After gathering research on other states’ communication interoperability planning efforts, create a state profile to capture your state’s unique characteristics, opportunities, and challenges. This research should include extensive details about the geographic breakdown of a state by county (or equivalent), rural/urban, and by discipline.
In addition, become familiar with the state governmental system (structure and function) and how the local government system rolls up to the state level. This research will raise awareness of budgetary flows, key political players/allies, and how to logically separate the state into geographic regions when determining focus group locations.
The state profile will include information such as:
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Public safety demographics,
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Topography (i.e. description of the region’s natural features),
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Geography (regional organization of public safety communities),
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Metropolitan areas, counties, state, and local government breakdown,
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Communication technology systems (statewide and regional),
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Current and past communications interoperability efforts and the leaders involved in those efforts, and
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Organization of state and local government.
Please see Appendix D for a state profile template.
More detail may be added to the template; the categories suggested are a direct result of the information gathered throughout Virginia’s communications interoperability planning process. Below are a few lessons learned in Virginia that led to the development of the state profile template.
Lesson Learned: Extensive knowledge of the state (i.e. geography, structure of government at the local level) allows for a more complete understanding of the challenges and privileges first responder communities face during day-to-day and major disaster scenarios.
Early focus group interviews highlighted the importance of understanding the challenges faced by different regions in the state as well as privileges enjoyed by others. Improving interoperable communications involves a focus on people, process, and technology. This being said, expanding zones of interoperability from an urban region to a more rural one involves not only access to technology, but also a willingness across groups to collaborate and work as part of a larger whole.
Lesson Learned: Breaking the state into regions similar to the first responder agencies’ geographic breakdown avoids confusion when determining how to recruit participants from each agency for the focus group interviews.
During Virginia’s planning process, it became apparent that almost every discipline approached the geographic breakdown of Virginia differently. Following an existing regional structure that is familiar to all, and adopted or endorsed by the governor, benefits the collaborative process – participants can clearly understand the region in which they are assigned and respond accordingly.
**Note: The Virginia Project Team discouraged attendees from participating outside their region to preserve the validity of the data from each regional focus group.
Lesson Learned: Determining current statewide and regional communication systems in place early in the planning process allows you to be familiar with systems capabilities and challenges that may arise during the focus group interviews.
Virginia placed a significant amount of emphasis on understanding the current technology available in the Commonwealth. At the state level, discussions around solving the communications interoperability problem seemed to originate with the availability and use of technology. The interoperability coordinator should research and obtain information on existing technology initiatives and share this information with the public safety community and key stakeholders involved in the process. This can facilitate discussion around the process and resource factors that may contribute to the current ability or inability to communicate data effectively and efficiently in real time.
Point of Interest: Virginia’s unique geographic characteristics included: military stations (Navy, Coast Guard), coastal waterways, international airports, mountainous terrain, and close proximity to the nation’s capital.