- Kids can be 911 Heroes Too

Rodrigo, Lori and Tom receive the 911 Local Heroes Award

Most of us have probably called 911 at some point in our lives to report a crime or a car accident. We take it for granted that the call will be answered efficiently and help will arrive quickly.

We forget, however, that calling 911 is something we learn to do. Even adults will overwhelm 911 after a minor earthquake with “did you feel that” calls. Calling 911 is a skill to be taught, knowing when to call and when not to call, staying calm, relaying the proper information. 911 For Kids is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping kids know about 911 and also prepare for other disasters and emergency response.

I attended an inspiring event at the APCO 2012 Conference in Minneapolis this week, where 9 year old Rodrigo Sanchez Sosa was recognized as a “local 911 hero”. He called 911 when his 2 year old sister fell unconscious after a seizure. Dispatcher Lori Patrick and emergency medical dispatcher Tom Polzin took the call and guided him through helping his sister until an emergency medical team arrived.

Rodrigo, Lori and Tom were all recognized as “Local 911 Heroes” on Tuesday, August 21st, in a ceremony opened by Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and sponsored by AT&T. “Local 911 Heroes” is a program established in 1999 to recognize people, especially kids, who perform in an extraordinary manner using 911 when faced with an everyday crisis.  AT&T sponsors these “Local 911 Heroes” Awards all across the country.

(Read the rest of this post on my Digital Communities Blog).

- Why don’t Cops Use Smart Phones?

Responders’ Smart Phones – Click to see more

Every teenager – including some of us 50 and 60 year old teenagers – seems to have a smart phone these days.  I’m writing this on an airplane, and I just finished an intense, 20 minute “Angry Birds” session on my HTC Android smart phone (yes, it was in “airplane” mode!).   And I’m almost a Luddite when it comes to apps and smart phones.

But many people young and old commonly use their smart phones or tablet computers to do interesting, productive activities such as:

• listen to public safety two-way radio;
• take meeting notes using Evernote or One Note;
• watch episodes of TV series using Hulu;
• read books and newspapers;
• take photos or videos and text message them around the world.

Gee, some people even use their smart phones to actually make voice telephone calls!?

So why don’t cops and firefighters, emergency medical technicians and electrical lineworkers, public works and transportation department employees, and a whole other host of critical and important government workers use smart phones in their daily jobs?

Of course these public safety workers DO use smart phones. Often they use their PERSONAL smart phones to do some part of their job. But rarely do governments give their workers smart phones – other than BlackBerrys for email, that is – to officially do their jobs and become much more productive.  In fairness, that’s not because Mayors and County Executives and Governors are unsupportive, or government CFOs are enny-pinching.

We don’t give government workers these important tools for two basic reasons:

• The apps don’t exist;
• There is no guarantee of priority access to commercial cell phone networks.

In terms of the “apps”, most governments use a relatively small set of applications from a few vendors – there are records management systems, computer-aided dispatch systems, utility billing systems, work management systems, etc.  And many of the vendors of those systems only recently have built them to accept even web-browser access. The terms and conditions for our (government’s) use of such software explicitly says we’ll only use the software with vendor approved configurations, or the vendor won’t give us support.  And most vendors for these government-specific systems don’t make a version of their application which runs on a smart phone, whether it is a Windows Phone 7, Apple iPad or Iphone, or  Google Android.

Software companies:  Get on the stick and write smart phone apps for your software. ‘nuf said.

More importantly, government workers presently have to use commercial mobile networks for their smart phones. And on those networks, public safety and critical infrastructure workers have no priority. That means your teenager (even if she’s 50 years old) has the same priority as a cop or firefighter or electrical lineworker responding to a major incident or emergency.

Do you want that emergency medical technician responding to YOUR heart attack to have priority access – wirelessly and in real time – to your medical history, and to the emergency room doctors at the level 1 trauma center, and to a video conference with your cardiologist?  Of course you  do!

