the 800 megahertz band versus the 50 megahertz band. My interest is focused on the process and a time line in which the FCC will make decisions on spectrum allocation or reallocation so that all stakeholders, including vendors, will be ready to coordinate interoperable solutions. It is clear that we cannot move forward or expect results without some decisions being made by those in positions of authority at the FCC and OMB. If not, we will have to solve these issues here on Capitol Hill, which is not the preferred solution. I am pleased we have nearly every stakeholder group represented here today to discuss their challenges, their roles, their responsibilities, and even what business-as-usual sacrifices they plan to make in order to generate real results. While I am not certain we will have all the answers today, I am confident that we will have an opportunity to make progress with our E-Gov leadership and FCC leadership testifying side by side before Congress for the first time ever on this issue. Before yielding to Chairman Shays, I would also like to extend a special welcome to Marilyn Ward, who happens to be the manager of public safety communications for Orange County, FL. We have a bit more experience in Florida than we would like responding to emergencies, but we have learned a lot that I believe will be useful toward improving our Nation's first responder communications. Ms. Ward's performance and know-how have, in fact, earned her the chairmanship of the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council, who she represents here today. [The prepared statement of Hon. Adam H. Putnam follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.002 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.003 Mr. Putnam. With that, I will take this opportunity to yield to the ranking member of my subcommittee, Mr. Clay, before returning to Chairman Shays. Mr. Clay. Mr. Clay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you and Chairman Shays for calling the meeting. At this time I would like to yield to the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, Representative Jane Harman. Thank you. Ms. Harman. Well, I thank you for yielding, Mr. Clay, and I thank the chairmen of these two subcommittees for letting me crash the party; I really appreciate it. Chairman Shays and I have had a brother-sister act going for years on national security and homeland security issues, and Chairman Putnam, I am very grateful that you would let me come today, and to your ranking member, I am very grateful that he would yield me some time. Mr. Chairmen, the deaths of 121 firefighters on September 11, 2001 might have been prevented if their colleagues in the NYPD were able to warn them in time that the World Trade Center towers were about to collapse. The problem was the lack of interoperable communications. Since September 11, I have maintained a virtual total focus on two issues that I think are the key issues we need to fix. One is information sharing, also known as connecting the dots, and the other is interoperable communications. We have made real progress on information sharing over the past 2 years in a variety of ways, but we are essentially nowhere, repeat, nowhere, on interoperability. As we sit here today, thousands of California firefighters in my home State are in the end stages of battling the worst wildfires, in fact, the worst natural disaster my State has ever experienced. The fires have already taken 22 lives, including 1 firefighter, destroyed 3,500 homes, and consumed more than 750,000 acres of brush and timber. More than 80,000 citizens had to be evacuated from their homes. Firefighters from all over California and neighboring Arizona coordinated their actions in real time to fight a menace that rapidly spread, shifted direction, and put both citizens' and firefighters' lives in mortal danger. And yet, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Mike Freeman informs me his firefighters were often unable to coordinate efforts with firefighters from neighboring jurisdictions not because they didn't have the finest men and women on the job, but because they could not communicate with each other over their radios. ``It is the same problems we always have communicating on our radios with other agencies,'' he said. ``Different counties' radios are often on completely different, incompatible frequencies, hindering our efforts to protect lives and property.'' LA County firefighters adapted by handing out some of their own radios to other departments, but this did not always work. In one instance, in Claremont, CA, a district represented by the chairman of our Rules Committee, Assistant Chief Michael Morgan's firefighters actually had to drive around and track down firefighters from a neighboring county to give them crucial information because they could not communicate with them by radio. I mean, this sounds like prehistoric times, using physical runners, at least they had vehicles, to communicate information because technology failed. This meant that in some cases coordination was impossible because they were separated by dangerous fire areas. This is unacceptable and completely unnecessary. It is a sad day when the talents and skills of brave men and women are undermined by a lack of technology. Today's witnesses will, I am sure, tell us that the key factors for interoperable communications are coordination, equipment, training, standards, and radio spectrum. It is spectrum that is the Achilles heel, and if Congress can't make good on its promise to provide the necessary spectrum for first responders, the other efforts, in my view, will be wasted, because radios need to be on the same frequency in order to talk to each other. And that is why Congressman Curt Weldon and I introduced H.R. 1425, the Homeland Emergency Respond Operations Act [HERO], earlier this year. Mr. Chairman, the 1997 Balanced Budget Act required the FCC to reallocate radio spectrum for public safety from a band that is scheduled to be vacated no later than December 31, 2006. Unfortunately, the same law postpones transferring that band indefinitely if more than 15 percent of households are unable to receive digital television. The practical effect of this unfortunate loophole is that firefighters, police, and emergency personnel can't even begin planning for next generation interoperable communication systems because they cannot be sure that spectrum will be available. I see all the witnesses nodding. I know you agree with me. The HERO Act would close this loophole and ensure the availability of the spectrum. This act also lays the foundation for a next generation of voice and data communications systems that can enable first responders to take advantage of the communications revolution that is already sweeping through the private sector and the military. For example, in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. forces capitalized on stunning advances in information technology. The military's integrated, cutting-edge communication systems rapidly coordinated and shared data, undoubtedly saving American lives. Likewise, in the private sector, we see a wide variety of innovative products hitting the markets allowing consumers to increasingly receive all the customized voice and data services they want wherever they are. The dividends of a similar revolution in public safety and homeland security could be directly measured in lives saved. With region-wide voice and data systems, firefighters in California could have had real-time tracking maps to show progress of the fires, location of other firefighters, critical infrastructure, blueprint layouts of chemical plants or oil refineries, and in many cases locations of citizens who needed to be rescued. In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, the HERO Act is endorsed by the National Association of Counties, you are going to hear about it in just a moment; the International Association of Fire Chiefs; the International Association of Chiefs of Police; the Association of Public Safety Communications Officers; the National League of Cities; the National Volunteer Fire Council; the International Union of Police Associations, all of whose letters of endorsement I am attaching to my statement today. By showing leadership now and moving forward with interoperability legislation like HERO, we can make vital and urgent progress in better protecting our citizens. I hope your subcommittees will join us. To adjourn with no action on H.R. 1425 is to leave thousands, perhaps millions, of first responders vulnerable. I thank all of you for the time; I really appreciate it. I urge you to review this legislation; it is endorsed by every international public safety group on the planet Earth, and I can tell you from many conversations with first responders, it would have made a real difference in the California fires and it will surely make a real difference in protecting Americans at home. If we have this technology for our military abroad, we deserve to have this technology for our first responders, who are really our frontier fighters at home. Thank you very much. [The prepared statement of Hon. Jane Harman follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.004 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.005 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.006 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.007 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.008 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.009 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.010 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.011 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.012 Mr. Putnam. Thank you, Ms. Harman. We appreciate your insightful remarks. You have certainly been a leader on this and a number of other homeland and national security issues. At this time I would like to introduce the chairman of the subcommittee who was the driving force behind this hearing, Christopher ``Cassandra'' Shays, ``Cassandra'' in that he has been issuing warnings on a number of these issues for years. Prior to the events of September 11th, his subcommittee had held more hearings than anyone else in the Congress, on the threats from Al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations. Prior to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, he and Ms. Harman held or were participants in a number of the early discussions about the need for creation of such a department. He has been just a tireless advocate for the issues related to spectrum and pushing these issues forward, and we are delighted that he invited us to participate with him. Mr. Shays. Mr. Shays. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I just want to thank you for holding this hearing. I want to thank the full committee staff as well, because this has been an effort of the full committee and both our subcommittees, Mr. Chairman; also to welcome Congresswoman Harman, who has been taking such a strong stand on so many of these issues, and I had asked my staff, as soon as she had read the bill, I hope to God we are on her bill. So I had them check. This will be a bill that I can't wait to see pass, and we are well aware of why it hasn't. We have lots of different interest groups that are, in my judgment, putting their interests before the national interest, and we are going to have to take them on. More than a year before September 11, 2001, the National Security Subcommittee heard testimony from first responders who had just participated in a tabletop exercise of emergency responses to a chemical attack. Among the first casualties in that scenario were internal and external communications by Federal, State, and local officials. On September 15th of this year, we observed a similar exercise with similar results. It is hard to imagine that we still have this problem. Fully 2 years after what many saw in September 11th as a wake up call from hell, too many first responders still can't hear the alarm. Despite significant expenditures and some progress, public safety and emergency response communications remain a high tech Tower of Babel splintered by different electromagnetic, political and fiscal languages. What stands in the way of first responder interoperability? Major impediments appear to be less a question of hardware or software than wetware, the human circuitry that must power enhanced connectivity. Linking more than 44,000 State and local agencies and over 100 Federal programs and offices for effective emergency response challenges entrenched cultures of intergovernmental mistrust. Interoperability threatens old ways of doing business, while pitting public use of limited radio frequency spectrum against new commercial wireless applications. Efforts like the Wireless Public Safety Interoperable Communications Program, called SAFECOM, in the Department of Homeland Security, referred to as DHS, face daunting near-and long-term obstacles: old and incompatible equipment not yet due to be replaced; misaligned planning and funding cycles; and narrow, fragmented public safety spectrum bands crowded between bursting commercial uses. In Connecticut's 4th District, which I represent, interference on public safety bands is a serious and growing problem. Central to the apparent intractability of all these issues is the lack of technological and performance standards for interoperability. Unless State, local, and Federal public safety and emergency response agencies know exactly when, how, with whom, and on what frequencies they are supposed to be able to communicate, there is little chance randomly implemented, vendor driven technical upgrades will produce much more than accidental interoperability. Real time communication capability in the face of the terrorist threat is a national security imperative. When the next attack comes, lives will be lost as a result of the technical gaps, jurisdictional stovepipes, and jumbled spectrum allocations still impeding effective public safety voice communication and data sharing, as Ms. Harman so eloquently pointed out. We need to know how and when SAFECOM and other Federal efforts will channel the current technological and political cacophony into the seamless network that will carry our most potent weapons against terror: accurate, timely information. I want to thank Technology Subcommittee Chairman Adam Putnam again, and his staff again, for convening this joint hearing with us today. It is a small but fitting example of breaching jurisdictional barriers in the cause of greater interoperability. We thank all our witnesses for their time and for the expertise they bring to this important discussion, and we look forward to the second hearing we will be having at 11:30 with government officials. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.013 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.014 Mr. Putnam. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And the gentleman from Missouri, the ranking member of this subcommittee, graciously yielded his time to Ms. Harman, and so we will now recognize him for his opening statement. Mr. Clay. Mr. Clay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks for calling the hearing. If it were not so dangerous to our public safety, I would find it somewhat amusing that there has been so much talk about getting first responders to talk to one another and so little change. We are not much better off than we were 10 years ago. In fact, we do not even have a coherent plan for where we want to go. Understanding the problem is not too difficult. At the Federal level there are too many cooks stirring the soup, and none of them having interest of the first responders as a priority. At the local level we find the competition between police and fire departments for control in communities who are loathe to share revenues with the community next door. The councilwoman from Maryland has an excellent idea for funding much of the cost of the new equipment for the nearly 40,000 jurisdictions throughout the United States: use the revenue from the spectrum auction. Unfortunately, that would require the FCC to change its tune. As we learned from her testimony, the FCC seems to be a part of the problem and not part of the solution. Several of our witnesses will testify to the problems created by the lack of sufficient bandwidth for public safety and the interference problems caused by commercial traffic on adjacent bands. Again, these problems seem to point to the FCC for solutions, but the witnesses, instead, point to the possibility that planned future actions by the FCC will make matters worse, not better. What is lacking the process is leadership. The SAFECOM project was designed to provide that leadership, but it too has a checkered past. It started out at the Department of Treasury and then was transferred to the Department of Homeland Security. As near as I can tell, the Department of Homeland Security is struggling to find its own direction. That is not a very good prescription for leadership. This hearing will highlight the problems we face in making our system of first responders better capable of handling both day-to-day emergencies and disasters. Many of the problems are the same, whether it be closing the Woodrow Wilson Bridge because of a suicide attempt or responding to Hurricane Isabel. It is my hope that this hearing will spur greater commitment in the administration for solving some of these problems. Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this hearing, and I look forward to the testimony of the witnesses. [The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.015 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.016 Mr. Putnam. Thank you, Mr. Clay. I want to recognize the members of the subcommittees who have joined us: Mr. Janklow, Ms. Sanchez, Mrs. Maloney, Mr. Ruppersberger. At this time I will recognize Governor Janklow for his opening statement. You are recognized. Mr. Janklow. Thank you very much. You know, I really appreciate having this hearing today, and the witnesses, as I have seen the list, that are coming before the committee. There can't be any more important public safety issue than the ability to communicate when there is a crisis that starts. We in this country have the most Byzantine methods of communication that anybody can imagine. In my State, which is a State of only 750,000 people, but a landmass that is 40 percent of the size of France or Great Britain, we have with public safety, with respect to police, fire, ambulance, sheriffs, State highway patrol, various public safety agencies, we have high band and we have low band, we have VHF and we had UHF, we had AM and we had FM; and we had them all operating independent of each other. When the town of Spencer, South Dakota, was destroyed in a tornado about 6 years ago, we actually had to fly into our State a special communications system and hand out portable radios so all of the first responders, second, third, and fourth responders that showed up could communicate with each other. As a result of that, frankly with some assistance from the Congress, and a lot of effort and money by the people of our State, we put together what I believe is the finest first responder communication system in existence; it is all on high band, it is 100 percent operative on VHF channels. We purchased and gave out free to every ambulance in the State, every hospital in the State, every nursing home in the State, every school bus in the State, every highway patrol vehicle, every sheriff vehicle, every police vehicle, every mayor's vehicle, all of the cabinet officials, the Governor's office, the State Department of Transportation and all their vehicles are now all on the same system that is linked together on a high band link system that works throughout the State. It is truly a model. And I don't say it to brag. What I say it is to show you where you can go from where you have been in a very short period of time if you can get over the parochial issues that exist, of everybody wants to be boss. Also in my State, we have 42 911 centers; 42 911 in a State with only 750,000 people. Folks just all feel that they all have to control their own 911 center, that they can't share one with anybody else. And to the extent you feel you can't share one with anybody else, you put yourself into a position where you jeopardize your citizens if there is something that is more severe than the average emergency that takes place. There can't be anything more timely, Mr. Chairman, than this hearing, and the vital issues that affect the people of this Nation when there is a crisis and a disaster. The time to fix it is now, not after the next terrorist attack, not after the next attack on this country, not after the next major tornado or series of fires or floods or explosions. Thank you very much. Mr. Putnam. Thank you very much, Mr. Janklow. We will recognize the gentlelady from California, Ms. Sanchez. Ms. Sanchez. Thank you. And I would like to commend Chairman Shays and Ranking Member Kucinich for calling this hearing today. Earlier this year I toured fire stations and police departments in my district, and each one of them highlighted to me the important need for communication systems that allow law enforcement, firefighters, and other first responders to talk to one another; and to this end the Los Angeles Fire Department, with minimal resources and funds, initiated an interoperability communications pilot program known as the Los Angeles Regional Tactical Communications System. We affectionately give it an acronym LARTCS. The system essentially enables them to speak directly to one another on one channel for both short-term and long-term incidents. The pilot program only serves a portion of the county, and contrast that with the fact that the Los Angeles County Fire Department provides services to 58 municipalities and spans a 3,000 mile radius. This includes dense, urban, rural, and even remote suburban districts. The LARTCS has already proven to be a success, particularly recently with the southern California wildfires that we experienced, and according to the Los Angeles County Assistant Fire Chief, Eric Eckberg, the fires hit the region really hard, but it could have been a lot worse if the communication system was not in place. I commend the foresight and the dedication of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, and all of the participating agencies that include law enforcement, EMS, and other first responders, for establishing this pilot program. And I just want to emphasize the fact again that the system was put into place with minimal funding. This successful pilot program proves that Congress needs to do more to fund interoperability systems, whether it is through additional FEMA grants or cutting red tape, so that first responders of LA County and multiple counties throughout California and the Nation can talk to one another. We need to do more to protect our public servants as well as the general population; therefore, I look forward to the testimonies of the witnesses who can shed some light on this salient issue. And again I would like to thank the chairman and ranking member for holding this hearing today. Mr. Putnam. Thank you, Ms. Sanchez. The gentlewoman from New York, Mrs. Maloney. Mrs. Maloney. I truly want to thank you for having this hearing; I think it is tremendously important. And as one who went to ground zero on September 11, our command central was destroyed on September 11 and we created one at the police plaza. That night, when I walked in, I asked what I could do, and they said, our radios don't work, get us radios. And I called Mr. Young, chairman of Appropriations, former chairman of Defense Appropriations, and asked for radios, and he had them flown in the next day from the military. But the radios that our fire department had did not even work, and it was our greatest vulnerability, I would say, was the lack of interoperability of communication on September 11 and the lack of radios that worked, period. And it is clearly one of the saddest lessons that we learned during the terrorist attacks of September 11, was the importance of all emergency personnel to communicate with each other. I want to share what happened on that terrible day. The New York City Police Department had a helicopter in the air around the towers and could see the North Tower glowing red, and radioed their officers to warn them of a collapse, allowing most of the police officers to exit safely. Regrettably, at the same time, numerous firefighters who were in the building could not hear the announcement to leave because their radios were not compatible. The lack of this crucial information contributed to the death of hundreds of New York City's finest and bravest. Another well documented problem was that the radios simply did not work in the towers because of their height and because they lacked the needed repeaters. The problems of September 11 were not without precedent. In 1993, when the World Trade Center wa the site of another terrorist attack, the fire department's radios did not work in the towers, and there was not interoperability between all emergency personnel. Thankfully, during that attack, these failures did not result in the loss of life of our emergency personnel, but failure to act on the lessons that were learned clearly led to deadly consequences on September 11th. In the 2 years since September 11th, there has been a lot of discussion regarding interoperability and efforts to have specific spectrum dedicated for public safety. But despite all of this discussion and billions of dollars spent on homeland security funding, including some grants for interoperable communications, there is still one simple truth that sadly exists in New York City: the radios that did not work on September 11th still do not work today. My sincere hope is that this hearing will shed further light on progress being made to further enhance interoperability of communication for our emergency personnel and to gain further information on what we have to do in New York to get this technology up and working for first responders to avoid another disaster. We must learn from history; we do not need any more examples as to why investing in this technology is so important, and the examples I gave really cite why, Mr. Chairman, the hearing that you are having today is tremendously important to the safety of our citizens. