Subject: RE: [Ieprep] Public Safety?

From: "Ken Diliberto" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 09:18:37 -0600

The infrastructure already exists for public safety officers to communicate with their command centers.  How about between agencies?  A dispatcher could us IM for messaging between agencies.  They already do something like this between mobile units.

Ken

>>> "Gunn, Janet NE" <[email-masked]> 03/29/02 10:02AM >>>
Yes, IM would be easier to set up.  And it would work for someone at a desk,
or in a stationary vehicle, or a passenger in a moving vehicle.  But I don't
think it would work well for the police officer driving down the road, or a
fireman in a darkened building. Voice (radio) works better in those cases.

I am not actively promoting this as an approach, just brainstorming the
known problems that MIGHT be addressed by Internet functionality.

[snip]

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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 10:31:23 -0800

At 07:18 AM 3/29/2002, Ken Diliberto wrote:
>A dispatcher could us IM for messaging between agencies.  They already do 
>something like this between mobile units.

yes; are there specific requirements here that we need to comment on, or 
does IM work as is?

On September 11, AOL distributed Blackberry-based IM devices to critical 
people working in New York on a "just use it for now and we'll ask long 
term questions after we get the people out and this mess cleaned up" basis 
- one of many companies who did such laudable things. I don't know how many 
Blackberries were distributed, I just know that it happened. From what I'm 
told, this helped in field communications.

What I note is that there were no special accommodations made in that 
service for emergency use. It was simply used as-is by emergency workers. 
There was probably some additional delay in message forwarding due to load, 
but I haven't heard anyone say that the service was materially impaired by 
that. That being the case, unless someone can tell me about a serious 
problem that happened with it, my first cut suggests that this is a service 
that works fine as is.