During a robbery, when you or your employees are being held up at gunpoint, don’t you want the responding cops to be able to see the video of  your store – including the images of the perpetrators, in real time as they respond?  And have passers-by snapping photos and video of the perps to send to 911 centers using next generation 911 technologies?  Of course you do!

When your electrical power is out, or your water is interrupted, don’t you want that utility worker to have access to all the diagrams and network configurations so they can accurately pinpoint where the outage is and rapidly fix it?  Well, of course you do.

If, all of a sudden, a kid in your child’s high school goes crazy and brings a gun to that school, taking teachers and students hostage, don’t you want responding cops and firefighters to have access to the video cameras with interior views of the school, and to the school’s building plan showing all the exits, and maybe even to the GPS on the cell phone used by the kid with the gun so they can see his (they are all boys, alas) exact position in the school? Obviously we do.

But the blunt fact of the matter is this:  At the same time you are having a heart attack, or your business is being robbed, or your electricity fails, or a school lockdown occurs - everyone who has a cell phone within a mile of the incident may be texting and calling and tweeting and sending photographs to their loved ones, and the commercial cellular networks will be overloaded.

That’s why we don’t give cops and firefighters smart phones.  Because – besides the fact that safe, secure, apps don’t exist – when responders most need their smart phones, the cell phone networks will be overloaded and fail them.

Is there a way out of this dilemma?  “Of course there is!”

Several bills are pending in Congress today which would allocate wireless spectrum for priority use by police, firefighters, emergency medical techs – and also by electrical lineworkers, public works employees and transportation workers .  Those same bills would auction other spectrum for use by carriers, producing almost $26 billion in revenue to both reduce the federal government deficit and to build a nationwide public safety network which responders could use – with priority over all other users and uses.

Then those first and second responders could use smart phone applications every day, confident that the network will be available, no matter what nearby teenagers are doing.

But, like so much else in this year of 2011, Congress is in deadlock. Some brave Senators and Representatives such as Jay Rockefeller
and Kay Bailey Hutchison (with Senate Bill S.911) and Peter King and Maria Cantwell and Dave Reichert do step up to the plate, led by Vice President Joe Biden.  They all support creation of a nationwide public safety wireless broadband network.   At the same time, many others in Congress stall and block the work, while people needlessly are hurt or die.

Why don’t cops and firefighters use smart phones?  Because some in Congress would rather play politics, argue endlessly, and pinch funding than give our responders the tools they need to save lives and protect property every day, as well as during future disasters.

With the 10th anniversary of the September 11th World Trade Center disaster just a month away, does this dithering make sense?   Of course it doesn’t.

- S.911: Profiles in Courage

Vice President Joe Biden leading the charge

It is fascinating how words and phrases take on difference nuances of meaning depending upon their context. I guess that’s why it is so hard for computers (IBM’s Watson notwithstanding) to understand and properly interpret human speech or, in many cases, writing. Take “911″. In most contexts and for most people, that would be the police/fire emergency number . The number you’d call to get help with a heart attack or a burglary-in-progress or a lost child.

But 9/11 refers to that infamous day when terrorist Osama bin Laden’s gang of terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City.

Now, today, 911 has a new meaning. S.911 is the United States Senate bill sponsored by Senators Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, which allocates additional spectrum and $11.75 billion in funding to build a nationwide interoperable public safety wireless broadband network.

That bill passed out of the Senate Commerce Committee on a vote of 21 to 4 on June 8th.

On June 16th, Vice President Joe Biden and public safety officials from cities and states across the country celebrated this huge step forward on a long road toward building that network. Biden, Attorney General Eric Holder, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and many others called upon the full Senate and House to pass the bill, so the President could sign it this year.

You don’t usually think of Senators as “courageous”, but we have twenty-one really courageous Senators on that Commerce Committee (and a courageous former senator in Vice President Biden).