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.017 Mr. Putnam. Thank you, Mrs. Maloney. You and your colleagues from New York have some very powerful lessons to share with us, some very tragic examples, unfortunately. The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Ruppersberger. Mr. Ruppersberger. And I agree with you, Mr. Chairman. A lot of the Members sitting here have been very active in first responders. Mrs. Maloney, I know you have been there and representing New York, and I know that Chairman Shays has really taken a lot of interest. So this is very important to us, this hearing; it is important to our local communities and our country. Also, I want to acknowledge Jane Harman, who is the ranking member of Intelligence. I am on the Intelligence Committee. She is a fine leader and it shows how much she cares about her job to be here. She is not a member of this committee, but she is here today. You can belong everywhere, I guess. Was that a slip? I am trying to be nice. We all know this is an incredibly important subject matter. We can create all the plans and have all the grants, but if our local first responders are not able to communicate, we are not going to be able to do the job. This issue goes beyond just first responders needing compatible equipment. The Government also has the responsibility to set aside spectrum to allow that communication occur, and that is very relevant to today's discussion. If we decide to access commercial spectrum, will it be dedicated only during a crisis or all of the time? These are issues we have to look at. What licensing agreements are needed between State and local authorities? How do we protect communication from this disruption? Can others pick up, jam, or even send messages during a crisis? This can be an issue involving terrorism. These are things that we have to look at. We have two panels here today. I do want to take a point of personal privilege. Councilwoman Marilyn Praisner and I have worked with for at least the last 10 years in local government, both on the board of the Maryland Association of Counties, of which she is president, but also on the National Association of Counties. She has been very active and has worked very hard on this issue, and I am glad to see that you are here representing the State of Maryland, Montgomery County. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Putnam. Thank you. We would also like to welcome to this hearing the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Murphy, and the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Duncan, both of whom have agreed to submit their statements for the record. Seeing no further statements, in keeping with the title of the Subcommittee on Technology, I remind you that today's hearing, and nearly all of our hearings, can be viewed live via Webcast on the committee's Web site, reform.house.gov under live committee broadcast link. At this time we will go to the testimony of our first panel. Before doing so, I would ask that panel one please stand and raise your right hands for the administration of the oath. [Witnesses sworn.] Mr. Putnam. Note for the record that all five witnesses and those accompanying them responded in the affirmative. And we will begin with Dr. Jenkins. Dr. William Jenkins is the Director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues for the U.S. General Accounting Office. Dr. Jenkins has been with the GAO since 1979, having worked principally in areas of budget policy, defense, financial markets, and justice administration. He has also been an adjunct professor at American University for over a decade. Dr. Jenkins is a graduate of Rice and received his Ph.D. in public law from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. We welcome you for your testimony, and you are recognized for 5 minutes. Noting the size of the panel and the size of the interests shown by subcommittee members, we would ask that you adhere to our 5 minute rule, please. You are recognized. STATEMENTS OF WILLIAM O. JENKINS, JR., DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY AND JUSTICE ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; MARILYN WARD, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL PUBLIC SAFETY TELECOMMUNICATIONS COUNCIL [NPSTC], MANAGER, PUBLIC SAFETY COMMUNICATIONS DIVISION, ORANGE COUNTY, FL; ALDONA VALICENTI, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF STATE CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICERS, NASCIO MEMBER TO PSWN/SAFECOM, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, STATE OF KENTUCKY; MARILYN PRAISNER, COUNCILWOMAN, MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MD, CHAIR, TELECOMMUNITY, CHAIR, TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF COUNTIES, PSWN EXECUTIVE BOARD, CAPWIN EXECUTIVE BOARD; AND GEORGE AKE, PROGRAM DIRECTOR, CAPITAL WIRELESS INTEGRATED NETWORK [CAPWIN] Dr. Jenkins. Chairman Putnam, Chairman Shays, members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity today to discuss the critical issue of interoperable communications for first responders. The interoperability issues the Nation faces today did not arise overnight, and they will not be successfully resolved over night. This morning I wish to discuss three challenges that must be met if we are to successfully address the complex issue of establishing effective and reliable interoperable communications, and one major barrier to successfully meeting those three challenges. The first challenge is to clearly define the problem, an obvious but not easy task. It is important to recognize that interoperable communications is not an end in itself, but one means to a very important end: the ability to respond effectively to any event that requires the coordinated actions of first responders. Moreover, interoperable communications is but one component of an effective incident command planning and operation structure, one that uses different scenarios--a car accident, a natural disaster, a major terrorist attack--to identify who is in charge, who must be able to communicate what information, to whom, in what form, under what circumstances. For example, what are the similarities and differences in the interoperable communication capacities, protocols, and first responder participants associated with responding to seasonably predicted flooding or a terrorist attack that involves biological agents. Only after this analysis has been done is it possible to assess the most appropriate means of achieving effective, reliable interoperable communications. It is also important to recognize that interoperable communications is not a static issue, but one that must be periodically reassessed in light of technology changes and changing events for which first responders must be prepared. Once the problem has been defined, the second challenge is to develop national performance goals and technical standards that balance uniformity with the need for flexibility in adapting them to different State and regional needs and circumstances. Because the events for which first responders must be prepared varies across the Nation, there is no single silver bullet solution that will meet all needs Nation-wide. The Council on Foreign Relations' report on emergency responders and SAFECOM officials have noted that we currently have no national standards, guidance, or strategy for achieving effective, reliable interoperable communications for first responders. DOJ officials told us they are working with SAFECOM to develop a statement of requirements for interoperable communications by May 2004. The third challenge is defining the roles and responsibilities of Federal, State, and local governments in addressing the interoperability problem. This includes their role in defining the problem, implementing any national performance goals and standards, and assessing alternative needs in achieving those goals and standards. In October 2002, this full committee issued a report on the Nation's preparation for biological, chemical, or nuclear attack. Its first finding was that incompatible communication systems impede intergovernmental coordination efforts, and recommended that the Federal Government take a leadership role in resolving the problem. A variety of Federal agencies and programs have been and remain involved in defining the interoperability problem and identifying potential solutions. OMB has designated SAFECOM as the means of unifying Federal efforts to coordinate the work of Federal, State, local, and tribal governments to provide reliable interoperable communications. However, SAFECOM does not include all major Federal efforts in this area, and its relationship to other Federal agencies and programs such as the Justice Department's AGILE program, is still evolving. SAFECOM will also face complex issues in addressing public safety spectrum management and coordination. Responsibility for assigning spectrum is split between the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Agency in the Department of Commerce. In September 2002 we reported these two agencies did not share a clearly defined national spectrum strategy, and we recommended that they develop such a strategy and report the result to Congress. To date, they have not done so. State roles are also evolving, with several States such as Missouri and Washington establishing a foundation for State- wide planning and multi-State cooperation through memoranda of understanding or similar agreements. Within States there is a growing recognition that effective emergency response, including effective interoperable communications, requires a regional approach. The barriers to achieving effective interoperable communications are generally well known. They include incompatible and aging communications equipment, limited and fragmented funding, limited and fragmented radio spectrum, limited equipment standards, and limited and fragmented planning and cooperation. Of these, perhaps the most fundamental is the lack of effective interdisciplinary and intergovernmental planning and cooperation. No one Federal first responder group, jurisdiction, or level of government can successfully fix the interoperability problems that face this Nation. Police and fire departments are often at war over how to run incident command centers. They also often use different terminology to describe the same thing. The absence of a common language in operating procedures can lead to communications problems even when participating first responders share common communications equipment and spectrum. Success will require the partnership, leadership, and collaboration of everyone involved. In the absence of that partnership and collaboration, we risk spending funds ineffectively and creating new problems in our attempt to resolve existing ones. That concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman. I would be pleased to answer any questions you or other members of the subcommittee may have. [The prepared statement of Dr. Jenkins follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.018 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.019 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.020 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.021 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.022 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.023 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.024 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.025 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.026 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.027 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.028 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.029 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.030 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.031 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.032 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.033 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.034 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.035 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.036 Mr. Putnam. Thank you very much. Our next witness is Marilyn Ward. Ms. Ward joins us today as chairman of the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council. She began her career in public safety more than 30 years ago as a dispatcher for the Florida Highway Patrol. Twenty-seven years of her career were spent in Orlando, where she quickly rose to the position of Communications Division Commander. She currently is the manager of Public Safety Communications Division for Orange County, FL. In her current position, she chairs the Governor's Domestic Security Task Force Interoperability Committee and is a member of the SAFECOM Executive Committee. Welcome. Ms. Ward. Thank you very much for having me. I am here today to talk with you about the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council [NPSTC]. NPSTC is an organization of 13 public safety type organizations, and we have 5 liaisons. Some of the initiatives that we have been working on to improve interoperability have been being worked on by all of these groups, and the IAFC, International Fire Chiefs, told me to be sure and mention them, that they are in support of these comments. With over 44,000 public safety first responder organizations in the United States, it is crucial that we have a resource and an advocate for public safety telecommunications. That is the primary role of NPSTC. NPSTC is a federation of public safety associations that encourages and facilitates through a collective voice, the implementation of the Public Safety Wireless Advisory Committee and 700 Megahertz Public Safety National Coordination Committee recommendations. NPSTC also serves as a standing forum for the exchange of ideas and information regarding public safety telecommunications. NPSTC has initiatives ranging from spectrum allocation to formation of rules and technology. Recently, we were asked by the staff at the FCC to assume an ongoing role of the National Coordination Committee. This committee was an advisory committee for interoperability spectrum in the 700 megahertz band. This role for NPSTC will ensure that as the interoperability channels are deployed, there will be a methodology to ensure interoperability and spectrum resources. It also continues to expand NPSTC's membership to include more manufacturers and ensure a forum for dialog between all levels of government. NPSTC also has numerous task forces that are working on several projects. We are working to clear the TV broadcasters from TV channels 60 to 69 so that public safety can move into this critically needed spectrum. We are also trying to work with the FCC to remove the interference on our existing spectrum in the 800 megahertz band. This is a critical public safety issue, as today we have responders whose radios will not talk when they are in certain areas of their communities because the cellular provider in that area shares frequencies. These items, plus the interoperability issues, are high on our agenda. In that 85 percent of all police departments nationwide have fewer than 25 sworn officers, it is clear that this issue is a difficult one to solve without your help. Today, radios purchased from different vendors cannot communicate. There is no mandatory standard for radios; however, a voluntary ANSI standard called Project 25 is available. We encourage your support to make this standard mandatory nationwide. In addition, the issue of who is in charge of radio spectrum and radio systems makes it very difficult to plan for multi-jurisdictional communications systems. Often referred to as the political factor of interoperability, this one requires that Congress place restrictions on Federal grant funds to require multi-jurisdictional interoperability and standard base solutions. In Florida, our Governor appointed a domestic security task force immediately after September 11. Recently, our region in central Florida, which is comprised of nine counties, applied for a Federal COPS and Interoperability grant for mutual aid channels region-wide. It was due to this DSTF system being in place that we were able to bring 100 people together, agree on a solution, get a 25 percent cash match, and complete the grant in a 2-week period. We did receive the grant, and we did so because we applied together. We will have a Project 25 standard and we are building a multi-jurisdictional solution. I tell you this to explain how critical it is for you to make interoperability standards and multi-jurisdictional systems mandatory in future grants. It can be done, but it requires funding and agreements to work together toward a regional type solution. So what can Congress do to improve public safety communications? I have a few suggestions: assist in assuring that the 700 megahertz bands are cleared as soon as possible; encourage the FCC to resolve the 800 megahertz interference issues; require that Federal grant funding ensure that users have to build to a public safety standard; allow grant funding to develop new technology standards; encourage a national center for interoperability source guide to all the different interoperability funding and research studies for locals to access on the Web; develop a standard set of frequencies and standards of use in a disaster area, and provide clear implementation guidelines; allow grant funding for communications technician and operator training. All of the plans in the world won't work unless people know how to use the technology. Also, as a member of the SAFECOM Executive Committee, I see this as an opportunity for SAFECOM to bring together all of the resources that have been out there in the Federal Government, and I would suggest that we support SAFECOM. Thank you for allowing me to speak to this body. The public safety community is depending on your leadership to help us solve this problem. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Ms. Ward follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.037 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.038 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.039 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.040 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.041 Mr. Putnam. Thank you very much, Ms. Ward. I want to thank both of our witnesses for adhering to our 5 minute limit. I welcome the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Tierney, who has joined us as well. Our next witness is Aldona Valicenti. Ms. Valicenti is the chief information officer for the State of Kentucky, a position she has held since 1997. She is Kentucky's first CIO. She is here today representing the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, an organization for which she previously served as president. Ms. Valicenti also serves as representative of the Nation's State CIOs to the Public Safety Wireless Network Program and SAFECOM Initiative. Prior to becoming Kentucky's CIO, Ms. Valicenti spent 21 years in the private sector serving in IT leadership positions, including management positions at Amoco and Dow Corning. Welcome. You are recognized. Ms. Valicenti. Chairman Putnam and Chairman Shays and members of the committee, and Honorable Congresswoman Harman, thank you very much for this opportunity. Rather than reading the testimony which we have submitted, I would like to take this opportunity and really reiterate many of the points that you have already made, and maybe with a slightly different twist to them. In some cases I will try to give you examples from the States that will allow you to relate to some things that have worked and, frankly, some things that have not worked very well. But the whole issue of interoperability is, frankly, too late to plan for when you need it. The planning and the coordination needs to take ahead of time, and long before that. The issue of interoperability is one that has existed for many, many years from a public safety perspective. When you deal with criminal justice systems, it has always been part of the criminal justice system; how do we communicate better on the information that we have. So let me address some of the same points that you already have made and this committee has already made. Technology and standards. It is probably the single most important component. When we talk about technology and standards, they are not something that is nebulous, they are not something that is unreal, but they are things that we can relate to. Architecture, in fact, is a blueprint for how things interrelate, and maybe one of the best examples that I can give you on where standards in technology does work is the working of the Internet. If it wasn't for standards, we probably would not enjoy many of the benefits of the Internet. Standards are well known, people ride to those standards, and we have used them. I suggest to you that we have an opportunity to drive the same kind of architecture in standards in this whole arena, which will allow us to then, hopefully 1 day, sit here and say we have the interoperability issue solved. So functionality exists, and exists in many cases, but we have not been very strong in endorsing them. Project 25 is one of those initiatives that has really relied on driving standards, and that is certainly one of the areas that we could be much more proactive. So NASCIO supports really the use of flexible and open architecture, and encourages all public safety agencies to really purchase equipment where it is advertised that it supports a standard. I would like to point out two States who have done an excellent job: Michigan and Delaware. Both were one of the first States to implement a standards-based compliance systems. In Michigan, that is known as the Michigan Public Safety Communications System, now has more than 300 local State and Federal public safety agencies and 10,000 radios in the system. Delaware has done something similar in the 800 megahertz system. Again, two States who have taken a very proactive approach. We have already heard some discussion of spectrum allocation. Spectrum allocation is a huge issue. Public safety community really has access to very small portion of that spectrum and, as you have already heard, that has a great deal of interference. So really looking at a preplanning, again, of the spectrum is an issue. Many of the States have applied for the 700 megahertz, and I wrote the letter for Governor Patton to apply for the 700 megahertz, but, frankly, right now there is not much hope that we will have that over the near future. 