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AWARDS & RECOGNITION

2004 Awards: Communications Infrastructure

WINNER: Virginia
Wireless E-911 Deployment Project

Left to Right: Dorothy Spears-Dean, Terry Mayo and Steve Marzolf

Public safety is one of the most important services provided by government. State and local governments must ensure that an emergency communications system is available that provides an efficient and effective method for its citizens to contact the public safety responders. This is customarily provided through the provision of an enhanced 9-1-1 (E-911) system. In addition to providing an expeditious means of contacting a public safety agency, an E-911 system provides valuable information about the location of the caller to speed the processing of the call. But the lack of ubiquitous service and new technologies that did not interface with the traditional 9-1-1 network threatened to undermine the 9-1-1 service citizens had grown to expect. One such new technology was wireless telephone service. Because of the mobile nature of the service, no location information was provided about the callers, which means they were harder to locate. As a result, wireless 9-1-1 calls took much longer to process. Facing a rapidly increasing call load from wireless (as high as 50% of all 9-1-1 calls), Virginia needed to take action to respond to the changing needs of its citizenry.

"We are very proud of our success with the Wireless E-911 Deployment Project. In this era of increased homeland security awareness, it is very rewarding to work on a project that has such a direct impact on the lives and safety of our citizens. This project demonstrates the real value we can achieve when all levels of government and commercial partners work together to improve citizen services."
Lemuel C. Stewart, Jr., Chief Information Officer, Commonwealth of Virginia Though previously E-911 had always been a local service delivery issue, Virginia established the Wireless E-911 Deployment Project at the state level to tackle the issue. Managed by the Virginia Wireless E-911 Services Board and Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA), the project is a successful partnership between state and local government agencies and the wireless and landline telecommunications providers throughout the Commonwealth. The project involved the Board providing funding and technical assistance to 137 local 9-1-1 centers so that they could implement upgrades and new systems to be able to receive and process location information from wireless callers. The Board also provided funding to wireless telephone carriers for the cost to deploy their required technology. With assistance from the Board, each local 9-1-1 center worked with the wireless carriers and landline 9-1-1 service provider in their area to deploy the service. Since many small, rural localities lack the staff and expertise for this sometimes complicated effort, the Board was very concerned about creating a gap in service level between large urban and small rural localities. To prevent this, the Board provided project management assistance in the form of consultants to work with localities that needed it.

As a result of the project, wireless E-911 service is now available to almost 80% of all wireless subscribers within Virginia. Since landline E-911 is a prerequisite to wireless E-911, the project has also resulted in a reduction from 37 to 15 localities without landline E-911 and all are projected to be completed within the next 12 months. More simply stated, this project has resulted in a vast improvement in Virginia's emergency communications infrastructure.

RUNNER UP
Washington D.C.
The District of Columbia Wireless Networks Program

OTHER NOMINATIONS:
Click on the link to download program submission.

California
"Do Not Call" Correspondence Management System

Colorado
Multi-Use Network of Colorado

Florida
MyFloridaNet

Idaho
IDANET, Idaho's Broadband Digital Telecommunications Inititative

Kansas
accessKansas.org

Kentucky
connectkentucky Stimulates Economic Development

South Carolina
South Carolina Palmetto 800 Network

Wisconsin
Deaf/Hard of Hearing Program

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