They faced (and continue to face) a wide variety of pressures:

• The continuing pain of the Federal budget deficit, which threatens to suck away the almost $12 billion allocated in this bill for public safety.
• The pressure from some wireless telecommunications companies, who would rather see that spectrum given to them to build more consumer networks;
• The Federal debt ceiling – which needs to be raised for the economic health of the nation – but many in Congress are holding that rise hostage to force budget cuts;
• A lack of trust by some in the ability of state and local governments, who some believe cannot be trusted to continue to build out the network. This is ironic, because when anyone telephones 911, it is local police, firefighters and emergency medical technicians who respond.  Furthermore, eight local governments are already building these networks under waivers from the FCC;
• A need by electric and water utilities, transportation agencies, and other critical infrastructure providers for spectrum to build their own interoperable networks so they can respond to hurricanes, tornadoes, windstorms and earthquakes too – luckily, if S.911 passes Congress, it would modify Federal law and allow these utilities to share the public safety network and spectrum;
• Oh, did I mention the Federal budget deficit as an as an excuse to NOT giving cops and firefighters and local governments the network they need to keep us all safe?

These are all poor reasons used to justify voting “no” on S.911. Reasons to justify inaction. Reasons to put the safety of 300 million Americans aside.

The campaign to pass S.911 – to fund and build this vital network – is significantly helped by the leadership of President Obama  and Vice-President Biden, who allocated the money in their 2012 budget. The Vice-President is especially active leading the charge to build this nationwide public safety wireless broadband network.  The Administration just issued a report describing the urgent need.

Yes, there is a lot of courage on that Senate Commerce Committee, and hopefully the courage is infectious and spreads to at least the 51 Senators and 217 members of the House needed to pass the legislation.

Because 9/11 is looming again.

9/11/11.

The 10th Anniversary of the terrorism at New York City’s World Trade Center. Where hundreds of firefighters and police officers lost their lives because their radio communications networks didn’t get them the order to evacuate the buildings which were about to collapse.

Will the rest of Congress have the courage to act?

- Citywatch

This past Tuesday night, there were 1,219 parties in the street all around Seattle. Kids, hot dogs, drinks, cops and firefighters and neighbors everywhere. It was part of the National Night Out. And it was, perhaps, one of the last in Seattle, as the City may cut the jobs of six or seven crime coordinators responsible for the Blockwatch program.

Blockwatch programs are a widespread form of civic engagement. And they’ve morphed over the years adopting technology to become more effective. Now the combination of the Great Recession, the Great Budget Crisis and the explosion of social media such as Facebook, they are likely to morph again into a new and cool form of civic engagement, if we can maintain the thin blue line of civilians who run the programs.

Blockwatches, often called neighborhood watches, are a staple of many communities across the United States. I talked to Terrie Johnston, a crime prevention coordinator and 30 year employee in the Seattle Police Department, and she gave me some history of Blockwatches in the Seattle PD. This history is typical of Blockwatches across the nation and Canada.

Often a Blockwatch starts around a particular incident in a neighborhood. Sometimes it is a series of burglaries, or perhaps a drive-by shooting, or an incident near a school. One or more people in a neighborhood get concerned enough to call the local police precinct or Seattle Crime Prevention. The crime prevention coordinator sets up a meeting with the neighbors, discusses the incident and related crimes, and gives the neighbors hints, tips and advice on how to be watchful and protect each other.

Amazingly, Terrie says, it is young families with children who often initiate the Blockwatch or get involved to protect their families. I say “amazingly” because it is this demographic – young people who have kids and very busy lives, often with two jobs – who are hard to get involved in public meetings with City officials. Not so with the Blockwatch!

From this beginning, Blockwatches progress in a variety of ways. Many become social groups as well as crime prevention tools. In my neighborhood we have an e-mail list, we get together for a Christmas party, we even watched the Presidential debates of 2008.
In most Seattle neighborhoods, the Blockwatches also organize themselves into a SNAP (Seattle Neighborhoods Actively Prepare) team. Seattle will have a major earthquake in the future. Such a quake – perhaps at 8 or even 9 on the Richter scale – will mean many neighborhoods may be isolated and have to survive on their own for many days. Neighbors need caches of food and water, need to know first aid and light search and rescue. Neighbors need to help each other.