2006 is not that far away, and when we look at that date, there is little movement to really implementing that. NASCIO published a white paper on public safety wireless interoperability and again addresses the issue of the 700 megahertz. But that is an issue that we, frankly, either need movement toward or much more discussion, that we cannot hold out hope for that. In that white paper, we also addressed many of the issues which today, as Congresswoman Harman suggested, are now parts of the HERO Act, and have had discussions over that. Let me address one other topic, because it is really a cultural topic, and maybe that is the one that is most difficult to address. Public safety agencies don't traditionally work well together, and preplanning is really not part of the culture. And this is where we have taken a dramatic approach, I think, in Kentucky. The general assembly passed a bill creating the Kentucky Wireless Interoperability Executive Committee, which brings together multiple agencies, State, local agencies together as a body to the advice of the CIO, and what we ought to do with further purchasing and implementing of systems. And the last item is one really of innovative funding. There is no single amount of money that will buy or deploy all the systems that we need. And this is one example where I think that, as Governor Janklow indicated, South Dakota has done an excellent job because they took multiple pools of funds and delivered a system that is ultimately very interoperable. Infrastructure requirements are great in two areas which, frankly, I have not yet heard discussed, but if you allow me just a couple of seconds. The ongoing support of the infrastructure. All of these radios have to be able to communicate with an infrastructure of existing cell towers or capabilities that are satellite communication capabilities. Most small communities do not have that; the State needs to provide that. And that is the huge issue for many, many of the States. And last, but by no means least, is really the requirements of the role of the CIO. The CIO in many States, as I do in Kentucky, plays a critical role in bringing together local, State, and, frankly, Federal officials who operate in our States together into a uniform and common conversation to actually deliver some of the interoperability vision that was discussed here today. Thank you very much. [The prepared statement of Ms. Valicenti follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.042 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.043 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.044 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.045 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.046 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.047 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.048 Mr. Putnam. Thank you. Our next witness is Marilyn Praisner. The Honorable Marilyn Praisner serves on the Montgomery County, MD County Council, first having been elected in 1990. She now chairs the management and fiscal policy committee of the Council. Prior to her election on the County Council, she focused great attention on education issues, having served 8 years on the county school board. Councilwoman Praisner is currently chairman of the National Association of Counties Telecommunications and Technology Committee and chairs a local government alliance group called TeleCommUnity. She joins us today representing the views of those organizations. You are recognized. Ms. Praisner. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, ranking members, and members of the subcommittees. My first statement has been circulated and will be entered into the record, so I will just summarize some of the points. We cannot achieve homeland security unless we have public safety wireless communications networks that are capable of supporting coordinated responses to threats at the neighborhood, county, regional, or national level. As multiple agencies in multiple jurisdictions respond to crises, interoperability is essential. Equally important is the need to address interference. The International Association of Chiefs of Police recently stated that 360 jurisdictions now have interference issues. That is more than in any other previous year. But rather than assign fault, let me share what I have learned from my work in this area. Public safety is a core function of all levels of government, and wireless communication is an essential element. Interoperability and interference are major obstacles, but so are turf battles and the lack of cooperation across jurisdictions. The solutions to the challenges of interoperability and interference will not be cheap, but neither is the cost of inaction. While there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution, solutions can only be achieved if there is leadership at the Federal level and a commitment to cooperation at the State and local level. Congress and the FCC must recognize their responsibilities by taking steps to ensure that local public safety agencies have adequate funding to achieve interoperability and have access to additional spectrum to alleviate serious interference problems. Local government elected officials must be at the table if solutions are to be reached, for while we need the Federal Government's leadership, Federal leaders need local governments' ownership of the issue. One example of the challenges faced in the real world is the interference experience of Anne Arundel County, MD. In 1998, Anne Arundel began to experience dead zones or blackouts. In 61 dead zones public safety personnel were unable to use portable receivers on their 800 megahertz radio system in the vicinity of commercial radio antenna sites. Now, while such dead zones would be a problem in any locale, in Anne Arundel County such dead zones have national implications, for in addition to being home to Annapolis, the State's capital, Anne Arundel is home to the National Security Agency, the U.S. Naval Academy, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and Baltimore-Washington International Airport. After having no success at the FCC, the county sought to avoid creation of any new dead zones by means of a land use approach. They required advance coordination for tower siting. The ordinance was challenged at the FCC as being a preempted action and the Commission agreed. Because other communities are experiencing the same challenges, the FCC, in March 2002, opened a rulemaking to consider a proposal by Nextel and others that would realign the spectrum at 800 megahertz. While it is possible that the FCC's decision will finish the job of interference reduction, no decision is expected until 2004, if then. That would mean that the county will have waited 6 years for a solution to their interference issue. On the bright side, there are many examples across this country where jurisdictions are working together to solve communication problems. We need to share these successes, because education and training and information are critical, and to that end I recommend to you the NTFI document that we all participated in, ``Why Can't We Talk?'' At the Federal level, PSWN, now part of SAFECOM, has been very helpful in broadening that education. I attended my first SAFECOM meeting this past Monday, and there also I think we are now moving in the right direction. It is my hope that SAFECOM will coordinate and hopefully reduce the number of well intentioned Federal initiatives across a number of agencies. On an even brighter note, let me conclude by thanking the leadership of this committee for holding this hearing and for demonstrating that you get it. Local government officials must be at the table. We have to be here because there is no perfect national solution to interoperability or interference. The nuances of each region are too complex for a one-size-fits-all approach. Thank you very much for giving local government an opportunity to speak. [The prepared statement of Ms. Praisner follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.049 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.050 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.051 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.052 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.053 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.054 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.055 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.056 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.057 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.058 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.059 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.060 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.061 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.062 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.063 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.064 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.065 Mr. Putnam. Thank you, Councilwoman. Our next and final witness for this panel is George Ake. Mr. Ake is program director for the Capital Wireless Integrated Network [CapWIN]. As most of us know, CapWIN is a project whose goal is to implement an integrated voice and mobile data network for transportation in public safety in the Washington, DC area. Prior to managing CapWIN, Mr. Ake served 6 years as director of research and planning for the North Carolina Highway Patrol. He is a graduate of Guilford College and received his MPA from North Carolina State. The interoperability issues facing Mr. Ake at CapWIN are perhaps a microcosm of the tremendous challenges we face nationally, so we look forward to hearing your remarks today, Mr. Ake. You are recognized. Mr. Ake. I am glad to be here with you, and I want to tell you what CapWIN is briefly before I start. And I would like to summarize my remarks. CapWIN enables first responders and incident management personnel from different organizations to communicate securely despite different systems. It is based on Internet protocol; it is based on a new way of doing business. We are using data now and hope to move to voice in the near future. Over 40 agencies are participating, and they are able to share information and get information they have never been able to get before. One of the most exciting things is to see multi- disciplinary people communicating, like transportation talking to law enforcement, fire talking to transportation. CapWIN is a true partnership. What I mean by that, we are working on an interstate compact between Maryland, Virginia, the District, and the Federal Government to share information. I go around the country, and as I speak I have a sandbox example. I have three little girls in a sandbox, and I said if we could all learn to play like these three little girls are in this sandbox, we would really be a lot better off. I believe we have to change the way we are doing business in the future. That means local governments, State governments, and Federal agencies need to sit down in the same sandbox and learn to play together. We leveraged the investments we already have. If local governments build a wonderful system, it is absolutely crazy to throw it out; we need to use that system. And that is what we are trying to do, we are trying to bridge between those systems and enable them to use the investments that they have already done. Standards is a problem for us. When we started looking at CapWIN, we started looking at the standards and, frankly, it was very frustrating. Many agencies are doing standards and there seems to be no one agency coordinating this, so there is a need to look at the standards issue. Multi-year Federal support is essential for programs like CapWIN that go across multiple States. It takes time to develop partnerships. It takes time to develop trust. It takes time to develop government systems. We are also getting a lot of calls from around the country. Our representing project, AGILE with the National Institute of Justice, ODP, and also SAFECOM, we have been going around the country talking to people about what we have learned and the lessons that we have learned and the mistakes that we have made. It makes no sense for us to learn something and not share that. Or if we make a mistake, why let someone step in the same home? It just doesn't make sense. So there is a need to share lessons learned; there is a need to share wins as well as mistakes. End users must help design these systems. I am amazed sometimes when I see people who have the solution, yet they have never talked to anybody on the street that did it. We try to use that in developing this system. We have users, people on the street, come in and help us design this thing. And I would say to you, based on 30 years in law enforcement, if they don't use it everyday, when you have the terrorist thing, they won't know how to use it. We have to build systems they use everyday. I am amazed when I look at the system around D.C. I come from North Carolina, a small community. But the traffic, if you have a major incident on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, it is a major problem here in D.C., and we need to learn to do that. So we have to use it everyday. Public safety agencies need to help sorting out all this information; what do we mean by IT, what do we mean by all these things. SAFECOM, I think, can help that by having some place that people can call and get information. Certainly spectrum is a big issue. Spectrum is a big issue that we need to address. Do we have everybody playing in the sandbox now at CapWIN? I would say to you no, but we have most of them. One of our vice chairs, Marilyn Praisner, said as one example that is working with us to move forward. In closing, I want to say to you in 1975 I had to go tell Trooper Tom Davis' wife and his two boys he wouldn't be able to come home again because he stopped somebody and he didn't have good information, and they killed him. I have never forgotten that. That is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. So we are talking about lives here. And I know all of you all are concerned, and that is the reason you are holding this hearing. I thank you for that, and I thank you for letting me come speak to you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Ake follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.066 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.067 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.068 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.069 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.070 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.071 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.072 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.073 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.074 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.075 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.076 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.077 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.078 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.079 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.080 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.081 Mr. Putnam. Thank you, Mr. Ake. I thank the entire panel for your valuable input. You have added greatly to this dialog and even generated questions that I know will be reflected in the second hearing with the Federal officials. For logistical purposes, we need to wrap up this first hearing by 11:45 so that we can seat the second hearing in time to complete that work and clear the room for the full committee's business meeting. So I will allocate 5 minutes to Chairman Shays, 5 minutes to the minority, and following that we will go to 3 minute rounds of questions for the rest of the Members, and that should allow everyone to participate and still keep us on track. So with that I will recognize Chairman Shays for 5 minutes. Mr. Shays. You know, I am going to defer to Mr. Janklow and give him my 5 minutes. Mr. Putnam. Very well. Mr. Janklow. Thank you very much, Mr. Shays. And, Mr. Chairman, I am going to ask some leading questions because it saves me time, if I can. National standards versus salesmen. Do you all agree that right now we have thousands of local first responder agencies that really are tied to the salesmen and women who are selling this stuff to them, and we need to establish a national standard around which they make their purchases? Are there any of you that disagree with that? One, two. Do you agree that systems that are put in place need to be trunked, that people have to have the ability to have trunk systems throughout their jurisdictions? Are there any of you that disagree with that? Mr. Shays. I think for the record we better, claiming my time a second, make sure that there is an answer that we can record. Mr. Janklow. Go ahead, Ms. Ward. Ms. Ward. Marilyn Ward, NPSTC. Trunking is very spectrally efficient, and I would say that you are able to get a lot more people on the same system, but there are a lot of rural areas where trunking would not really be something they would have to do. If you are in a rural area and you only need one frequency, it is a waste of money to trunk it. Mr. Janklow. But to the extent that you have a system that has land lines connecting your towers, then it is just a matter of how many channels you have available in a rural area; isn't that correct? Ms. Ward. With multiple channels. Mr. Janklow. Yes, ma'am. Ms. Ward. For a lot of users, trunking is the way to go. Mr. Janklow. And in some States the 700 and 800 frequencies won't work because of the distance that those megahertz travel as opposed to things that are lower in a high band area, like 150 or 450. Do you all agree that the exact frequency isn't nearly as important as the interoperability of the system? Ms. Ward. Correct. Mr. Janklow. The lady from Maryland indicated it took 6 years to solve a problem. World War II only lasted 3 years for us, and yet it took twice as long as World War II lasted for America to solve a problem of operability within dead zones in the State of Maryland. Ms. Praisner. Congressman, I am sorry. If I left that impression, I would like to be able to correct it. It has not been solved. I said that if the FCC moves in 2004, it would be 6 years since Anne Arundel identified the problem. Mr. Janklow. So it may last as long as the Vietnam War before it is done. Ms. Praisner. The problem has not been solved. Mr. Janklow. OK. And if I could, with respect to the FCC, am I correct that because of the way they have allocated channels historically, there are different parts of the spectrum that are set aside for agencies? For example, the American railroad industry has a large block of channels in the 150 area that they don't use, and they are not willing to give up to anybody, and because of the system, am I correct, Mr. Jenkins, the way the system operates in the FCC, it is not their fault, but their procedures make it virtually impossible for anybody to come in in any reasonable amount of time and get their hands on the frequencies until the railroads decide to use them 200 or 300 years from now? Dr. Jenkins. Basically, yes. Part of it is just basically that the rulemaking process is not a quick process, and FCC has a certain rule process with things, and it is not speedy. Mr. Janklow. And to the extent that Congress could speed up, by legislation, the rulemaking process in this specific area, am I correct, folks, it would be a godsend for the problems that this country faces? Are there any of you that disagree with that? With respect to Federal agencies, the ANSI 25 standard, is that an open architecture, or is that still controlled by Motorola? Ms. Ward. That is an open ANSI 102 standard, where there are several manufacturers that are building. Mr. Janklow. So E.F. Johnson makes it and the old General Electric, I can't think of what they are called now, but the old GE. Ms. Ward. The old GE is Maycom, and they are looking at phase two. Mr. Janklow. OK. And with respect to Federal agencies, for example, the Federal Forest Service, they operate on 150, and they are not willing anyplace in America to go on other first responders' frequencies because they claim they have to have the ability, when they move their people from State to State, they have to have the ability to communicate. So when you have fires in California and firefighters come from all over the country, they come with radios that can't work with the California authorities, isn't that correct? And it is the same in your States. I happen to live in a place in South Dakota that is 4 miles from the Iowa border and 3 miles from the Minnesota border. To the extent that we have a crisis or an emergency, northwest Iowa responding to southwest Minnesota just magnifies the problem with respect to the crisis that we are having. My time is up, Mr. Chairman, but what I would like to say is this panel is phenomenal in the testimony they gave. Every one of them makes sense. We ought to wrap it all together, put it in legislation, and