NEWS ROOM | Press Releases
For immediate release: February 6, 2003
Contact: Beth
Roszman
NASCIO Contributes to Public
Safety
Communications Interoperability Report
(Lexington, KY) - The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) is one of 18 national associations representing state and local elected, appointed and public safety officials that contributed to the final report of the National Task Force on Interoperability (NTFI). Released today, the report on critical public safety communications interoperability issues facing the nation includes recommendations for radio spectrum allocation, standards, funding, and coordination and collaboration among agencies and levels of government.
"State CIOs can play a key role in efforts to achieve interoperability and improve the public safety communications infrastructure at the local, state and national levels," said Otto Doll, chief information officer for South Dakota and NASCIO's representative on the task force. "State leadership is essential to the development of a coordinated approach to this issue and CIOs are uniquely positioned to develop an interoperability architecture that provides a roadmap for all to follow."
The NTFI report stresses the need for public officials at all levels of government to:
- understand the importance of interoperability;
- be able to effectively communicate the benefits of interoperability to the public;
- understand the political and institutional barriers with the public safety community that can impede interoperability;
- facilitate collaborative planning among local, state and federal agencies;
- encourage the development of flexible and open architectures and standards, and;
- support funding for public safety agencies that work to achieve interoperability within an agreed-upon plan.
The NTFI final report consists of three documents - a brochure designed to provide public officials with general information on interoperability, a more comprehensive guide intended to serve as a catalyst for public officials to develop collaborative solutions with their local, state and federal counterparts, and a supplemental resources publication that provides case studies and articles on recent interoperability efforts - available for download at http://www.agileprogram.org/ntfi/publications.html. Hard copies will be mailed to the state CIOs in the next several weeks.
NASCIO (http://www.nascio.org) represents the state chief information officers from the 50 states, six U.S. territories and the District of Columbia. Members include cabinet and senior level state officials responsible for information resource management. Other IT officials participate as associate members and private sector representatives may become corporate members. The mission of the association is to shape national IT policy through collaborative partnerships, information sharing and knowledge transfer across jurisdictional and functional boundaries.
In response to the success of the National Public Safety Wireless
Interoperability Forum in October of 2001, the National Institute of Justice,
Office of Science and Technology, funded the creation of the National Task Force
on Interoperability (NTFI) (http://www.agileprogram.org/ntfi) to foster the improvement
of cooperation among federal, state, and local government and public safety agencies
through the encouraged development and use of interoperable communications systems.
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For more information contact NASCIO Issues Coordinator
Jack Gallt at (859) 514-9187.
Association Management Resources, Inc. (AMR) provides NASCIO's executive staff. For more information about AMR visit http://www.amrinc.net.