There are probably a thousand active blockwatches in Seattle, but the Seattle Police crime coordinators have a list of 4000 blockwatch contacts.
The crime coordinators actively stay in touch with their Blockwatch contacts. Originally this contact was by conducting meetings and handing out fliers or maps of recent crimes. While they still attend meetings, make phone calls and hand out paper, the coordinators have also adapted technology. By far the most common method of contact now is e-mail, and they’ll email hints and tips or alerts to their Blockwatch Captains and contacts.

The most active Captains themselves will suggest alerts and updates – for example alerting neighbors to a Memorial Day observance at a military cemetery which included gunshots – a 21 gun salute. Every precinct has a blog and web page for crime prevention.

Just within the last year the City of Seattle and Seattle Police have developed a whole series of new online tools to improve the effectiveness of crime prevention. There’s now an online tool which allows residents to map almost all the crimes in their neighborhood (domestic violence and a few others are excluded). The map also allows people to actually download and view the actual redacted police report for many of these crimes. Just last week mapping of Police 911 calls debuted on the website, added to the mapping of Seattle Fire 911 calls which has been available for 6 years or more. Also last week a new crime reporting function was added to the Seattle.gov web, so residents can file reports online for minor crimes such as thefts under $500 or car prowls or similar incidents where they don’t need to talk to a police officer.

Seattle departments – including Police, Fire and others, have adapted twitter to rapidly inform residents of incidents as they occur. The Seattle website also includes a series of fifteen interlinked blogs called CityLink. On the Police blog, called spdblotter.seattle.gov, more detail is given on crimes and other incidents which the Police also tweet .

There are many organizations which operate in every neighborhood. Besides Blockwatches, there are district councils, and arts organizations and community development groups, not to mention an active set of privately operated neighborhood blogs which have, in many ways, taken over the functions formerly performed by community newspapers. The City has an index of all these resources on its website, Neighborhoods on the Net.

I think Blockwatches may morph in two ways in the future – first expanding their function and also changing their method of communication to use social media.

In terms of function, traditionally some Blockwatches have morphed from crime prevention to community engagement. They actively advocate for cleaning up derelict properties, eliminating graffiti, calming traffic (adding speed bumps or traffic circles) and of course caring for each other, e.g. checking in on the elderly or disabled.

But the City hasn’t always adopted the power of the Blockwatch movement for other forms of civic engagement. Many City departments go to neighborhoods and hold public meetings to gain input on zoning changes or neighborhood plan updates or changing the configuration of an arterial street to add turning lanes or bike lanes. But those meetings tend to be “one shot” deals or tend to use or create new e-mailing lists. Rarely do the other departments take advantage of the existing power of the organized Blockwatches. And often the City doesn’t actually give feedback to neighborhoods about how their input was used.

In these days of constrained resources, Blockwatches can and should morph from just crime prevention, to community involvement groups – “Citywatches”.

To do this, municipal governments need to find ways to adapt social media to Blockwatches and community engagement.

Facebook has taken the Internet by storm, with over half-a-billion users. It seems to be a natural new way for Blockwatches to post news, communicate and interact both internally, with other Blockwatches and with police departments and other City functions.

But Facebook as a company doesn’t “play nice” with government or other companies, in that it is hard for governments to save Facebook entries and comments, thereby complying with State records retention laws and FOIA laws. Furthermore, it is hard – if not impossible – to create a set of “blockwatch neighbors” separate and distinct from other groups and friends, and keep that group private, only sharing selected updates with other groups or the municipal government.

Facebook’s great advantage for this purpose is that so many people use it – they don’t have to learn or adopt some new tool. Other social media tools also hold promise for the future of Blockwatches and Citywatches. These include, perhaps, Wiki’s for sharing information about neighborhoods, Ideascale or Uservoice tools such as Ideas For Seattle to generate and rank ideas on certain topics, and Twitter.

