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Chicomm Blog

8 Views on the Consolidation of Public Safety Answering Points

Posted by Jill McNamara on Thursday, February 28, 2013

IMG 0077 Everything You Need to Consider About Consolidating PSAPs

     A few weeks ago I posed the question 'What are your thoughts on the consolidation of PSAPs?' to members of the 'Public Safety Professionals' group on Linkedin (to view/join the group you must have a LinkedIn account). In return I got some very valuable input from members who were scattered all over the country. The feedback was as diverse as the many different cities it came from. I've condensed and summarized an assortment of the answers for you to view below that highlight some benefits and struggles that must be considered in the case that your region, county, or city wants to consolidate public safety answering points (PSAPs).

 +It's about more than just the price tag. In some cases consolidation has been shown to be a cost effective solution to staffing woes and budgetary issues while in others agencies have avoided it based on the price of new integration and upgrades. From a cost and coverage standpoint, it certainly works when the agencies are in the same area with overlapping coverage and mutual aid for coordinating back-up and support, but cost saving should not be the prime driver. Consider what degree of consolidation you want to accomplish. If it is full operational integration you will likely find that the initial costs are quite high but you have to consider the cost savings you'll be achieving in the long-term, too. Instead think of it 'future cost avoidance'. -Bruce Day (Calgary, Canada)

-(Geography) Size matters. PSAPs come in all shapes and sizes, each ranging in the amount of calls it receives per day to the size of the area it provides coverage for. Regional consolidation could be bad in some cases since it is extremely beneficial for call-takers and dispatchers to know the area they’re covering and to know it well. If dispatchers aren’t familiar with the area, they are prone to making more errors such as sending units to ‘different’ locations that are actually the same place. -Jeff Thau (Las Vegas, NV)

+Upgrade costs become feasible. "PSAPs are complex operations that have evolved to become a distinct discipline with performance requirements that require organizational resources that simply cannot be done without an adequate resource level," says Bob Oenning of Seattle, WA. When you take into consideration the upgrades in technology and equipment that may be required, the prices can be frightening to an agency on its own. The ability to leverage equipment purchases and infrastructure technology is much easier to achieve across multiple agencies, especially when it presents opportunities for grant monies to be awarded. 

+/-Culture clash. Consolidation may lead to clashing within the work environment as a number of employees may not accept the change. When you bring dispatchers under one roof who previously worked for different departments/agencies, they have different ways of working, including the different hardware, software and equipment they have experience using. This could potentially lead to resistance over “this is the way we’ve always done it” complaints. It’s up to management to demonstrate that this collaborative approach poses a great opportunity for dispatchers to learn from each other to develop new best practices for the PSAP. -Gina George (Columbus, OH)

+/- Don't underestimate the importance of planning. Prepare for hurdles. Beyond a clash of the call takers in a PSAP, consolidation without proper implementation plans could pose technological difficulties and holes in your staff. Here are some examples:

"The advent of new IP based networks and distributed processing will allow dispatch centers to stay further apart however, every time a 9-1-1 call gets transferred the potential for delay and mishandling increases." -Joe Blaschka Jr. (Seattle, WA)

"Consolidation is not always the big money saver politicians think - unless the small dispatch center workers do nothing but answer the phone and dispatch. Most perform a multitude of other jobs that someone will still have to do after consolidation." -John Ellison (Birmingham, AL)

"I was a dispatcher during a consolidation in the county where I was working. From an end-user standpoint, the implementation was a disaster. The agencies involved thought they could reduce the total number of dispatchers, but after a year in which over half the staff resigned, they performed a "work study" and found that 36 personnel would be minimum staffing instead of the 24 budgeted. Everyone was burning out." -Janet Smith (Portland, OR) 

+/-Remember redundancy. An effective consolidation would have to also include a well-thought out plan for disaster recovery and disaster continuity. In a situation with 3 neighboring PSAPs and all each serving as a back-up for the other two, when any PSAP individually fails, the work is picked up without loss by one of the others. -William Moulder (Des Moines, IA)

+Thorough training and combined expertise is crucial. Overall consolidation is a good thing if the consolidated center's staff has been trained well and treats all agencies fairly. "On the technology front it is imperative that a PSAP have a team that understands the radio, telecommunications and computer systems necessary to support operations. That includes functions such as internet and system security that cannot be ignored. Add to that mix the increasing need for GIS expertise, related not only to the movement from addressed based location but also to the use of map based resource management tools to provide assistance to responding units, and it becomes imperative that the 9-1-1 industry embrace the concept of larger PSAPs." -Bob Oenning, ENP (Seattle, WA)

+ Increased effectiveness. "As long as there are lines on a map, boundaries will exist. As long as boundaries exist, there will be a jurisdictional demarcation point. In the past, many have looked at consolidation as giving up their jurisdictional control, but in reality it is simply a flattening and collapse of the network redundancies. Not that public safety should not be redundant, it just does not need to be duplicative in every sense of the word. Single points of failure need to be eliminated, policy and inter working agreements must be vetted, and then the excess infrastructure can be minimized. The concept is not new to public safety, it's just applicable to larger PSAPs now."-Mark Fletcher, Avaya (New York City, NY)

 As with almost any question like this, there is no one answer that works for everyone. Each area faces different problems, so each area must study all aspects of the issue to determine if consolidation is a feasible option. Agencies should keep in mind that the decision should be made based on what serves the public the best and not the needs of the individual departments. Now tell me what you think...did I leave out any vital part that needs reviewing for this process? Leave your thoughts in the comment box below!

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Jill MThis article was posted by Jill McNamara, Internet Marketing Coordinator at Chicago Communications. Jill has written all of the Meet Our Techs & Employee Spotlight articles for ChiComm's blog and continues to seek opportunities for articles relating to the wireless communications industry. If you'd like to submit a suggestion for JillContact Us!