mandate it, because Congress has created this problem with the laws that we passed and those we failed to pass to deal with this, so we have allowed this to become this type of problem. I can tell you, Mr. Chairman, Somalia and chad will have, 2 years from now, better interoperability and better emergency first responder communication than we do because they don't have an entrenched system in place that has to be dealt with. Am I correct, folks? They don't have an entrenched system, so they are going to build a new system that is wireless that handles the things that we in America can't handle. Thank you for yielding your time to me, Mr. Shays. Mr. Putnam. Thank you, Governor, and you are going to get your next bite at the apple in panel two, when you can have the Federal folks, and I am sure they are all anxiously awaiting. Mr. Janklow. I hope the BIA is here, the National Park Service is here, and the Forest Service is here, and ATF is here. Mr. Putnam. Very well. The gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Clay, unless you want to give your time to Governor Janklow too. Mr. Clay. I may just yield that to Governor Janklow. Let me ask a couple of questions, and if there is time after, I would love to give it back to him. The term interoperability may not be easily defined or grasped. Incidents requiring interoperability of public safety, communications for first responders can occur over a range of scenario from responding to daily mutual aid events to major events such as the Olympics that occur over days or weeks. The term first responder also appears to be evolving to include more professions, such as health departments and other professions besides the traditional first responders such as police and fire. Question: How do you define interoperability and who is a first responder? Perhaps, Dr. Jenkins, you may want to tackle it. Dr. Jenkins. Well, we tried to define that in the statement, that is, that in our view, interoperability is the ability to exchange voice or data information in any situation in which first responders need to coordinate their actions, and need to be able to do that in order to coordinate their actions. You know, but we also point out that the definition of first responder is basically situation-specific. You don't need the same people responding, necessarily, to a car accident that you do to something like September 11th. And they may include, also depending on the situation, first responders can include private entities. For example, in some jurisdictions, first responders themselves are private contractors, that is, the local governments contract with them for public services. It is very important to be able to coordinate if there is an attack on an electrical grid or something to be able to coordinate with private entities. So I don't think there is a clear hard and fast definition for first responder. I think the Homeland Security Act has a generally good definition that it uses that is a fairly broad definition. I do think that one needs to think beyond the traditional sort of fire-police-emergency medical service notion when you think of first responders and who needs to communicate with one another. Mr. Clay. Anyone else want to try to tackle it? Yes, Ms. Valicenti. Ms. Valicenti. I would say that first responders now include almost all disciplines that can in fact mitigate an event or an attack, and that very clearly is going to include any bioterrorism attack, more medical folks probably than we have ever seen before. And I would suggest to you that 911 is also a first responder; it is the first of the first responders. Mr. Clay. Thank you. For Councilwoman Praisner, good morning. Let me ask you do you feel the Federal Government has done enough to reach out to local officials in their individual efforts to reach first responder interoperability? Ms. Praisner. Sir, with all due respect to the Federal agencies, it depends upon which agency and it depends upon what level and it depends upon what issue. And I would say in general, if you put it all into one pot or Mr. Ake's sandbox, I would have to say no, the Federal Government as an entity has not adequately reached out to local government. And by that I would also add that it may very well be that relationships are established with public safety personnel and with the traditional elements, but not beyond that level, and certainly not with local elected officials. And it is the local elected official who has to raise his or her hand to say yes for a funding, and in tough times making decisions about one project or another, without the kind of information that you need, is also very challenging. Mr. Clay. So there is not a real formal relationship established between local and Federal. Ms. Praisner. Well, I think there are through certain structures, and we are trying, as the National Association of Counties and I would say the League of Cities and the Conference of Mayors and our umbrella organizations, to participate, but I think at some level it is not the first group of folks that Federal agencies think of including in that dialog. Certainly that was the experience initially with SAFECOM. I think we are there now, and I tend to be an optimist looking at the glass half full. We are making significant progress recently. Mr. Clay. I see Ms. Ward with her hand up. I know that my time is up. Can she answer, Mr. Chairman, please? Ms. Ward. I would like to add to that that the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council has been supported by the AGILE program, which is a Federal initiative, and their mission is to support State and local public safety communications. So we have been very well supported by them. They also put together a group, as Marilyn has referred to, the National Task Force for Interoperability, which most of the people at this table were members of, to try to bring in the State and local elected officials. So we have been working with the feds, but on a limited basis. Mr. Clay. I thank you and thank the panel for their responses. Mr. Putnam. Thank you, Mr. Clay. I overlooked one item. I understand we have received written testimony for the record from Mr. Vincent Stile, the president of the Association of Public Safety Communication Officials International. Mr. Stile is also the policy radio communications systems director for Suffolk County, New York Police Department. I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Stile's testimony be inserted in the appropriate place in the records. Without objection, we will do that and place his statement in the record. [The prepared statement of Mr. Stile follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.082 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.083 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.084 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.085 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.086 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.087 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.088 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.089 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.090 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.091 Mr. Putnam. At this time I recognize Mr. Schrock from Virginia. Mr. Schrock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I love Bill Janklow, but I hate following Bill Janklow, because he says it exactly as it is, and you are five miraculous people. In fact, I have had the privilege of hearing Ms. Valicenti and Councilwoman Praisner before, and I don't know why we can't get our act together and get this done. How many hearings do we have to have before we get it done? I looked at Congresswoman Harman's testimony. She talks about the fires. My family and my wife's family live there; my wife and son were caught in those fires, so I know how bad it is. You know, if they had something, they could have had the tracking maps, the locations, on and on it goes. And I think one of the most telling things is from Marilyn Ward's testimony. She says in here interoperability has been brought to the forefront by disasters such as the Air Florida plane crash here in D.C. on the 14th Street Bridge. Are any of you aware how long ago that was? Twenty-one years ago. I was here when that happened. Twenty-one years ago. Yet we never seem to get this thing solved. I heard Mr. Jenkins say there is no single bullet solution. I don't think he is advocating that, I think he thinks that is just the situation, but there needs to be. My question is, then, who do you believe should and will decide the standards for preparedness for each locality, for each State, for each area, and the country? In our area, I represent Virginia Beach and Norfolk. We too have our Chesapeake Bay Bridge as well. And we have massive numbers of military, a huge port there, and I worry that we are going to have a problem. Any money I am getting for my localities right now I am making sure they are getting the same equipment. During our recent hurricane it worked. It really did. But we are just Hampton Roads area; that is not Richmond, northern Virginia, Virginia, or the country. Who's got the responsibility for doing this? Ultimately I think we do, but at what point does it become a local, State, or region responsibility? Yes, ma'am? Ms. Ward. Right now the SAFECOM program is working with NIST to work in this direction, and SAFECOM is a good place because we have representatives on the executive committee and other levels that are State and local representatives. You can't create a standard without having the people that are impacted by the standard at the table. And so that is an excellent forum to do that because you have the leadership of all of the different public safety organizations available in the executive committee and the other levels of SAFECOM. Mr. Schrock. Ms. Valicenti. Ms. Valicenti. I would support that SAFECOM is a very good area to have that conversation, but I would also encourage that the individual States, I give you the State perspective, form committees, form councils to discuss this issue, because ultimately you have to get buy-in. You have to get buy-in that this is a good thing to do to adhere to a set of standards, and that, frankly, is not an overnight thing. The other issue that maybe we have not yet discussed nearly to the same extent is the availability of equipment, and manufacturers have to agree to provide equipment to a set of standards; and that conversation is really with the private sector and the public sector officials. Mr. Schrock. Your State adjoins my State, and if we have those committees and Kentucky does their own thing and Virginia does their own thing, yet there has probably got to be a national standard somewhere so before these committees get together they are all working from the same standard so everybody can work together. Ms. Valicenti. Absolutely. Kentucky is surrounded by seven States. Mr. Schrock. We are privileged to be one of them. Ms. Valicenti. And we know that all incidents will not occur in the middle of the State. Mr. Schrock. That is exactly right. Mr. Ake. Mr. Ake. I think that the multi-State compact that we are working on in CapWIN, with Virginia, Maryland, and D.C., we will learn a lot of lessons about that. I am already running into lessons with three different laws, three different ways of doing business, and trying to combine that into one, and it has been a real learning experience for me, coming from a State that has a State-wide system. So I think we will learn a lot from that, and I think ultimately the partnership piece has to be put together, but the Federal folks have to come together with a standard and some guidance and that kind of thing. What we have had in the past, we have had equipment being built to different standards, not using IP standards or whatever, and none of them will talk to one another. So we have to say to folks, our vendors around the country, this is what we want and this is what we want it to do. Mr. Schrock. I agree. You agree as well? I am old, guys, I am 62. Let us get this done, because I don't want to come back in another 20 years and have to say, gee, 20 years ago I mentioned that Ms. Ward talked about the same thing that happened 21 years ago. This is ridiculous. The Governor is right, we have to get this done and get it done quick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Putnam. Thank you, Mr. Schrock. Mr. Ruppersberger. Mr. Ruppersberger. I didn't know 62 was old. First, there is a lot of frustration here, and I was a former county executive, and when you manage your public safety one of your biggest expenses and frustration is the communication; and it is not with your own jurisdictions, but it has to be regional, State-wide, and even more than that, and I will give you an example. We all know of the situation with the snipers in the Washington area, and in the evidence that was found, they were then going to target schools in Baltimore, elementary schools in Baltimore. And, you know, over and over, and especially with drugs, which is probably still our most serious crime today, and the implications of drugs, we need to be able to communicate just beyond our own regions and States. You know, crime has no geographical boundary, and if you can't communicate, you just can't do the job. As a result of September 11, now it has come to the forefront even more that we have to do something. Now, Councilwoman Praisner, you made a comment, and I would like you to explore that, because what we want to do here is get to the bottom line and make recommendations. I mean, that is what we really want to do. You made a comment that you felt that local government needs to have ownership of these systems. I am not sure if I agree, but I would like you to explore that. I think that you have to have really a national plan and the help of the Federal Government to coordinate it. You know how difficult it is to get a lot of elected officials together and come to an agreement. Just look at us here on Capitol Hill. So we need that formula to pull together to focus on the right plan, and then we need to talk about a lot of times it comes down to money, how are we going to pay for it. And there are over 3,000 counties, as you know, or more, in this country that might not be able to do it. So let me have your thoughts on that, or anyone else who wants to talk about that issue, implementation. Ms. Praisner. Congressman, thank you very much. The issue of ownership is not an issue of who has title to the document or the equipment. The issue of ownership is one of assuming responsibility and knowing that you are part of the solution, and that you are at the table as the solution is worked through. You were extremely effective as county executive and as president of the Maryland Association of Counties because your philosophy was, and is, to bring everyone to the table, and you are anxious to listen to what the views and thoughts of people are before decisions are made. One of the challenges we face from a local elected official perspective is that lack of opportunity in many occasions, on many arenas, for participation to offer the perspective of what actually does work in your community. As George indicated, whether it is the first responder himself or herself who has to use the equipment or, in my perspective, the local elected official who has to raise his or her hand and make a decision as to whether you fund, and in these times it is a case, and I would suspect that it in any time it is a case of making choices. And so the question is do I make this choice to fund or support this equipment, or do I vote to participate in this structure, or do I not. And it is a tug and it is a question of education and information, ownership and partnership, and we don't always have that; and local elected officials are often the last people invited to the table, if at all. And that is my point, is that whenever someone may dictate from whatever level they may be, unless you have the participants of the first responders and the local elected officials who have to fund those programs or systems, you don't have ownership in the best sense of the word. Mr. Ruppersberger. OK. My time is up? That was a quick 5 minutes. Mr. Putnam. We owe you a couple of minutes. Mr. Ruppersberger. Oh, I thought so. Mr. Putnam. We gave you 3, but because so many people have left, we will give everybody 5. So keep on going. Mr. Ruppersberger. OK, well, let us get to the bottom line. What would you, in a very concise statement, or anyone on this panel, what do you think we need to do? We have all talked about different issues in our statements, but we need to talk about funding; we need to talk about pulling it together. How would you recommend we do that from your perspective? Ms. Valicenti. I would like to point out two issues where I think you could be very instrumental. The first one is the whole funding issue. I don't think any single entity will have all the funding, so there has to be a drive toward pooled funding; and pooled funding is Federal funds, State funds, and local funds. And we have a couple of examples where that has worked, and I think the more that the States can do to coordinate that funding, the more likely we will, then, to provide solutions which are going to be interoperable. But I think that there is a second issue, and that is one where I think that this committee can be most influential, and that is that the funding that is provided from the Federal level come with a requirement that it has to either regionally participate in an interoperable environment or State environment, or some kind of strings attached as far as standards. And unless that happens, we will continue to recreate what we have been creating for the last 20-some years, stovepipe systems. Mr. Ruppersberger. Are you saying that Federal standards or bureaucracy is getting in the way? Ms. Valicenti. No, I don't think so. I think that the discussion and, frankly, SAFECOM is probably a good example where the discussion of standards is occurring, the discussion on how to do that is occurring, and I think that there are more and more forums that are buying into a standards-based. Mr. Ruppersberger. Chairman Shays put together a bill about standards with first responders, and maybe we could continue to explore that. On your bill about standards that we have for first responders, maybe we can tie this subject matter into that somehow. Mr. Shays. Right. If the gentleman would yield. It is really our bill, yours and mine, and some others in the committee. We are trying to insert that in the bill on the select committee and Homeland Security, which is a little broader, and there is a way to do that in that bigger bill, and we should do it. Mr. Ruppersberger. Good. Ms. Valicenti. I would suggest that if you could do those two things, that request for money has to demonstrate that it will buy into standards and, second, it has to demonstrate that it buys into a larger interoperable environment, multi- jurisdictional environment. Mr. Ake. In North Carolina, in my other life, I sat on a board that did grants, and we said to the people of North Carolina, if you want to be considered, it has to be multi- jurisdictional. It was amazing to see them start forming partnerships and start working together. So I would say to you that is certainly a method to use. They have to feel like they have ownership and they have all got to work together, but there has to be some motivation for them to do that. Ms. Praisner. The only comment that I would add is that I don't think this is a one time situation where it is one check and one dollar amount and one time. This is a significant amount of money over an extended period of time, and it is going to require continuous progress; it can't be done in 1 day or one appropriation. Mr. Putnam. Thank you, Mr. Ruppersberger. I will now call on Chairman Shays for our final 5 minutes of questioning. Chairman Shays. Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman. In the State that I am in, we have no county government, so in one sense it seems even more difficult to get cooperation. But because of that what the State did is it basically said when it got money from the Department of Homeland Security, it said it is not giving out this money to each local community, it is going to come out only if you come together. And the trend in the Federal Government has been, as well, to try to fund grants where there is cooperation among more than just one or two entities. I remember when I was in the State house dealing with September 11, and it is surprising to think about it now. Our opposition was the firemen and the policemen who didn't want to have to come under the same jurisdiction; fire didn't want to be with police, the police didn't want to be with fire, which was kind of fascinating. Now we have solved that problem, and now we look back on it with some horror that there was ever this ownership. I feel, at least in our State, we are finding ways to have our communication be able to operate among jurisdictions and among different organizations and entities, at least in our State. What I am having the hardest time reconciling is the spectrum issue, and I would love someone to address that. As clearly and as succinctly as you can, tell Congress what you want us to do about the spectrum. Ms. Ward. Public safety needs more spectrum. Mr. Shays. Why don't you pull your mic closer, if you don't mind. Ms. Ward. Public safety needs more spectrum. We have new technologies that are emerging; we would like to be able to take advantage of them. It is very difficult when you are in competition with broadcasters who have a lot more people to be able to come up here. I mean, I am on my work day here. We have volunteers. We really need to have that interference issue resolved. Congress should encourage the FCC to do that before 2004. We really need to get the 700 megahertz band cleared. Congress needs to visit that issue and get that taken care of as soon as possible. We need the spectrum. It has already been promised to us, but now we need to get on it. And that is how we are going to build regional systems, we need the spectrum to build the regional systems. And the 700 megahertz band is going to be able to afford us a lot more flexibility in doing that. Also, allow grant funding so that we can develop new technology standards. That is going to be an important thing for us. And when you do your grant funding, I wholeheartedly agree that it needs to be required in there that the systems be multi-jurisdictional, and they should be focused on a standard. Ms. Praisner. From my perspective, one of the concerns that I have is if folks have to move, will they be held harmless by the process. Mr. Shays. When you say they have to move, would you explain? Ms. Praisner. If one has to move to 700 megahertz. Mr. Shays. If they have to give up what they have and go somewhere else? Ms. Praisner. Then they should be held harmless, and the question of the cost of that transition and the manner in which that matter would occur. There is great concern out there and anxiety, having expended significant revenue for an 800 megahertz system, to then tell a local government that you have to move from it because that is the solution that is proposed for their region and their area. And having expended those funds, will they be held harmless in the process. Mr. Shays. Anyone else want to respond to that question? Ms. Ward. The issue that Ms. Praisner is speaking about is a plan that is in front of the FCC that would allow for some compensation to come from the cellular industry, but it would require that local government move their users to the 700 band instead of the 800 band that they are currently in, and there could be some additional cost to local government for that. I don't know if you are familiar with that plan, but that is formally called the consensus plan that the majority of the public safety associations support. Mr. Shays. My colleague said that it wouldn't solve it. Maybe you would like to get a response, then. Mr. Janklow. My question is, for example, we went 150. Had we gone 700, for which we had the frequencies available, we would have needed five more towers because of how they penetrate, correct? Ms. Ward. That is correct. Mr. Janklow. And so for a State like mine, that went 150, we wouldn't have to migrate to that standard, correct? So the 700 won't solve the problem for everybody, but for a lot of you in America it will. Ms. Ward. That is correct. Mr. Janklow. What the FCC needs to do is get the bandwidth cleared out. Ms. Ward. That is correct. Mr. Janklow. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Putnam. Thank you, Mr. Shays. I appreciate your leadership, and we thank Governor Janklow and Mr. Schrock and Mr. Ruppersberger, and all the others who participated in this hearing. I particularly want to thank our five witnesses on this panel for your testimony and expertise that you have provided us. You have given us a tremendous perspective that will benefit us greatly as we move into the second hearing, which deals with our Federal agencies, and I think that you have given us a clear path for improving your lot. As is customary, in the event that there may be additional questions for panelists or statements that we did not have time for today, the record will remain open for 2 weeks for such submissions. Thank you all very much, and we stand adjourned. The second hearing will begin immediately. Mr. Janklow. Mr. Chairman? Mr. Chairman? Might you ask the panel if they would submit within the 2-week period, those that are interested, a statement as to how SAFECOM, since that is a Federal agency or Federal group, could be modified to take in the local people as part of the process? Mr. Putnam. Consider it done. We are adjourned. Thank you. 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(FEDERAL PERSPECTIVES) ---------- THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2003 House of Representatives, Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, joint with the Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census, Committee on Government Reform, Washington, DC. The subcommittees met, pursuant to notice, at 11:45 a.m., in room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Shays (chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations) presiding. Present: Representatives Putnam, Duncan, Janklow, Murphy, Schrock, Shays, Clay, Maloney, Ruppersberger, Sanchez, and Tierney. Also present: Representatives Harman and Weldon. Staff present: Lawrence Halloran, staff director and counsel; and Robert A. Briggs, clerk, Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations; Bob Dix, staff director; Ursula Wojciechowski, clerk; and John Hambel, counsel, Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census; Grace Washbourne, professional staff member; David McMillen, minority professional staff member; Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk; and Casey Welch and Jamie Harper, minority legislative assistants, Committee on Government Reform. Mr. Shays. A quorum being present, the Subcommittees on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, and Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census hearing entitled ``First Responders Interoperability: Can You Hear Me Now? (Federal Perspectives)'' is called to order. This hearing brings before us key Federal officials responsible for the policies, technologies, standards, and frequency allocations needed to advance interoperability. We appreciate their being here and look forward to their testimony. I will put on the record my statement that opened the previous hearing. [The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.160 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.161 Mr. Shays. I will recognize any Member who would like to make a statement for this hearing before we recognize our panel. Is there anyone who would like to make a statement? I recognize the chairman of the subcommittee. Mr. Putnam. Just very briefly, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your leadership on this, and I have to tell you how very disappointed I am in the difficulty that we had pulling together the witnesses from the Federal Government. The first panel, the first hearing, and it was a hearing, not a panel because of the uprising by the administration witnesses, gave us a pretty clear outline of the cultural challenges that we face in bringing interoperability and cooperation to this problem. Our two subcommittees managed to work through the jurisdictional issues, and the Federal Government can't seem to figure out how to do that. And when agencies threaten to refuse to come to a congressional hearing because they are not going to get to speak first, it is a little bit embarrassing. It is very embarrassing. And I am certain that a lot of these things get wrapped up in staff conflicts and things like that, but if you are a member of the Rotary Club or the Kiwanis Club or, when you are back, it is your homeowner's association, I think that if you raise the issue with your neighbors that we thought about not going to the congressional hearing because they weren't going to put the administration first, we were going to hear from the State and local officials and the industry beforehand, I think that they would have a hard time seeing it from your perspective. Frankly, I am glad that we weren't made aware of this until the last minute, because if it had been up to me, we would have just had empty chairs, and with place cards where the agencies might have been. But it is perfectly illustrative of the problem about working together and bringing interoperability and bringing coordination to this very, very serious issue. And so I just wanted to begin, Mr. Chairman, by thanking you for your leadership and thanking the administration representatives for finding a suitable format for which they would share their insight into this issue. [The prepared statement of Hon. Adam H. Putnam follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.162 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.163 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.164 Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman. Anyone else who has a statement? I will say for the record that our witnesses were good enough to be at the previous hearing that we had, and I thank them for that. So you will be able to make comment on what was said. But I do share your concerns, Mr. Putnam. We will also put on the record Mr. Clay's opening statement and I think the opening statements that all the members had for this hearing as well. At this time, I will just recognize those who are participating in this hearing: The Honorable Karen S. Evans, E- Government IT Director, U.S. Office of Management and Budget; Mr. David Boyd, Program Manager, SAFECOM, Wireless Public Safety Interoperable Communications Program, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Dr. John S. Morgan, Assistant Director for Science and Technology, National Institute of Justice; and John Muleta, Chief, Wireless Bureau, Federal Communications Commission; and, finally, Edmond Thomas, Chief, Office of Engineering and Technology, Federal Communications Commission as well. And at this time I would invite you to stand; we will swear you in, as we swear all our witnesses in. If there is anyone else you think who has accompanied you that may need to respond to an answer, I would prefer they stand up now, even if they turn out not to be needed; at least this way we won't have to swear anyone else in. Is there anyone else that you would like sworn in? OK. [Witnesses sworn.] Mr. Shays. Note for the record our witnesses have responded in the affirmative. And we will go as I called you. Excuse me, let me take care of the UCs. I ask unanimous consent that all members of the subcommittee be permitted to place an opening statement in the record and the record remain open for 3 days for that purpose. Without objection, so ordered. I ask further unanimous consent that all witnesses be permitted to include their written statement in the record. Without objection, so ordered. And, again, we are going to put the opening statements that Members made at the previous hearing in as part of this hearing's record, and at this time we will just basically go right down the table there. Ms. Evans, you have the floor. You are going to need to put that mic much closer to you, as I was told to do. Excuse me. I have to practice what I preach. STATEMENTS OF KAREN S. EVANS, ADMINISTRATOR OF E-GOVERNMENT AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, U.S. OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET; DR. DAVID BOYD, PROGRAM MANAGER, SAFECOM, WIRELESS PUBLIC SAFETY INTEROPERABLE COMMUNICATIONS PROGRAM, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY; JOHN MORGAN, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE, ADVANCED GENERATION INTEROPERABILITY LAW ENFORCEMENT [AGILE]; JOHN MULETA, CHIEF, WIRELESS BUREAU, FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION; AND EDMOND THOMAS, CHIEF, OFFICE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY, FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION Ms. Evans. Good morning, Chairman Shays, Chairman Putnam, and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me to speak about communication challenges facing the first responder community. My remarks will focus on the administration's strategy and progress to date in working with State, local, and tribal governments and organizations to address these challenges to achieve interoperability. As you know, in the fall of 2001, OMB's E-Gov Task Force identified 24 Government-wide opportunities to simplify and consolidate redundant Federal programs. One of those opportunities was in the area of wireless communications and became the Project SAFECOM E-Gov initiative. Given the critical importance of improving communications among the first responder community, the President's Management Council identified SAFECOM as one of the top three priority E-Gov initiatives out of the 24. SAFECOM is a central part of the administration's strategy toward achieving the goal of improved interoperability among Federal, State, local, and tribal governments and organizations. Because over 90 percent of the Nation's public safety infrastructure is owned at the State and local level, SAFECOM was created to be a public safety practitioner-driven program. Its mission is to serve as the central point within the Federal Government to help public safety agencies across all levels of government to improve response through more effective and efficient wireless communications. As the umbrella program for all Federal interoperability efforts, SAFECOM has developed a strategy with both short-and long-term milestones to fulfill that mission. The Department of Homeland Security is the managing partner of this initiative. Additionally, there are six partner agencies: the Departments of Defense, Energy, Interior, Justice, Health and Human Services, and Agriculture. All of these agencies are involved because of significant roles they play in public safety communications, emergency incident response and management, and law enforcement. It is abundantly clear that in order for first responders and other public safety and law enforcement officials to effectively prevent, respond, and recover from disasters, whether their origin is natural or terrorist, they must be able to depend on interoperable communications. Unfortunately, until recently, each Federal agency had their own policies, standards, and equipment for the individual programs they administered. This problem was compounded at the State and local level as each public safety group used their own equipment, standards, and procedures. To address these and other barriers to achieving interoperability, SAFECOM will accomplish the following four items. The first item is the development of a national policy that promotes communications interoperability. SAFECOM is working within DHS and with its partners in the development of a national response plan, and the national incident management system is outlined in Homeland Security Presidential Directive No. 5. The goal of this directive is to enhance the ability of the United States to manage domestic incidences by establishing a single, comprehensive national incident management system. This effort is ongoing. A second task is the development of a common set of requirements for the public safety interoperable communications. SAFECOM is collaborating with the public safety community to identify their needs. Once completed, this uniform set of requirements will be used by public safety organizations and industry to ensure that the organization's own requirements and the overall need for interoperable communications are fully met. This effort is underway. A third SAFECOM activity will be the creation of standards that will provide a technical foundation for interoperable communications across the public safety community. SAFECOM and their State, local, and tribal partners are working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology to create standards for equipment, technology, and processes. Finally, SAFECOM, with its partners, will develop a national wireless communications architecture that brings together the policies, requirements, and standards activities I just mentioned. This architecture will provide a framework for implementing interoperable communication solutions across agencies and jurisdictions at all levels, while preventing any new and eliminating existing islands of interoperability and communication stovepipes. Successful achievement of those four activities clearly requires both inter-and intra-governmental collaboration. In addition to the Federal, State, local, and tribal partners already mentioned, both the Department of Justice Advanced Generation of Interoperability for Law Enforcement [AGILE] program and the Federal Communications Commission [FCC] play a critical role in this arena. SAFECOM and AGILE work together on a daily basis to make sure that tasks are coordinated and resources are used as effectively as possible. AGILE is a vital partner in the areas of standards development and outreach to the first responder community. The FCC has a critical role in solving the issue of limited ad fragmented spectrum, a barrier toward interoperability. In closing, I would like to emphasize the administration's commitment to continue to work collaboratively across Federal agencies with Congress and State and local and tribal governments to overcome the interoperability challenges facing the first responder community. While great strides have been made toward improving interoperability for our Nation's first responders, this is not a problem that can be solved overnight, or even in a year or two, but achievement of the SAFECOM goals will bring us much closer toward realizing interoperability. Collectively, we must continue to work toward developing a common set of requirements and standards for public safety communications. I look forward to working with the committee on our shared goals to achieve interoperability and realize effective and efficient first responder communications. [The prepared statement of Ms. Evans follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.170 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.171 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.172 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.173 Mr. Shays. Thank you. Before going to Dr. Boyd, I would like to recognize Mr. Schrock for an expression of appreciation. Mr. Schrock. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. At the end of last hearing I learned that Ms. Valicenti is going to be leaving her job with the State of Kentucky, and I am sad about that, but after 6 years in that pressure cooker, she wants to go on and do other things. And I just want to tell her that we appreciate very much the times you have come here, the knowledge you have given us. You have been a great help to us, and I think I speak for everybody here when I say thank you for the job you have done, and we wish you luck in whatever endeavor you take on after that. Thank you. Mr. Shays. We will note for the record silent applause. Thank you. Dr. Boyd. Dr. Boyd. Good morning and thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, for the invitation to speak to you today. While several programs have done important work in addressing interoperability, much of it has been disconnected, fragmented, and often conflicting. That is why SAFECOM was established as a high priority electronic government initiative to provide a national coordinating umbrella for Federal programs touching on interoperability. But SAFECOM is also a public safety practitioner-driven program with a customer base of over 44,000 local and State public agencies and more than 100 Federal agencies engaged in public safety disciplines such as law enforcement, fire fighting, public health, and disaster recovery. Fixing the interoperability program will require a long- term coordinated effort among local, State, and Federal stakeholders, and the sheer size and diversity of the public safety community and the billions of dollars invested in existing communication systems means we cannot start with a blank slate. Our solutions will have to include: backward compatibility with legacy systems to protect those investments; leveraging of advances in technology through research, development, and testing; and development of a well defined set of requirements for interoperability that can steer the development of reliable standards to guide industry as it creates solutions, and localities and States as they purchase them. But we need solutions quickly, so we have begun several near-term initiatives to begin moving us in the right direction, including innovative developmental projects, testing and evaluating of equipment, the pursuit of better spectrum management policies and technology, coordination of grant guidance across the Federal Government, and identification and promotion of best practices. In this last fiscal year, SAFECOM developed the Common Grant Guidance for use by Federal programs funding public safety communications equipment for State and local agencies. The COPS Office, FEMA, and the Office of Domestic Preparedness all incorporated this guidance into their public safety communications programs, thus producing the first multi-agency, multi-departmental coordinated approach to funding requirements for interoperability. With the AGILE Project, we also organized and funded the peer review process for the joint grant solicitation from COPS and FEMA, and with the National Institute of Science and Technology held a summit on interoperability as a critical first step in identifying all the Federal and national programs currently involved in public safety communications. This year we will complete the initial draft of the first Statement of Requirements for Public Safety Communications Interoperability. This Statement of Requirements will serve as the basis for SAFECOM's technology efforts. And about 2 weeks ago we issued a request for information to gather information from industry on current technologies to enhance interoperability that are either available now or under development, and we have begun collecting information on current technologies through vendor days. In our coordinating role, we are collaborating with the Department of Justice in the development of interoperability between Federal agencies and local public safety in 25 critical cities, and have begun discussions with the Department of Agriculture on a possible joint effort to explore radio over IP. We continue to support the Capital Area Wireless Integrated Network Demonstration project because it exhibits model governance structures and technology implementation for multi- disciplinary and multi-jurisdictional data sharing, and because it offers an example of how to incorporate new technologies into emergency communication systems. And, finally, SAFECOM is developing an interoperability information portal to provide information to public safety agencies through an integrated central cite which will include, as one example, a scorecard tool that can be used to identify and track public safety progress on interoperable communications. Some of this effort leverages the work of the former Public Safety Wireless Network program now fully absorbed into SAFECOM. We believe we have made significant progress in establishing SAFECOM as the umbrella program for interoperability within the Federal Government, and gaining the confidence of the State and local public safety community who own and operate more than 90 percent of the Nation's public safety infrastructure, without whom this effort cannot succeed. We are, with all our partners, working toward a world where lives and property are never lost because public safety agencies cannot communicate. The bottom line? There are no simple solutions and no quick fixes, but the problem is not insoluble if we marshal our resources and work together. I would be happy to answer any questions. [The prepared statement of Dr. Boyd follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.174 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.175 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.176 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.177 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.178 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.179 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.180 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.181 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.182 Mr. Shays. I am so grateful you stopped because we didn't hit the clock. It is the first time in my 16 years that I remember that not happening. You could have gone on forever, sir. So thank you very much. Dr. Morgan, you won't be so lucky. You are on. Dr. Morgan. Oh, well, I will try to keep to the 5 minutes. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Clay, Mr. Kucinich, members of the subcommittees. I am John Morgan, Acting Assistant Director for Science and Technology of the National Institute of Justice. NIJ is the research, development, and evaluation arm of the Department of Justice and a component of the Department's Office of Justice Programs. I am pleased to appear before you today to discuss the history of NIJ's AGILE program, you have heard some of it already today, and to present current interoperability solutions and discuss research and development plans that can help the law enforcement and first responder communities develop long-term interoperability solutions. NIJ established the AGILE program to assist State and local law enforcement and public safety agencies in effectively and efficiently communicating with one another, using both voice and data, across agency and jurisdictional boundaries. AGILE accomplishes its mission through four main program components: supporting research and development of technology; testing, evaluating, and demonstrating technologies; developing technology standards; and educating and reaching out to public safety practitioners and policymakers. AGILE is helping bridge the gap in emergency communication by identifying, adopting, and developing interoperability solutions that include open architecture, not proprietary standards, for voice, data, image, and video communications systems. AGILE serves all of public safety, but is primarily focused on law enforcement's unique needs. For example, police in general care first and foremost about solutions for day-to-day operations in criminal justice problems. Such solutions, which use open architecture and support day-to-day needs, will also serve where multiple parties need to exchange information on the spot, at critical incidents. Much of AGILE's success can be attributed to its partnership with several of NIJ's regional technology centers, especially the Rocky Mountain and Northeast centers, and its partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. These facilities have performed much of the work that you will hear about today and are included in the written testimony in more detail. AGILE actually dates back to the mid-1990's, actually under the able leadership and vision of Dr. Boyd, when he sat as the Director of the Office of Science and Technology within NIJ. The first system that NIJ pursued at that time was BORTAC, the Border Tactical Communications System, which connected the dispatch centers of 12 agencies operating in San Diego County, including the Border Patrol, INS, California Highway Patrol, San Diego Police Department, and others. BORTAC, which has actually been operational since 1996, demonstrated early on that overcoming institutional and cultural barriers in developing interoperable systems is often more important and more difficult than overcoming existing technical barriers. It actually took 2 years to bring everybody together on the same page about what to do at BORTAC and only 2 months to implement the technical solution. NIJ's interoperability projects portfolio grew after that to include many other interoperability research projects and data and information sharing projects such as InfoTech in southern Florida and COPLINK in Arizona, and the development of the leading standard that is helping to solve this problem right now, the P-25 digital wireless standard. In April 2002, NIJ convened NTFI. Again, you have heard about NTFI today from Marilyn Ward and others, and the staff has the summary pamphlet on the NTFI guide that came out of the convening of that group, ``Why Can't We Talk? Working Together to Bridge the Communication Gap to Save Lives,'' an excellent resource for those of you who want to see the major issues in interoperability and what public safety professionals have to say about it. NIJ has also developed a strong partnership between its AGILE program and the Wireless Public Safety Interoperable Communications program, the E-Gov initiative known as SAFECOM. AGILE's years of experience in the areas of technology research and development, standards development, and outreach and support to the public safety community and national associations enable it to assist SAFECOM in fulfilling its mission. In fact, as we talk today, AGILE technical representatives are working with SAFECOM on operational requirements in interoperability elsewhere in this town. To best integrate the respective programs, AGILE and SAFECOM have merged their planning in these areas of common interest. In order to meet the need for short-term interoperable solutions, NIJ has created a process to research, evaluate, test, and implement commercially available technologies, including the ACU-1000 and other communications switches. The ACU-1000 is actually operational right now in Alexandria, VA. Another area that we have been very, very much involved in and is a technology development area is software defined radio [SDR], which shows the breadth of the NIJ AGILE program. SDR technology replaces the internal hardware of a mobile radio system with flexible software and promises to provide portable radios that can adapt to many different radio environments. NIJ funded the development of a particularly innovative approach that accomplishes all of the radio's signal processing using a typical general purpose processor such as a Pentium chip. This approach has been demonstrated using a hand-held pocket PC to emulate a public safety radio, and we have successfully demonstrated the ability of this laboratory prototype to emulate a vast array of radio types across a wide range of frequencies and protocols. So what this is, members of the committee, is a PDA, a compact, pocket PC PDA, with an RF amplifier on the back, and this little device can emulate, for much less cost than the average radio, honestly, hundreds of different radio types, regardless of frequency and protocol, across a very, very wide range. This is something that I think going to be part of the solutions for public safety in the long run. NIJ isn't saying that this is the only solution. What we are trying to do is create a range of solutions that can be adapted to a wide range of environments across the pubic safety community. Mr. Shays. Just a quick question. Is that voice and text? Dr. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Shays. We need to have you wrap up here. Dr. Morgan. I will wrap that up. I wanted to show off my cool toy. And we are also, of course, working with public safety associations to provide for how such systems can be implemented in public safety and in a regulatory environment. I appreciate the committee's interest in this very, very vitally important area of interoperable communications. [The prepared statement of Dr. Morgan follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.183 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.184 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.185 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.186 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.187 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.188 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.189 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.190 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.191 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.192 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.193 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.194 Mr. Shays. Thank you, Dr. Morgan. Mr. Muleta. Mr. Muleta. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. Mr. Shays. I am going to have you pull the mic a little closer. We can hear you, but we would like to hear you better. Mr. Muleta. I was going to say can you hear me now, but that would favor one carrier over another. I want to start off by first recognizing Congressman Putnam. My early beginnings as an engineer was out in Brandon, FL, so I think we have something in common there. Mr. Shays. Was that when he was in junior high school? Mr. Muleta. I don't know. I don't know if he went to Brandon; he might have been Polk County. But I also want to recognize the fact that interoperability is demonstrated to me every morning when I drive in from Arlington on the way to my office in Washington, when I drive through the Pentagon area on the way to the 14th Street Bridge. There you see the Virginia State Police, the Arlington County Police, the DOD folks all trying to work together to make sure that the Defense Department, the Pentagon is safe, and I think that is a demonstration of the kind of interoperability that needs to take place. What my talk today will describe is how the FCC and my bureau in particular are facilitating interoperability and effective public safety communications. Mr. Shays. You can move that mic about 2 inches back and we will be fine. No, I like hearing someone like I am hearing you, so thank you. Mr. Muleta. All right. I will also touch upon the three critical issues that drive interoperability and effective use of public safety spectrum. These are the need for local, State, and Federal planning coordination; the need for public safety systems to take advantage of the latest technology; and, three, the financial infrastructure to help address the coordination and technology adoption issues. Under the able leadership of Chairman Michael Powell, the Commission has systematically addressed and will continue to address these issues. My dear colleague, Ed Thomas, will describe the issues related to public safety interference issues and the potential solution, so my focus will be on the activities of the Bureau to develop a network of effective public safety systems. We are doing that while being cognizant of the varying needs and interests of more than 40,000 different public safety entities in the country. First of all, I do want to assure the members of the subcommittee that we place the highest priority on public safety issues, and these issues not include the public safety radio system, but also the integration of critical infrastructure industries and a seamless nationwide E-911 system into a national homeland security and safety system. Our commitment is exemplified by the dedication and hard work of the over 90 people that we have working in our Public Safety and Private Wireless Division. These lawyers, engineers, and analysts process over 400,000 different license applications, transfers, and requests for special temporary authority, and they also deal with the highly complicated legal and regulatory issues that are presented by public safety radio operations. In addition, we work closely with other offices and Bureaus in the Commission, including the Homeland Security Policy Council, which was created under the direction and leadership of Chairman Powell. It is through this interdisciplinary council that we are able to coordinate our activities with other Federal, State, and local authorities in order to put in place measures that protect our country's telecommunications, broadcasts, and other communications, infrastructures, and facilities from adverse attacks. In terms of planning and coordination in greater interoperability, the FCC has been active in promoting better coordination between different public safety entities. The FCC first explored a national and regional planning approach for public safety spectrum in the 1980's as an alternative to the traditional first come, first served licensing approach. It was during this process that service rules and technical standards were adopted to govern a dedicated 6 megahertz of public safety spectrum in the 800 megahertz band. Most importantly during this process, the Commission designated five channels nationwide for mutual aid cooperation and communication. As part of the planning process, there were 55 regional planning committees, broken down along State lines, to develop regional plans tailored to the particular public safety communication needs of each region. This same regional planning process was also adopted and used as a model for the 700 megahertz public safety band plan. We chartered the Public Safety National Coordination Committee, the NCC, in 1999 to solicit input from the public safety community in further development of rules for the use of this technology. Its final recommendations were submitted to us this past summer and will lead to the development of service rules and regulation that will lead to greater interoperability in the 700 megahertz public safety band. We are also excited about the growing potential for introducing technology that will lead to innovative public safety uses. For example, the recently adopted service rules for the 4.9 gigahertz band accommodate new applications for broadband mobile operations in the use of fixed hot spots. We also continue to pursue a flexible licensing regime in the public safety arena and encourage optimal public safety communications and interoperability. For example, licensees in the 4.9 gigahertz band, public safety licensees, are permitted and encouraged to enter sharing agreements or strategic partnerships with both traditional public safety entities, Federal Government agencies, and non-public safety entities such as critical infrastructure industries, power and utility companies. Two remaining challenges relate to funding and leveraging technology to the benefit of public safety. These issues are related, and we continue to have an open dialog with the public safety community and other interested stakeholders, including equipment manufacturers, critical infrastructure industries, and the commercial service providers. The creation of more public and private partnership is one potential solution to the funding and technology issue. Better spectrum management is also a key issue to address these concerns. The 800 megahertz interference proceeding is yet another example where the FCC must address the three challenges of planning and coordination, technology, and funding to solve the problem. In addressing the problem, I do want to assure you that we are conducting our examination of potential solutions with the following priorities in mind. One is to address the interference issues for public safety first and foremost. Second, we want to adapt a spectrum plan that provides certainty to all the licensees in the band. And, third, we want to treat all of the affected licensees equitably as we move to an effective solution. In conclusion, I want to reaffirm that the FCC views as one of its highest responsibilities the public safety community. The Commission has been and will continue to be sensitive to the need of this community by making spectrum available for its use when necessary, by protecting it from interference, and by enabling new technologies to aid it in its mission. Thank you again for your invitation to testify on this important and timely subject. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Muleta follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.195 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.196 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.197 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.198 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.199 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.200 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.201 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.202 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.203 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.204 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.205 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.206 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.207 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.208 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.209 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.210 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.211 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.212 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.213 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.214 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.215 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.216 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.217 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.218 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.219 Mr. Shays. Thank you very much. Mr. Thomas. And then we will go to questions with Mr. Putnam first, and we are going to do 8 minute rounds of questions, and then we may have a second. We need to be done by 1. Thank you. Mr. Thomas. Mr. Thomas. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. It is a great pleasure to appear before you to discuss the critical issues regarding public safety. Public safety has been one of the Commission's highest priorities for many years. Today I will be discussing the role of the Office of Engineering and Technology in ensuring that public safety and other first responders have the spectrum and technology resources necessary to meet their critical needs. I serve as the Commission's Chief Engineer. Among other things, my office is responsible for spectrum allocation and technical analysis. Today I will be discussing public safety spectrum allocation and how the Commission is addressing certain recent interference concerns in the 800 megahertz band. To put matters in perspective, the Commission has allocated 97 megahertz of spectrum to public safety in 10 different bands. Therefore, in a typical metropolitan area, there are over 1,000 potential channels available to public safety for voice communication. In some of the largest metropolitan areas there are even more, since the Commission has authorized up to an additional 18 megahertz in these areas. In addition, in the last few years the Commission has taken further steps to allocate new spectrum for public safety use. The Commission recently made available 50 megahertz of spectrum at 4.9 gigahertz. The rules adopted for 4.9 band are intended to accommodate a variety of new broadband applications such as high speed data and video. The Commission has also allocated 24 megahertz of spectrum in the portion of the 700 megahertz band that has been recovered as part of the digital TV transition. A band plan for this 24 megahertz has been developed in conjunction with the public safety community and, among other things, it sets aside significant amount of spectrum for interoperability and future uses. Interoperability has been a critical issue for the Commission for many years. Frequencies have been set aside for interoperability at 150 megahertz, at 450 megahertz, at 700 megahertz, and at 800 megahertz. To ensure improved interoperability for public safety operations, as of January 1, 2005, the Commission will require newly certified public safety radios to operate on a nationwide safety interoperable calling channel in the band in which the radio operates. Along with allocation issues, the Commission has also been actively addressing interference to public safety operations. Recently, the most significant interference issue has arisen in the 800 megahertz band. In March 2002, the Commission began the process of developing a public record for seeking comment as to what additional steps we should take to help resolve the interference problem. I think it is an understatement to say that the response has been robust. Parties have engaged in extensive discussions of the proposals and have submitted numerous different plans to reduce interference. For example, last year Nextel joined a group of public safety and private radio organizations to submit a relocation plan that was called a consensus plan. Others joined together and filed an opposition to the plan. Presently, the Commission staff is diligently analyzing the proposals before it. The public record is comprehensive, contradictory, and complex. We are committed to resolving this public safety interference problem as quickly as humanly possible. On another front, the Commission is moving forward to enable and encourage development of new technologies that hold promise for public safety use. Ultra wideband technology is one example. The most relevant application of ultra wideband technology for public safety is imaging. For example, in hostage situations, through-the-wall imaging systems can be used to pinpoint the location and movement of persons within a building. Similarly, a ground penetrating radar system can be used to locate buried objects or underground faults. The Commission is also actively pursuing the public safety potential of cognitive radio technology or software-defined radios, which holds tremendous promise in the area of interoperability and interference rejection or avoidance. For instance, during an emergency, these radios will have the capability to configure themselves for interoperable use and adjust automatically to avoid interference. Mr. Chairman and Members, allow me to end as I have begun. The Commission views its responsibility in the public safety arena as one of its highest responsibilities. The Commission has been and will continue to be sensitive to the needs of that community by making spectrum available to it when necessary, by protecting it from interference, and by enabling new technologies to facilitate the completion of its mission. Thank you for the opportunity of addressing the subcommittee. Mr. Shays. Thank you very much. The Chair will recognize Mr. Putnam for 8 minutes and all Members for 8 minutes. We will then go to Mr. Clay. I want to just point out my biggest fear is I feel that when everyone is in charge, no one is in charge, and so, in the end, I am going to be very eager to know who is going to take ownership. Mr. Putnam. Mr. Putnam. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You have given me a perfect lead-in. My committee's jurisdictional role here is mostly related to the fact that this is an E-Gov initiative, which is Ms. Bailey's bailiwick; SAFECOM is a homeland security initiative, which is Dr. Boyd's bailiwick; Dr. Morgan has presented the AGILE program through Justice; and then, of course, the underlying spectrum issues are FCC. So what or who is coordinating all of the key Federal stakeholders to make sure that we have one streamlined SAFECOM program and that we avoid the duplication of efforts that has been the frustration so eloquently presented by our first panel? Well, I am not sure who should answer it. Who is in charge? Does Dr. Morgan report to Dr. Boyd, since Dr. Boyd runs the SAFECOM program? Dr. Morgan. Well, with respect to interoperability, it is the settled position of the National Institute of Justice that SAFECOM is the primary coordinator of all activities in that area, and the AGILE program, as a result, has worked very diligently to coordinate all of its activities with SAFECOM on a daily basis. When we do our planning and program review in December for the AGILE program, we are doing it jointly with SAFECOM so that everything that we are doing is vetted through that effort and everything is coordinated with that effort. And so we feel that we have a very unique role because of our history, our technical expertise within our center system, and our focus on law enforcement, but we also feel that it is very important to coordinate with SAFECOM as well. Mr. Putnam. And have them play the lead in this area. So Dr. Boyd is the lead agency. Dr. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Putnam. And AGILE reports to Dr. Boyd. Dr. Boyd. There obviously is a formal legal structure that has to do with direct reporting. What I can tell you is that we cooperate to the extent that we talked about what we were going to say in the testimony and how we would relate those things. We participate actively in progress reviews within AGILE; we have participated in the development of those programs. This, in fact, extends across not just AGILE and SAFECOM, but well beyond that. So, for example, when the interoperability grants which were authorized by Congress in 2003 were awarded roughly $75 million in FEMA and $75 million in COPS--COPS, of course, in Justice and FEMA in DHS, we also worked actively with both of those agencies to develop the Common Grant Guidance which they then used as part of that solicitation. And we have worked directly with the Office of Domestic Preparedness, so that the SAFECOM guidance is incorporated in their program as well. To give you an idea of the level of coordination, AGILE was tasked with developing the common performance template they were going to use to collect the data, so we could see how well the FEMA and COPS grants were actually accomplishing interoperability, and we even participated again with the AGILE program in developing the peer review process that supported both the FEMA and the COPS selections. We have created a Federal coordination council, in fact, which includes not just the funding partners, but also includes all of those other activities that are providing grants that touch on interoperability. In fact, we have had meetings already in the last couple of months and we will have more meetings in the next couple of months as we begin to work through these things. Mr. Putnam. If I am a police chief working on interoperability issues, do I call Karen Evans at OMB, who is Director of E-Gov Initiatives; do I call Dr. Boyd with SAFECOM; do I call Dr. Morgan with AGILE; or do I call the FCC? Dr. Boyd. If you call any of the three of us, it is going to wind up in my office, and we will coordinate the response back. In fact, we have a staff for that. As we tell chiefs right now, one of the quickest ways if you want an answer in a hurry is to just send a message to safecom@dhs.gov and we will respond, and then we will coordinate whether it is AGILE that needs to be involved in that activity or we will advise them if we think they need to refer it to the FCC or others. Mr. Putnam. So these marketing materials, what is on this? We just received this from AGILE. Dr. Morgan. As I alluded to in the testimony, AGILE has a very wide range of work that it has done I standards development and research and development, test and evaluation, such as the AC-1000 switch in Alexandria. What this CD contains is a very wide range of documents and publications that can be accessed by everyone from policymakers right down to the technical people who are trying to implement these illusions. And so this AGILE Resource CD is something that we give out broadly at public safety associations and to people who are calling to determine what best solutions fit into their local environment, and so on. So it is a very wide range of publications and knowledge, and I would say it captures the vast majority of the knowledge that has been gained through the AGILE program over the last decade. Mr. Putnam. Well, let me ask what apparently is probably a delicate question. In creating the Department of Homeland Security, we ruffled a lot of features because we moved some serious agencies around. I mean, we dislocated Coast Guard out of Transportation, which was a huge deal; we moved Secret Service around; we did all these things. Is AGILE best located in the Department of Homeland Security, considering the overlapping role? Dr. Morgan. Well, first of all, I think that AGILE and SAFECOM have a very strong working relationship, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it is the first part of it. Mr. Putnam. That is what people said before we passed the Homeland Security bill. Dr. Morgan. The other issue I would say is that law enforcement has some problems with respect to day-to-day communications that we don't want to get subsumed in the overall public safety environment. In this city every day, not every day, but this year in this city there will be over 300 murders. There is a criminal justice mission that is separate from the Homeland Security mission, and a criminal justice mission that is very serious and important in this country; and, honestly, the investments that are necessary in building technology for criminal justice are extremely important and oftentimes overlooked. NIJ is focused on local law enforcement, and I think we are working very well with SAFECOM. Mr. Putnam. Ms. Evans, what is your role in this? Ms. Evans. As the Administrator for E-Government and IT, it is my role to ensure that, and facilitate the cooperation and the coordination that has been demonstrated today. Additionally, what is also important in my role is that investments that are in the Federal space that are providing this service are done wisely and that meet the goals. So it is the administration's viewpoint that SAFECOM is the umbrella program for the Federal Government, and that we are working to ensure that all the Federal Government investments in this space are working through the SAFECOM to ensure that the standards, once the standards are established and that the architecture and those types of issues are there, that all the Federal investments those requirements. Mr. Putnam. Is there a plan somewhere that has short-and long-term milestones for SAFECOM's progress? Ms. Evans. Yes, sir, there is. And we are also in the process of reviewing the plan again to ensure that we are keeping to 10 percent of the performance and schedule and budget. And as we move through the fiscal year 2004 budget cycle, it is our intention at the end of this to ensure that there is great visibility into all of the projects, not just the SAFECOM project, but all E-Gov projects so that question will be answered and that information will be available. Mr. Putnam. Mr. Chairman, am I out of time? Thank you. Thank you very much. I thank the witnesses. Mr. Shays. Thank you. I said 2 minutes, but it had been about a minute and 20 seconds. I am sorry. At this time I recognize Mr. Clay. I asked Mr. Clay, now that the two of you are working instead of the two of us, if he had been a bad influence on you, and he said, I hope so. Mr. Clay, you have the floor. Mr. Clay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And we work together well. [The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.165 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3427.166 Mr. Clay. I guess this is directed to the FCC witnesses. Councilwoman Praisner has suggested that the money from the spectrum auctions be used to support local first responders. This is a two-part question. First, please tell me where the money from past auctions has gone and, second, what do you think of the councilwoman's proposal? Either one, Mr. Thomas or Mr. Muleta can attempt to answer that. Mr. Muleta. Thank you. The first question is where has auctions money gone? The auctions are designed to assign licenses between mutually exclusive licensees, and the moneys paid to that go directly to the Treasury. So that is one answer. Your second question is what we think about the proposal. Generally, we defer to the legislatures on their initiatives. You know, that is something that is sort of in the purview of Congress as to whether that is an appropriate solution for the funding issues. I do recognize there are funding issues for first responders, and it is a very complex problem that needs to be tackled. There are over 40,000 public safety systems nationwide, and coordinating the funding structure for all of them and just the communication among all of them on the coordination issue is an important aspect of this. Thank you. Mr. Clay. Has the FCC weighed in in any way on this proposal that the councilwoman has offered up? Mr. Muleta. My general understanding is that we do not comment on legislative initiatives; that is not under our purview. Mr. Clay. OK, thank you, Mr. Muleta. Let me ask Dr. Boyd what requirements is the Department of Homeland Security putting on grants to first responders, and do you require that governments develop plans for interoperability? Dr. Boyd. I think there are two answers to that. The first one is that in this last year, as we developed the guidance, we, in some cases, shoehorned the guidance in what the existing legislation said because every program wasn't driven under exactly the same set of rules, so we had to make some adjustments for that. But, in fact, we have worked with what is called the Consortium for the Improvement of Public Safety Communications, which is an organization made up of all of the major public safety organizations: the International Association of Fire Chiefs, Chiefs of Police, Major City Chiefs, Major City Sheriffs, the Association of Public Safety Communications Officers. Working with them, we developed the Common Grant Guidance, which then became part of the criteria that was used both in asking that they complete the applications in a way that addressed that guidance and then was used as part of the criteria in deciding how they were going to be selected, and that included a number of things. Where appropriate, for example, it strongly encouraged the use of P- 25. P-25, as you know, is a standard which addresses digital trunk radio systems. And in each instance it looked largely for cross-jurisdictional, cross-disciplinary kinds of partnerships that addressed specifically the interoperability problem. Mr. Clay. Thank you for that response. And tell me which agency is responsible for communicating with the local officials. Whose responsibility is that? Dr. Boyd. Obviously, we would hope that local agencies would have access to any agency that they needed help from. Within the interoperability community we have been very proactive in going out and creating a structure that doesn't just allow occasional communication when they want to talk to us but, in fact, fosters an ongoing dialog. And so we have both an executive committee and an advisory committee structure which is built around the public safety community and around public officials so that, for example, as you heard in the earlier panel in your earlier hearing, Marilyn Praisner, Marilyn Ward and others are part of the SAFECOM system and, in fact, we meet with them. Eventually we will meet with them quarterly; right now we are meeting about every 4 to 6 weeks, as we put the foundations in place to do the things we think we need to. Mr. Clay. OK. Will SAFECOM be a one-stop shopping place for local governments who are trying to solve problems of interoperability? Dr. Boyd. That is in fact the focus, that we would be not necessarily the sole place that would do that. AGILE is an R&D activity; we would anticipate that COPS and others would do that. But what we do see SAFECOM's role as is a place that you can go to in a one-stop basis and we will make the connections, so that instead of the local agency having to know that they need to talk to the COPS Office or to ODP to get the kind of training and technical assistance they need, they can come to SAFECOM and we will link them with the right folks. Mr. Clay. OK, any other panelists want to contribute? Ms. Evans. Ms. Evans. The one thing that I would like to point out is on the 24 E-Gov initiatives there is another initiative. Although we talk about them separate, they are going forward to ensure that there is coordination among those. And, of course, there is one which is grants.gov. And so the opportunities that you are talking about that are related to grants and how the grants go forward, there are opportunities there that we, as the administration, ensure that those opportunities then are coordinated between these initiatives to ensure that if they went to grants.gov to find out what opportunities were available to them, they would also then, if they were specifically interested in interoperability wireless types of opportunities, that would then be linked to the SAFECOM project. Mr. Clay. All right. Well, I thank the panel for their answers. And in the interest of time, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back the balance of mine. Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman. At this time we will recognize Mr. Schrock for 8 minutes. Mr. Schrock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before we start, I notice the members of the first panel are here, and I am wondering if you all have copies of that. Mr. Shays. We will note for the record nodding of heads. Mr. Schrock. Appropriate nodding. I am sorry you guys weren't here for the first panel, but some of the testimony they had was amazing, especially some of the comments that were made by Congresswoman Jane Harman from California about this issue as it related to the California fires that, unfortunately, they are still engaged in. And she said if they had some of these systems in place, firefighters in California could have had real-time tracking maps to show progress of the fires, locations of other firefighters, critical infrastructures, blueprint layouts, etc. And then probably the most compelling statement of all the testimony came from Marilyn Ward, who said in here interoperability has been brought to the forefront by disasters such as the Air Florida plane crash here in D.C. on the 14th Street Bridge. I don't know how many of you remember that. That was 21 years ago. Twenty-one years ago, and we are still discussing this subject. So clearly something has to be done. Let me followup on something that I am not sure I got a complete answer to what Mr. Putnam was asking and I gather, Dr. Boyd, you have taken possession of responsibility, that is the way I figured it, so I guess I am going to aim this at you. Who has the sole responsibility for creating and facilitating these standards on a Federal-to-Federal basis, Federal-to-Federal interoperability, Federal-to-State, State-to-local, and regional? I am not sure. Maybe I was fiddling with my papers and didn't hear you answer that, but who has that responsibility? Dr. Boyd. I don't think you missed it; I am not sure that we addressed that specifically. But, in fact, standards is a key component of what we are trying to do in SAFECOM, and it is standards at all of the levels. And, in fact, the instrument that we are using to help do that is the Office of Law Enforcement Standards of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and that has been a partnership that has existed for a long time that started, in fact, before even I was in the Office of Science and Technology, and that entails working at all of the levels together. We don't believe that there is a separate set of Federal interoperability standards and a separate set of State standards and a separate set of local standards; we think they need to be a common set of standards. Mr. Schrock. I agree. Dr. Boyd. And so the approach that we are using working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology involves a number of pieces. One of the first pieces, and it has been an interesting challenge, is who are all the players in this community. So some months ago, in May or June, as I recall, we asked the National Institute of Standards and Technology to convene a summit to invite in all of the Federal and national organizations that had some role in interoperability so that we could create what amounted to a catalog of all the players so we could figure out who ought to be involved with us in doing this and who ought to be involved in the standards process. That resulted in that catalog. In fact, there is a report to that effect and it is on a Web site. Mr. Schrock. Who should it be? Dr. Boyd. I am sorry? Mr. Schrock. Who should that person be? For instance, on our recent panel we just had Ms. Valicenti. She is the head of the National Chief Information Officers, but she also runs the Kentucky one. Is it somebody like Mrs. Valicenti that should be doing this? Should it be one person at the State level, one State person for each of the States doing this? Dr. Boyd. Clearly she is one of the people that we need to have involved in this, and, in fact, each of the States has its own structure and we work with whatever that State structure is. To be very frank, in order to make interoperability work at any level, what is most essential to begin with, whether it is at a county level or State level at the Federal level, is the creation of a governance structure that gives everybody in it at every level a stake in playing a role; and they have to feel credibly that they are at the table, that they have a role, that they are not just there, that they actually are helping to steer it and helping to shape it. Mr. Schrock. Now, are they at the table? Dr. Boyd. They are in SAFECOM. Mr. Schrock. They are, OK. Dr. Boyd. Yes, sir. Mr. Schrock. All right, that is good. You threw me off there, I was thinking of something else. Let me think here a minute. Does the DHS and SAFECOM have the overall lead responsibility for coordinating Federal efforts to assist State and local governments, address barriers to interoperability? In the area where I live, I represent Virginia Beach and Norfolk. We just had a fairly bad hurricane come through there, and because of what we have done over the last couple of years, by proving moneys so all the localities have the same kind of equipment, you would be amazed. I rode with the police for 24 hours; they could talk to anybody in the area. But that is just our area; that isn't even Richmond or northern Virginia or the State. I just wonder does DHS have the authority they need to make all this happen. Dr. Boyd. When we began to develop the SAFECOM strategy, and we actually have five components of it, one of those critical components was identifying what the barriers are, and we actually called it that, said the barriers; what creates the problem. And in that list there are more things that are both human and cultural and policy than there are that are technical. To be very frank, the technologies that could make this happen exist but have not been largely employed, have not been put into place in most cases. Mr. Schrock. Why? Dr. Boyd. For many of the same reason that BORTAC, which we began actually back in 1993, took 2 years to get people to agree on what the protocols would be, on what the language would be, on who would control the decision on who you talk to. When you can actually develop a regional system like the one you just spoke of or what is happening under the Capital Wireless Integrated Network, what happened in SAFECOM or under BORTAC in San Diego, then you begin, I think, to begin the kind of movement that we eventually have to spread across the country. I am not going to try to tell you that we have been successful in all the regions yet in communicating that piece of it, but that is a critical part, I think, of the national leadership, is to help local activities and demonstrate by taking examples like the Virginia Beach example, like some of the examples in Chicago, in South Dakota and other places and say, look, here are places where it not only worked, it paid huge dividends for those agencies who were involved, and you didn't lose control, you didn't lose the ability to communicate the way you needed to. Mr. Schrock. Do you think it is local politics that is getting in the way of some of this? Everybody has their own way of doing things and change is hard for people to accept, or what? Dr. Boyd. I think I would be inclined to agree, that human nature is always going to be an element of this. Dr. Morgan. It is a natural outgrowth of the Federal system. I mean, we have thousands and thousands of independent public safety agencies out there because that is the way the founding fathers established the Constitution in their wisdom and, as a result, it is not necessarily a problem that the Federal Government can easily come in and say, all right, here is the solution and everybody adopt it. That wouldn't be appropriate. The best thing to do is to give them standards they can operate to, have the money that is put out from the Federal Government adhere to those standards, and provide technical assistance so that they will be able to implement systems. Mr. Schrock. When I was in the State senate I thought, if the Federal Government told us to do anything, mind your own business, we're meddling, you know, frankly. And I was always one to say that people at the local level know how to handle their business better. But I think when you are dealing with an issue like this and we are dealing with terror, there has to be a basic framework from which everybody works; and I think we talked about that in the last panel. And unless we have that, you know, unless people are able to agree to that, we are never going to come up with a solution. My gosh, is my 8 minutes up already? Mr. Shays. Keep going. Mr. Schrock. OK. I want to ask Ms. Evans something. In fact, Ms. Evans, you are new in your current job, aren't you? I met with her on another issue the other day and enjoyed that, and I was surprised to see her here. What has the OMB done to promote better management of public safety spectrum issues in Federal departments, and do you all have the money available to do this effectively? Ms. Evans. Currently what OMB is doing, what the administration is doing is really working through the SAFECOM initiative, and the SAFECOM initiative is our umbrella program to ensure that the Federal resources in this area are directed to support the overall need of what we have been talking about and to ensure that partnership occurs. Additionally, dealing with the spectrum issue, the administration has launched an initiative which is underway under the leadership of the Department of Commerce that is looking at the spectrum issue overall. That task force work is ongoing and Commerce is the lead on that to address some of the other issues that we are talking about as far as spectrum and spectrum usage and spectrum management. Mr. Schrock. Are all the other agencies as engaged as Commerce, for instance, and do they have the funding to do this as well? Ms. Evans. All the agencies are engaged in this, this task force that is going forward that is supposed to provide a recommendation to the President of how we can move forward to address the spectrum issue. That report and that task force is ongoing, so as that evolves we would be glad to come back to the committee and tell you how that work is going on. As far as the funding issue, we continuously look at that, and as we are going through the 2005 cycle, we are addressing and looking at those issues to ensure that as we move forward, projects such as SAFECOM do have the funding that they need in order to move forward to achieve the results. Mr. Schrock. What is the next step to get this done? What do we need to do to get this done? And if it means we in Congress have to do something to step up to the plate and do it, I think we need to do it, and the quicker the better, because the folks who appeared before you have been here before and I think they are frustrated that not much is happening, and it looks to me like the problems that exist probably exist right here on Capitol Hill. We have to try to help resolve this. And I understand every time we pass a bill or do anything, more people's rights are taken away, but we are in a war right now, and I certainly don't want it to come to our homeland anymore. What is the next step? What do you think we need to do to get this done and get it done quickly? I am asking all of you that. Dr. Boyd. In SAFECOM, in fact, we have identified a list of things that we think we need to do, and, in fact, 2 or 3 