A common problem – especially with Twitter and Blogs and Facebook – is easily capturing and harvesting comments or tweets so the Blockwatch captain or appropriate City department can adequately respond. Smartphone applications are already used by governments for JAPA (just another pothole application) feedback, but haven’t been widely used in public meetings, e.g. making comments and what is being said or voting during public meetings, which can improve the level of involvement among the audience. Certainly many governments are afraid of being overwhelmed by input which underscores the need for tools or software to harvest and consolidate responses.

Seattle has asked Code for America, the new non-profit founded by Tim O’Reilly, for help in developing a solution to improving Blockwatches via such social media tools, and thereby helping them to evolve into new platforms for civic action and engagement. With some luck, such a solution can be developed and used by many local governments across the nation.

Finally, I will admit and lament that personal interaction among neighbors has declined. The many time pressures on families mean we have less time to simply talk to our neighbors. But all these new smartphone, social media, technology tools can help improve that interaction.
Fundamentally, however they only supplement the face-to-face Blockwatch meeting which builds community and trust, so neighbors truly care about and watch out for each other.

- A Peek at the National Broadband Plan

Broadband Wireless

On January 26th Admiral Jamie Barnett of the FCC spoke about the National Broadband Plan, which is now due out on March 17^th (and I understand New York City, Boston and other cities with large Irish-American populations plan to have parades in honor of the plan that day, too!)

As a CTO, I’m so immersed in technology that I’m not sure “broadband” means anything to the average American (if an “average” American exists).   Certainly most Americans are now at least aware of the Internet and use technology in their lives, even if that tech is nothing more than a cell phone or ATM.   But all you have to do is watch the security lines at any airport and see all the laptops and luggables and cell phones and DVD players and other associated smart lumps of plastic dumped on the scanner lines to know that tech is ubiquitous in most people’s lives.

A significant fraction of people know about broadband and what it means.   In Seattle, some 84% of homes have an Internet connection, 75% have something faster than dial-up and 88% have a computer at home.  Of course Seattle’s got a reputation as a city of high tech folks (an image Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and I work hard to polish).   But even nationwide 79% of homes have an Internet connection and 63% are faster than dial-up.  The source for these stats is here.  

These are numbers are hard to fathom when one considers the web didn’t exist 20 years ago,  and most people probably thought “Internet” had something to do with basketball, volleyball, tennis or another “net-centric” sport.

Admiral Barnett heads the Homeland Security and Public Safety Bureau at the FCC.   He’s charged with making wireless spectrum available to government in general and specifically to the law enforcement, firefighting and emergency medical agencies who keep the public safe.   He spoke at the Winter Summit of Association of Public Safety Communications Officials on January 26th, and gave us a glimpse of what the National Broadband Plan will contain. 

Admiral Barnett’s remarks centered on wireless spectrum for use by first responders.  About 10 Megahertz is available nationwide for public safety, but the license for that is held by a  single nationwide organization.     Yet most police, fire and emergency medical agencies are operated by cities and counties.    Given this paradoxical situation, 17 states and cities have requested waivers from the FCC to use that spectrum in their local areas to immediately create networks for their use.  

And why is the spectrum required?   These new wireless networks hold promise that cops in police vehicles can see videos of crimes in progress as they race to crime scenes, or rapidly access building plans, images and video.  Have a peek at a  report prepared by PTI and APCO here for more uses.  

According to Admiral Barnett, those waivers may be granted later this year so we can get started building the network.  The FCC is very interested in public-private partnerships to build the networks because many jurisdictions don’t have funds to construct such networks for themselves.  Luckily, commercial cell phone carriers like Verizon and AT&T, and companies like Motorola and Alcatel-Lucent have signed on in support of this plan, and are developing new networks including  LTE (long term evolution) for not only their own networks but also for public safety use.   This means public safety agencies could use a network built and funded by taxpayers (more resilient, better priority, less costly) for most of their work, but could roam only the commercial carriers’ networks when necessary.   This is in stark contrast to today’s networks, where police/fire radios are incompatible with the cell phone networks.  The best of both worlds!

It looks like the FCC will encourage these partnerships in its plan. 

