3 Hughes Final Draft 64kbps
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Participants:
Ken Hughes
Regional Communications Planner
City of New Orleans, Louisiana

Ben Krauss
Public Safety Technology Specialist
SEARCH, The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics

Podcast length: 22:58

Ben Krauss:  The following is another conversation in our series of podcasts on lessons learned in best practices on projects funded through the COPS Technology grants. These podcasts are presented by SEARCH, The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics. This series is made possible through funding from the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, COPS. Today's topic is regional communications planning. Our guest is Ken Hughes, Regional Communications Planner with City of New Orleans. I'm Ben Krauss, a Public Safety Technology Specialist for SEARCH and moderator for this podcast.

Ken, we'd like to welcome you today. Before we get started on your regional interoperable communications planning, can you tell us a bit generally about voice and data communications that public safety responders have in New Orleans and surrounding parishes?

Ken Hughes:  Well, thank you for inviting me. It's a great honor. To give you some history of the region, the greater New Orleans region is actually comprised of four parishes, or counties, and in each of those basically there was originally a separate radio system. And as a result of Hurricane Katrina, we began to realize real quickly that we needed to be more interdependent upon one another. And basically, that was probably where the catalyst of the regional radio system that we currently use came about. As a result, again, of Hurricane Katrina, we have developed a 10-site system that has what we refer to as a “northern simulcast.” which is comprised of three sites, a “southern simulcast,” which is comprised of two sites, and five IR sites to cover basically the whole four-parish area. Right now, we probably have, I would say, about 73 agencies that are currently users on the system, and somewhere close to 9,000 subscribers. So, it has grown considerably from where we even originally thought it would possibly go to.

Ben:  The City of New Orleans and surrounding parishes constitute Louisiana's primary Urban Areas Security Initiative, or UASI region. Louisiana Region One, as it's known, was the first in the nation to develop a tactical interoperable communications plan, and following Hurricane Katrina, again the first to develop the more extensive regional interoperable communications plan. Ken, how did the regional plan come about?

Ken:  Well again, it's unfortunate to say, but in the aftermath of Katrina, you realize that if a natural disaster does occur, you cannot handle it on your own or in that you are very vulnerable. And once you've been laid bare, you begin to realize that you need to be dependent upon others, others in your own parish, other parishes that surround you. And basically that's what started this whole project. And what we've learned, hopefully other states, regions, or agencies could learn from our experience. It starts basically with more of a concept as far as a broader approach toward interoperability. In the region here, what we did that seemed to work very well is we tasked two individuals as the key players. And their mission was basically to go out there and meet with everybody. And a lot of those meetings initially started out just as venting sessions. We all go through that. I would say basically probably the first six, eight months probably was more venting than anything. But, slowly what happens is you direct that dialogue from problems to problem solutions, and in this case to a particular question: How do we all need to operate during an emergency?

And that really is the crux of how we came about with our regional interoperable communications plan. In hindsight it sounds simple, but I've got to tell you, you've got to have thick skin. You're going to get beat up a lot. There's going to be a lot of naysayers. But, if you stick with it, it can be accomplished.

Ben:  The region has strongly embraced shared systems to provide communications for its emergency response agencies. Ken, how did you develop a shared talk group plan for the region?

Ken:  Initially, I think the group looked at the regional system as public safety. In those terms, when I say public safety, back then I think we really thought it to be more of what you would consider to be police, fire, and EMS. And we sat down, obviously, with representatives from the various fire departments, the various EMS services, the various sheriff’s offices, PD departments and just started discussing talk groups, what we really wanted to share and who wanted to share what. For example, SWAT teams—basically all of the SWAT teams in this area have their own talk groups but they also have each other's talk groups. So, if there's an event, the neighboring SWAT team that may be coming in to help can actually be monitoring the situation as they're driving to the scene. So, they become more acutely aware of what's going on and of the situation before they even arrive at the scene.

Now, no one else has those talk groups. We don't share them among the whole of the agencies, but there are ones like this that are specific to certain groups or divisions within an agency. And then there are other ones that we share that are more departmentwide.

