One of the last conversations of the day involves the selection and prioritization of the state’s top three short term and long term initiatives for improving communications interoperability. Facilitation of this conversation includes ruthless prioritization techniques. The participants will have a hard time identifying the top three initiatives, but failing to prioritize will negatively impact the success of the planning process. Too many initiatives will overwhelm the state officials accountable for implementation and may dilute funding streams identified and/or secured to support communications initiatives. Collective agreement can build momentum toward driving a strategic plan that is tangible, realistic, and manageable.
Lesson Learned: Virginia’s strategic planning session yielded the following initiatives, which were later used to design a comprehensive, locally-driven statewide plan.
Top 3 identified key short term initiatives:
- Create a method to extract lessons learned from disaster exercises and actual incidents.
- Develop and distribute a set of public safety communications requirements, which include the federal interoperability grant guidance.
- Leverage existing resources and systems.
Top 3 identified key long term initiatives:
- Develop desired outcomes for interoperability based on stakeholder input and leverage earmarked funds to localities to achieve the outcomes.
- Create regional interoperability work groups that have direct representation on the state level interoperability working group.
- Establish information and outreach strategy to educate public safety responders, policy makers, and the public about interoperability in Virginia.
Please see Appendix AB for a Weblink to the strategic planning session report.
You should consider this the conclusion to the interview process; but more importantly, it is the beginning of the implementation phase.