The FCC also knows that funding will be required to construct these networks.   Admiral Barnett understands funding is required not just to build the networks, but to operate them.  Besides public-private partnerships, the FCC is floating the idea of an Emergency Response Interoperability Center (ERIC) to pushing forward on a national public safety wireless network.  We’ll hear more about this on February 10^th.

Finally, Barnett said  “next generation 911” will also be recognized in the national broadband plan.   Right now, the only way to get information to a 911 center is to … well … telephone 911!    But many citizens’ cell phones have the capability to do text messages, take photos and video.   Yet 911 centers have little or no capability to accept such media, which can be critical to rapidly apprehending perpetrators and rendering aid to victims.   We higher-speed land line fiber optic networking between 911 centers and other public safety and government facilities too, and I hope that will be in the Plan.

Twenty years ago, very few people knew of the Internet or Web.   Now it is an indispensible part of most people’s lives and a vital component of our HomeCity security and public safety.  But we need more network SPEED, both wired and wireless.  The National Broadband Plan could be, with a bit of vision by the FCC, a roadmap to the future of the nation.

- 1999, an Odd Odyssey

The Year 2000 Bug

It was just ten short years ago that many of us were preparing to celebrate New Year’s Eve – by working all night!

Anyone over 30 probably still remembers all the information technology work that went into preparing for Year 2000.

I’m going to dredge (!?) up some of my memories in the next few paragraphs, but if you have memories or stories of that frightening December 31, 1999, evening, I invite you to leave them as a comment to this blog entry.

For many of us in Seattle, 1999 was not a good year.

First of all, we had madly been reviewing and fixing our information technology applications and programs and systems for Y2K bugs.

But no one really knew what would happen.  Would buses and trains stop dead due to bugs in their microchips?  Would the electrical grid fail?  Would 911 stop working?

The City of Seattle, like any organization using IT, had very real problems – we knew the accounting/financial database – called SFMS for Seattle Financial Management System – was not ready for Y2K, so we replaced it with an entirely new system.  We also patched up the water utility’s and electrical utility’s billing systems, since another project to replace them was in progress. (That system, now called CCSS for the Consolidated Customer Service System, was implemented in 2001, a year late and $14 million over budget, which is a different story).

The City’s Chief Technology Officer was Lynn Jacobs, and in 1998 she had spread the alarm about Y2K, galvanizing the Mayor, City Council and most departments into action looking for their Y2K bugs.  But by October, 1999, Jacobs had largely checked out due to personal issues, rarely coming to work and exerting virtually no leadership.  So Mayor Schell replaced her with Marty Chakoian, who was, not coincidently, leading the City’s Y2K efforts. There was plenty of consternation among the IT leadership in the City government.

But the outside world was in chaos in 1999 too.

The Seattle Times ran a whole series of articles about the electrical grid and 911 systems and other critical functions, and how we were preparing them for Y2K. Gee, they even talked about potential water systems’ issues with Y2K, even though Seattle’s water reservoirs are high up in the mountains and the basic rule of water and wastewater is “s___ flows downhill” (The s___ stands for “stuff”, of course).

And we had the WTO riots in Seattle in November; Seattle sure appeared to be the anarchy capital of North America, if not the world.

Then on Dec. 14, 1999, a 32-year-old Algerian named Ahmed Ressam was arrested in Port Angeles, Washington, coming across the border from Canada with 100 pounds of powerful explosives in the trunk of his car.  Was he headed to Seattle to detonate the explosives at the base of the Space Needle on New Year’s Eve?  We couldn’t take a chance, so Mayor Paul Schell cancelled the grand New Year’s celebration planned there.

For most of us tech types, and a lot of other folks, it didn’t make any difference, anyway.  We had already planned to be at work instead of celebrating on December 31st.

The City’s Emergency Operations Center was open.  At that time, the EOC was in a crowded basement of Fire Station #2 in the Denny Regrade (it has since been replaced with a $30 million modern facility).  Nevertheless, senior officials from every department hunkered down to see in the millennium in that basement.