For example, all of the law enforcement agencies have the other law enforcement agencies' dispatch channels. So, you could just be driving through a neighboring parish and see something, and you can actually talk directly to the dispatchers so that you can expedite response times. Or if you happen to come across a serious incident, you're basically actually there initially and you're handling the situation, and the units that are responding, again, are aware of what's going on.

So, it's been an interesting learning curve. I would tell you that obviously five years later we're now stepping back and reassessing some of these share talk groups that we have, or the extent of share talk groups that we have.

We've now taken a little bit different approach, particularly with a lot of additional agencies now coming on. We have created a common way in so that, for example, universities, public works, other entities, basically have a common means to get to a dispatcher for assistance.

They're actually not listening to or capable of hearing the actual police dispatch channels. So, that's a little bit different approach, because what we realized real quickly is that we couldn't have everybody listening in on the police dispatch channel.

Another interesting thing that we've started is looking at some more regional talk groups that would be handled more for an incident. Basically, we would have a coordinated talk group that agencies would basically go to. We've done a lot with this.
Ben:  What have you learned over time as revisions have been needed?

Ken:  I think one of the things that we've learned at the time I was stating earlier was that we have more agencies now. You have schools, the universities, that are now in the system. The state supreme court, the security there has radios and access to the system. We have a lot of different entities now than what we originally started with five years ago. A lot of those entities we needed to find, we needed to curtail, basically, what they could have access to. Like I said, it's been a slow learning curve and it's been a little bit of a trial and error for us, but I think we've come out with a good solution that will work for all.

Ben:  Ken, starting with a tactical interoperable communications plan, Louisiana Region One was quick to adopt the National Incident Management System, NIMS, and its constructs for management of communications under the Incident Command System, ICS. How has your adoption of ICS shaped the regional talk group plan?

Ken:  Well, I would say obviously that you learn real quickly that basically the key to this is the three Cs—Command, Control, and Communications. Those are the three things that we have to basically establish any time you have an incident. Using that as our guide, we've slowly built up some regional talk groups that mimic the NIMS sections. So basically, we have talk groups that are now referred to as—the talk group names would be like "IC," Incident Command; "UC," Unified Command; OPS; LOGs; PLANs.

What happens is the incident could be handled within a given parish or within the region. We now have these talk groups that make sense, if you will, from a NIMS perspective. It reinforces that training and that learning of what you're trying to accomplish here and it gives us also a common thread now that is carried out throughout the region, but allows us all to communicate for a given incident. So, it's worked out pretty good for us.

Ben:  Continuing with a three Cs team, that you just referenced—Command, Control, and Communication. How do individuals fulfilling the ICS Communication Unit Leader role apply the plan during incidents?

Ken:  I would say basically we are looking at, I would say more of the COML role, but along with that, we're also looking at it more as a twotier system. The COML really would be engaged more in an incident that warrants more coordination with other agencies from outside of the region—Coast Guard, state agencies, federal agencies, or the adjunct of different systems; UHF system or something like that. That's really where I guess we see a little difference here within the region. So, you have a COML who basically, obviously is capable of all of those things, that's forced to handle all those requirements.

But, within the region, the system is probably very wellestablished, so what you're really looking for here is someone to be more familiar with the 205s. The ICS 205 forms, which are basically to establish your talk groups for a particular incident.
The 205 is a form that obviously we have become very dependent upon. It's important that we have dispatchers at the 9-1-1 centers who can quickly assess the situation, and reference some boilerplate ICS 205 templates that we've developed, and quickly put together a communications talk group plan that can then be incorporated into the incident plan itself.

So, we've actually worked more with our dispatchers and created what we'll just say is a 205 training class. What happens is from those training classes, we've built some boilerplate 205s.

Then what happens is the incident occurs, dispatchers basically know where the 205s are, they understand the 205s, they understand the regional talk groups, and they can quickly put together a plan.

So they don't really have to go outside the system. They don't have to understand a lot of the other dynamics that a COML person would have to understand. So that's an area where we see, I guess we'll say again, a twotier type system.
Ben:  Ken, you've recently been putting together a Regional Field Operations Guide or RFOG, what's the purpose of the RFOG and how does it differ from the Regional Interoperable Communications Plan?