weeks ago we brought that before another joint committee, in fact, I believe the chairman was at that session, and in it we pointed out that one of the critical things we needed was a governance structure that means that everybody that actually plays has a stake in it, has a role, and has a voice, so that it is both credible and it begins to get at those human issues you raised earlier. The second one is the development for the first time of a genuine Statement of Requirements. What exactly do we need in interoperability; what level of interoperability, for what purpose, and what ought to be the rules that surround it. Mr. Schrock. Who is going to create those rules? Dr. Boyd. We are doing that right now. Mr. Schrock. So you have ownership of that. Dr. Boyd. That is correct. In fact, this afternoon I will be in reviewing the draft Statement of Requirements. Mr. Schrock. Oh, good. Dr. Boyd. The third thing we then need is the development of common guidance, grant guidance, which we have done, we are going to continue to refine that, out of which, with the Statement of Requirements and the guidance, we then hope to come up with a suite of standards. Now, these aren't necessarily going to be all new standards; there are standards, in fact, that are useful in a variety of areas that we will want to adopt. What we want to do is create a package of standards, and then create standards where holes exist, is what we call a standards gap analysis, and then use those standards both to help guide industry in what they ought to be producing for us and to help guide State and local activities, and even Federal activities, when they go to buy the equipment. And then the last piece, the last crucial piece that we think needs to be applied here is some serious technical assistance. As you are well aware, most local jurisdictions don't have scientists or engineers or technicians as part of their public safety staff, and we need to provide them an objective capability through the system to do that, and so activities are being put together by the Office of Domestic Preparedness, by the AGILE program and the center system, and in some of the holes by SAFECOM so that we can begin to provide that objective assistance and they don't have to depend solely on vendors for the information, but can get broad, disinterested advice. Mr. Schrock. I agree with everything you said. I just hope we can keep the standards and the rules and the regulations and the process simple so that the localities will be able to implement it easily and that there is the least amount of man- hours possible and the least amount of cost, because cost is everything right now at the localities, they are all screaming about it, they sure are in the district I represent, and I think the sooner we get this done the better. I thank you all for coming here. And I have no further questions, Mr. Chairman. Oh yes I do. Mr. Thomas, you said something about 1,000 channels in some metro areas, and it just went right over my head, but the number kind of baffled me. Help me understand that. Mr. Thomas. Well, what I mean by that, Congressman, is the Commission has allocated an aggregate 97 megahertz of spectrum across 10 bands. They are available in almost all metropolitan areas. Mr. Schrock. Oh, I see. Mr. Thomas. OK? If you just translate those to a number of voice channels that is equivalent to, that is roughly, conservatively speaking, it is about 1,000. Mr. Schrock. OK, I see. You said something else, through- the-wall detection, and that is of interest to me because I represent the Port of Hampton Roads and, really, port security is my No. 1 issue right now, because I worry about those container ships with 3,000 containers coming in there and I think what is on there, what little device is in the corner of one of those things that when it gets to a certain grid behind the carrier person, it blows up, takes out our Navy and takes out our port, and I worry about that all the time. Every time I cross that bridge I see it. Help me understand that technology. Mr. Thomas. Well, there is a technology called ultra wideband technology. Mr. Schrock. What is it? Mr. Thomas. Ultra wideband technology. Sometimes it is referred to as UWB. It is very, very broadband, of the order of 4 or 5 gigahertz wide, but very, very low power, almost at the noise level. It has the capability of penetrating walls, and there are technologies available or devices available today. Mr. Schrock. All kinds of walls; steel, concrete? Mr. Thomas. Well, I mean, there are certain walls that render it less effective than others, but the answer to your question generally is yes. It is used by special ops in the military and S.W.A.T. teams, and basically what you can do is you put a device up against the wall and you get a radar picture of the movement inside of the wall, so you can keep track of individuals; it is used for hostage resolution issues, that kind of thing. Mr. Schrock. OK, now I know what it is. Special operations forces have shown me that in Virginia. Mr. Thomas. And it is used by S.W.A.T. teams as well in the local areas as well. Dr. Morgan. Congressman, if I may, I also would recommend to you two other sets of experience with respect to technology for security of ports. The first, Project Seahawk out of Charleston, Charleston is a very large port, as you know, as well, is being run out of our southeast center and is applying technologies to the security of the Charleston port, as well as providing interoperability solutions in the Charleston area with law enforcement and public safety. The other, I think, most extraordinary effort in terms of security of ports in this country is being run by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. There is a man up there by the name of John Pachowski who is doing amazing work in protecting the ports associated with New York and has put in the best technology that I have seen, and I think that we would be happy to put the folks in Newport News-Hampton Roads in touch with him and the other people who are supporting his efforts. Mr. Schrock. Put me in touch with him. That would be great. Dr. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Schrock. That would be great. Thank you very much. That used to be a Navy base; now it is a commercial port in Charleston, isn't it? Dr. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman. It is my intention originally to be out at 1. I think we can go to probably 10 after, and then we will need to go for the 1:30 committee meeting we are having here. It is also my intention to ask some questions. I think Mr. Janklow may come back, and I also want the professional staff to ask a few. As I think of this hearing, first, the Government Reform Committee looks at programs. We look at programs for waste, abuse, and fraud. We try to make Government work better; we don't appropriate, we don't legislate except in some areas, and we try to get those committees of cognizance to legislate, and we do a darned successful job, and we do a pretty successful job getting, I think, the executive branch to sometimes revisit its rules and regulations and performance. So in this hearing we are talking about the ability to communicate within communities local, regional, State, and the ability to communicate among communities local, regional, and State as well, and we want to know how these laws are doing, how the regulations are doing, and how the administration is doing. When I look at this issue and I see what SAFECOM is having to do with those organizations, some of those organizations represent some big, complex groups such as, for instance, the Governors organization, for one. As one of my staff members described it, it is like herding cats with a squirt gun. So that almost seems hopeless, so I will reject his description. But what I want to know, first, with the megahertz issue, the TV stations are basically supposed to get out of the 700 megahertz by 2006, is that correct? That is the end, right? I mean, it would be nice if they did it sooner. Mr. Thomas. Unfortunately, Congressman, that is not the end. That is the objective, but there is another hook in the law, as I understand it; and I am not a lawyer. Mr. Shays. Every time someone says they are not a lawyer, they are giving themselves a compliment. Mr. Thomas. I am not going to touch that one with a 10 foot pole. But also what is required is that within a market that 85 percent of the receivers be equipped to receive digital TV. Mr. Shays. So the reality is, let us cut to the short, 2006 is almost meaningless. Mr. Thomas. It is highly unlikely. Mr. Shays. OK. So that requires a legal change, a law to change that. That is not a regulation, that is a law, correct? Mr. Thomas. That is correct. But there is a consequence, and you should be aware of it, and that is the following: the way the process is set up is that basically a broadcaster presently has an analog channel. He is going to be moved somewhere in the spectrum to get a digital channel. When the channel is up and running, and when the market, and that market area is 85 percent or better digital, he loses the analog channel. The problem is if you speed it up, what occurs is that broadcaster could have no market. He could have a digital transmitter operating with no receivers in the market, and then there is a consequential question. Mr. Shays. Just tell me the bottom line, all right? What is the bottom line? Mr. Thomas. The bottom line is, very simply, broadcasters have to be able to earn their living. If they have no market, they have no advertising. And it is just a caution, that is all I am giving you here. Mr. Shays. So the solution is what? Mr. Thomas. Well, the solution is not an easy one, but one of the things we have done at the Commission, for instance, is when we did our digital planning we kept Channel 63, 64, 68, and 69 mostly vacant for interoperability. That is pretty much available in many spots in the United States today. The second thing is we did make available, as I said, the 50 megahertz at 4.9. The problem is, in the interoperability space, is that the entrenched receivers don't have that capability, so in order to get to interoperability there at least has to be some money provided someplace to upgrade the equipment. And they could also use part of the 700 band as well as other places, 150, 450 and the like. Mr. Shays. The FCC spectrum task force report, this was issued, I guess, in November 2002. One recommended objective was to define and set standards of interference. Why is it so hard to come to an agreement on definition of interference? And when does the FCC hope to quantify acceptable levels of interference in the safety band area? Mr. Thomas. You are talking about at 800 megahertz, Congressman? Mr. Shays. Yes. Mr. Thomas. All I can tell you is that is about the highest priority we have right now at the Commission. What makes it difficult is that interference is not a simple concept, it has several parameters that you have to juggle. One thing is if the public safety transmitter were at higher power, the effect of interference from other systems would be mitigated. So the first question is to what level do you protect public safety. The further you get away from the transmitter, the more susceptible it is to interference. So what diameter around the transmitter do you protect, that is the first issue. The second issue is when you provide protection for interference, you basically move costs. If you make that diameter small, the public safety community incurs costs. If you make that diameter large, the adjacent community, those who are adjacent to it, incur cost. And the question is what is the appropriate public interest decision, and we are in the process of analyzing this right now. Mr. Shays. OK, how long, how long, how long, how long? How long is it going to take? Mr. Thomas. Let us put it this way. I can't commit the Commission because, obviously, that is a matter of vote, but I think it is imminent. And when I say that, several months. Mr. Shays. Well, based on the FCC, several months would be imminent, with all due respect. You know, I have questions, but I want Mr. Janklow to ask his, so I am going to give him his 8 minutes. Mr. Janklow. I will try and be brief, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Shays. You ask the questions you need to ask. Mr. Janklow. I apologize for having left, but I had my weekly press conference I had to do back home with the folks on the telephone. But you, Mr. Muleta, and you, Mr. Thomas, on behalf of the people of my State I would like to thank you. The FCC has moved mountains to assist us to getting transferred 150 frequencies to put this State-wide trunk system together that we put together, and you and your team of people have really done a phenomenal job. As a matter of fact, in order to get 150 frequencies, we went out in the public spectrum and bought them, and have had to have them transferred, bought them in other States, neighboring States, and used a little bit of subterfuge with some of the auctions working through people in Texas, because we weren't a qualified bidder in time, so we had to find a qualified bidder to get ourselves frequencies. We need to fix by legislation these problems that you are being asked about, don't you agree? Don't you gentlemen agree? You can just say yes or no. Mr. Muleta. Well, I think in general any issues, you know, where we have to sort of balance interest, having the legislators participate brings a greater focus on it. Mr. Janklow. Let me give you an example briefly. I can remember during the invasion of Grenada. Afterwards, there was a major in the 101st Airborne Division that received the bronze star. What he earned the bronze star for was he was trying to call in an air strike on a building, and he, in the Army, couldn't reach the Air Force airplanes. So he went to a pay telephone, used his AT&T credit card, called the 82nd Airborne Division headquarters in North Carolina, they patched him into the Pentagon, which patched him into a communications system, which patched him into the Air Force airplanes. Mr. Shays. I am going to interrupt the gentleman. We know the system is bad. We just need to get some answers right now. Mr. Janklow. But the military fixed it. Now, the chairman asked you how long is it going to take to fix it. Would it be fixed faster if legislation was passed to set out the standards of getting this done? You are shaking your head yes, Dr. Boyd. Mr. Thomas. I would say no, and for a very simple reason. You have to know how to fix it to pass the legislation to do it, Congressman. Mr. Janklow. And can you tell us what it is so we can pass the legislation? Mr. Thomas. Well, I wish I can. And that is the reason this is taking that long. This is an extremely complex issue, and it is not easy. Mr. Janklow. So what you are telling me is, sir, if I understand you, we are doing the best we can do, and let us just hang in there and keep plugging forward. Mr. Thomas. No, I am not saying that, Congressman. What I am saying is it is an extremely complex, technical problem. Mr. Janklow. Excuse me. Dr. Boyd, you were shaking your head yes. Do you think we need legislation? Dr. Boyd. Obviously, this is an issue that I think Congress is going to have to resolve at some point. I don't think we are in a position to challenge the technical details. I will tell you that the public safety community is very, very anxious to be able to occupy that spectrum. Mr. Janklow. You have various Federal agencies that you are involved with in SAFECOM. Is the Agriculture Department part of this? Is the Interior Department part of it? Dr. Boyd. Yes, they are. Mr. Janklow. So, then, when the Ag Department can't use any radios except the 150 band for fires, no matter where they go, that is part of the SAFECOM plan? That is acceptable to SAFECOM? And you continue to allow them to be funded that way? Dr. Boyd. Let me explain what SAFECOM is trying to do with this. The answer to that is that because there are 10 bands currently existing, and because there are very large investments in State and local agencies in these things, we know that we can't scrap that investment; it is just too much, it is too expensive. The local folks can't afford to undo those things. So what we are trying to do in SAFECOM is to find what is the best way for us to make those things work together in the near and probably intermediate term as we migrate toward what we hope is a genuine interoperability solution. And I will tell you that the public safety community sees 700 megahertz as part of that longer term approach. Mr. Janklow. OK, but 700 won't work everyplace. Dr. Boyd. Correct. Mr. Janklow. There are places, remote areas of America, most rural States can't put up enough towers to accommodate 700, so they have to get in the lower frequencies. Mr. Shays. I am going to have to interrupt. Dr. Boyd. We have been very careful to make clear, when we talk about this, we are not talking about public safety giving up any of its existing spectrum. There are different characteristics in different bands. Mr. Janklow. Mr. Chairman, I understand. We will quit. Mr. Shays. Thank you very much. Let me just say that it is a little frustrating for all of us at the moment, because I think we could go on a good bit longer. This is a hearing about spectrums and standards, and it seems to me standards should be driving the issues of spectrum, and the problem, I think, is we have not really come to grips with the whole issue of standards; what do people need, where do they need it, why do they need it. And so we are kind of, in a way, wrestling with how we make some very tough decisions that impact people commercially and so on, and there are obviously significant tradeoffs. But, in the end, we need, ultimately, the Department of Homeland Security to set general standards on a whole host of issues, not just dealing with communication, and we need that done more quickly than I think it is happening, and I think folks there know it. I have a standard that says don't ever get the staff mad at you. Maybe that is a rule. But we have a few minutes more, and I would like the professional staff to ask one or two questions. We will drop dead at 15 after, and I am going to herd folks like cats out of this place, because I have to clear it out in order to make sure we get ready for the committee. Grace, you have the floor. Ms. Washbourne. My name is Grace Washbourne. I am a professional staff member at the full committee; I work for Chairman Tom Davis. Dr. Boyd, I just wanted to ask you one question. I noticed on October 20th SAFECOM or DHS sent out a pre-solicitation notice asking for input from qualified vendors in the academic research community regarding technology concepts and existing under development products or services. Can you tell me a little bit about what you hope to get from that notice and some of your deadlines and the planning, what you are going to do and when you might have a list of equipment that you approve for use across this country? Dr. Boyd. One of the first things that we want to be able to do is to find out what technologies actually exist; what is it that the developers or vendors claim these technologies can do. And there is no central place you can go to. In fact, as the public safety community will tell you, one of their problems is finding out what is there and what can it do. So as a first part of our effort, we are trying to find out what is it that everybody out there thinks really can address this problem. We get a number of offerings that, once we look at them, we find really don't fit in this arena because they don't fully understand this arena. So part of the RFI is to try to get that information; what do people think is out there, what does it actually do, and what do we need to look more closely at as possible either present or near term or more advanced solutions or ways to use technology to help with interoperability, to help us solve the problem. So that is a fundamental part of what we do, because we think there are two things we need to develop before we can make the standards process move properly. One is to understand what there is and what can be done; and the second none is to make sure, and this is where the Statement of Requirements is important, that we understand exactly what interoperability is that the different elements of the community need for what purpose, how much, when, what circumstances, so that we can then define as quickly as we are able serious standards that will begin to address those issues. Ms. Washbourne. Do you have a timetable set for this? I guess I am sure there is a lot of people out there who want to buy this equipment right now with the SAFECOM approval on it. Do you have in your milestones a deadline? Dr. Boyd. We have a series of milestones. The first set is the RFI came out about 2 weeks ago, and the closing date, as I recall, is about November 13th or 14th. The Statement of Requirements, we are going to process the draft today. Our goal is to have that completed not later than the end of this calendar year and everybody on board for that. That then becomes part of the standards process and will become the next phase of what our technology development material is, and we hope at that point to be able to go back out publicly. And in fairness I need to tell you this is a goal, this is what we really hope to get; I won't promise we may not have to slip it, because we are working with 44,000 different activities here. Our goal is to try to have the next element of that, looking for specific things that we can actually do some testing and evaluation on around the end of January. Ms. Washbourne. Thank you, sir. Mr. Shays. Let me conclude my part by saying it is very clear to me the following. The standards need to be set whether or not we can meet the standards, whether or not it is economically feasible, because we need to know what the target is, and then we need to decide whether we can meet it and what are all the restraints in dealing with that. So I just want to emphasize again what are the standards of communication within a community, what are the standards that need to be set among communities, among States, and then say, well, we can meet it if we do the following, and then we say, well, it is just not feasible. We then have to know, well, we are not going to be able to meet the standard in this part of the country or in this area, we simply can't do it for the following reasons. But then we can have kind of an honest dialog. And I think that is kind of how I want to summarize my sense of this hearing. I am happy to have any of you, in the next minute, make any statement that needs to be on the record. Is there anything, Ms. Evans, that needs to be put on the record before we adjourn? OK, noting that there is none that has to be, I am sorry we kind of rushed you at the end. And to our audience, thank you for your cooperation, but we are going to have Members who are going to start to come in the next 5 minutes for a committee meeting, so this hearing will be adjourned, and I ask you graciously to leave. [Whereupon, at 1:15 p.m., the subcommittees were adjourned, to reconvene at the call of their respective Chairs.] [The prepared statements of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney, Hon. 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