My own Department of Information Technology was all of 5 months old – we were created as a separate department on August 1, 1999. Our operations center was in an old stock brokerage (Foster and Marshall) building at 2nd and Columbia, which is now home to the United Way of Seattle. That building was home to the telecommunications division, including the service desk – the rest of the department was in the Dexter Horton building next door. [The Dexter Horton building turned out to be much worse off in the earthquake of 2001, when virtually everyone working there was forced to leave it for a couple weeks due to building damage, but again that's another story.]

City of Seattle IT Staff celebrate Year 2000

On December 31, 1999, we had a whole team of folks who celebrated the beginning of the third millennium* together, watching a quiet, uneventful Seattle 20th Century night turn into a quiet, uneventful and sleepy 21st century* morning.

Was it uneventful due to all our diligency and preparations, or was there never really any problem in the first place?  I don’t know, but I do know I’ll celebrate the end of the decade of the naughts tonight with a bit more enjoyment and a lot less trepidation.

---

*Note: Yes, yes, I do understand the real beginning of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century is January 1,2001. See article here. But, gee, popular culture doesn’t count the years that way, so I took a little tech-journalism-geek liberties with dates in writing this article.

- Higher Tech Policing

Dubuque Police Department

Updated:  18 June 2011
Original Post:  2 August 2009

A long time ago in a city far far away I was a street cop. A police officer working the beat. It wasn’t a large city – Dubuque, Iowa – 65,000 people and probably 60 or 70 policemen. Yes “policeMEN”. The first women were hired into the Dubuque PD while I was there, and I – at 5′ 9″ and 170 pounds – was one of the smallest cops on the force.

In those days, technology was not really part of an officer’s life. Times have changed, they REALLY have changed. The Seattle Police Department has just implemented a new Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system which is fundamentally altering policing at the City of Seattle – the “SPIDER” project. Technology is now – literally – at the right and left hand of virtually every cop – and firefighter and emergency medical tech.

When I was on the street, my primary technology was the radio in my police cruiser. The voice radio was (and still is) the lifeline for public safety officers on the street. But, in the 1970s, when I walked out of the car, I also walked away from that lifeline. We didn’t have handheld or portable radios, nor did cell phones exist. If there was a problem when we were away from the car, we depended upon each other to “drive by” and check on us (and cops still do that), or on a citizen to use a land-line telephone to notify dispatch. That was scary.

Now police officers carry a handheld radio, and a lapel mike, and every Seattle radio has an emergency button which, when pressed, alerts dispatch center that the officer is in trouble. The emergency alert triggers a display of badge number on the dispatch console. The radios can communicate with officers throughout the region. And automatic vehicle location (AVL) shows the location of every police and fire apparatus in the City. All of this tech doesn’t mean policing is easier or safer than it was in the 1970s – on the contrary, there are new issues and dangers, which I’ll mention a little later.

We did reports by hand, on paper. We filled out index cards for car stops. And every call to police/fire emergency was logged on a card with a timestamp. When we wanted to get information about a license plate or driver’s license, the dispatcher looked up the info in a set of file cards or – this was really high tech in the 1970s – typed the request into a teletype machine for someone in some far city (like Des Moines) to look up on their index cards.

Now, things are much more high tech. First, people call 911 for emergencies. 911 is virtually ubiquitous in the United States, but barely existed in the 1970s. The police call-taker immediately sees the ANI/ALI (automatic number identification / automatic location identification) associated with your number. The call taker immediately enters all the information about the call into the Seattle Police Department’s new CAD (software written by Versaterm). [Fires or emergency medical calls are "hot transferred" from a police call-taker to a fire dispatcher, who enters the information into a Seattle Fire CAD, and you can actually view some real-time information about Fire 911 calls online here].

Dispatchers then dispatch the 911 call to an available police unit. An electronic map shows the location of every 911 call which is in-progress or waiting, the locations of police units and their status (free, working a call, etc.). A double click on a map icon brings up information about the call or the unit. Records management (also by Versaterm) is similarly automated, with reports now written electronically on laptop or in-vehicle computers directly by officers. A wide variety of information (e.g. address) is automatically verified, and the report is uploaded wirelessly.