Ken:  The communications plan has become rather large. It's 100-plus pages. It probably addresses most, if not all, issues and concerns, but it's not practical to carry around with you. Basically, we've been working to develop a Regional FOG, which is scoped to assist the agencies or the incident commanders [to] know what communication assets are available, be it talk groups, patching, gateways, radio caches or even just alternate means of communications, such as tier-two systems.

It's more focused, so that obviously agencies and/or incident commanders have a quick reference that they can use. And obviously taking the lead from the national FOG, we're going to make it basically the same pocket size so that it's something that can be managed and hopefully it becomes a useful tool.

Our intent is—obviously, once we fully developed the FOG—is to basically try to have some training classes, so that we have obviously, incident commanders, COML personnel, operations personnel, or command personnel familiar with this document and basically how to utilize it so that if they are ever in an incident they have something to draw upon.

We would probably try to do an initial training of just what it's all about. And then incorporate it into some of the other exercises that we are planning for in the region over the next several years. I think it would be very useful in table tops—that's really where I see the goal being as far as we do any training, be it table top or operational, or full functional exercise—basically to have a communications part of that exercise and see how well the various command personnel utilize that FOG document.

Ben:  Ken, Hurricane Katrina proved to be a harsh test of survivability of radio systems along the Gulf Coast. Louisiana Region 1 and statewide radio systems are being built out to survive similar conditions in the future. What is being done in the region to ensure survivability of the systems?

Ken:  During Katrina, obviously, the local telephone COs, or Central Offices, were under water. Therefore you had no Central Office; therefore you had no circuits. So without the circuits, bottom line is you had no radio system. Really, unfortunately, it was that simple. But, it has caused a lot of difficulty as far as how to build in the survivability so that we're never caught with this situation again.

And one of the things that we've done is we've designed a system so that we had hardware redundancy all the way through into the core routers. And we're in the process of building out a microwave system so that we also have redundant links or circuits coming in.

So we're in a position now where, from a hardware failure or from a link or circuit failure, the site can stay up. And that's really at the crux of the survivability of the system.

And we've realized that it's not a cheap proposition. You're probably going to have a lot of push back from a lot of the accounting personnel because you're going to be spending a lot of money in order to build in that survivability. But, it's really one of those things that's a necessity.

You almost have to have it these days in order to assure yourself that during an incident you're able to communicate. And obviously we've learned the hard way. Katrina basically, really ripped this region apart from a communications standpoint.
You had no idea what was going on down the block more or less, and in your neighboring parishes, or in the far reaches of your own parish. So, we've realized basically we can never be in that situation again.
So, we are leveraging a lot of the grant monies this region gets strictly to interoperability. It is our number one goal. We're still building it out five years later. And I would envision that basically if we're lucky—hopefully in another year—we will have our complete microwave ring in place so that we have survivability or what we hope to be a survivable system.
Ben:  Continuing with the theme of regional communications planning, Ken, what are the carry-away messages that you have that others can model?

Ken:  I would say, some of the things that obviously you need to be aware of is: 1) you've got to establish the dialog, that's first and paramount, 2) you've got to empower a team of individuals to develop a vision, a governance, and then a plan. And you've got to remember, obviously, the three Cs. At the end of the day, it's all about that command, control, and communication. And you have to have that obviously as a center plank of any plan that you put in place.

And finally I would say, the other two pieces that are critical are survivability and most importantly, is sustainability. Where all basically have the opportunities to get a lot of grant money to assist us building out systems. But, the sustainability of that is where basically a lot of agencies all of a sudden are going to realize there is a cost at the end of the day.

And as you design or build or implement, you have to be thinking about a permanent funding source to maintain your infrastructure. Because without that, we're all building today but we have no way to keep the system operational in the long term. And that's what we really need—that sustainability.

Ben:  Ken, I want to thank you for your time. We've used your models around the country for tentacle assistance work that we provided so, thank you. The application of those regional plans in extreme situations and actually being able to bring to bear the successes that you've seen to other practitioners around the country has been very helpful.
Ken:  Well, thank you very much and I enjoyed the opportunity.

Ben:  You've been listening to a SEARCH podcast on regional communications planning. We'd like to thank our guest Ken Hughes, Regional Communications Planner for New Orleans. This project was supported by cooperative agreement 2007-CKWXK002 with the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Points of view or opinions expressed in this podcast are those of guest and moderators and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
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