The state-of-the-art in Seattle Police is even more high tech. Every patrol car has a digital video camera; every car stop is recorded, including the audio of the conversation from a wireless mic carried by the officer. Special license-plate-recognition vehicles (wirelessly connected to national databases) cruise the streets looking for parking scofflaws and stolen cars. Officers with BlackBerrys or their in-car vehicles can easily search for online information – a far cry from that teletype machine.

We are actively working on even higher speed wireless networking in the 700 MHz spectrum, which should allow two-way high-quality video transmissions to/from field units, including video from private security cameras in banks and stores. Fire units already carry electronic versions certain sorts of building plans, but in the future those building plans could be quickly updated to show the locations of hazardous materials or the detailed configuration of a school.

I’m certain high-tech has increased public safety through more rapid sharing of information, and has improved communications and therefore officer safety. This comes at a price, of course, and not just in dollars.   I’m not quite sure how dispatchers and police officers and firefighters stay current with the skills required to dispatch, provide policing, fight fires and provide emergency medical, AND also learn all this technology.  It is a challenge!

And officers today face dangers on the street which I never dreamed of in the 1970s – significant drug use, gangs, potential terrorists, and criminals who specialize themselves in using technology for identity theft, stalking, and crimes against children. I’m glad my experience as a police officer is behind me – I’m not smart enough or quick enough on my feet to face the challenges of the street today. But I hope – by continued wise application of technology – we can make cops, firefighters and the people they serve a bit safer.

- Cyber City Armageddon?

and Loose Laptops Sink Cyber (Security)

Is City-Cyber-Armageddon just around the corner?

Today City governments depend upon technology – more than ever – to operate.  Constituents depend upon the Internet, web, e-mail , cell phones to communicate with their government for information and services.  But, gee, how secure and reliable are these systems, these networks and these communication?

I recently had a non-classified meeting with some fedgov Department of Homeland Security cyber folks, and DHS contractors about potential cyber security tools.  I’m a “geek”, so I love tools and software.  I’m a senior public official, so I also like charts and graphs and statistics.  My meeting had plenty of both tools and statistics.  But I walked away from the meeting ready to move to a mountain cabin “off the grid” and isolated from the world.

Is cybersecurity really a major issue?  What can a municipal government do to improve HomeCity Security?

Is it an issue? I offer the following observations:
•   A laptop computer with records of 26.5 million veterans was stolen from the home of a Veteran’s Administration employee in May 2006 (later recovered).  But these veterans (including me – I’m a retired Army Officer) received letters notifying us of the problem.  The VA also lost records of 1.8 million veterans in February 2007 and covered up other data breaches.  They (that’s “we” for those of us who pay fedgov income tax) paid for a lot of clean-up and credit monitoring.
•   The day after his inauguration, President Obama published a cybersecurity plan and intends – as a top priority – to appoint a national cybersecurity advisor.
•   Within the last few months, Heartland Computer Systems may have lost over 45 million consumer credit card numbers .
•   The nation’s electrical grid is allegedly vulnerable to cyberattack (and my City operates the nation’s ninth largest municipal electric utility with 300,000 customers)
•   Conficker worm may be infecting one million new computers a day

What scares me?

1. Injury to the people who trust the government of the City of Seattle.  The people of Seattle entrust their credit card numbers, their phone numbers, their personal information to my government.  When they call 911, they expect help.  And we’ve had web-based SQL databases compromised by SQL injection attacks, so any constituent visiting those websites receives computer viruses… from us!   If someone is hurt physically or financially or emotionally because we’ve failed to keep the telephone network or their personal information cybersecure, I’ve failed as CTO, and I’ve failed big-time.   I never want to be sending letters like the one I received from the VA.

2.  Damage to the City of Seattle’s reputation.  One reason my government works so well is that the people of Seattle trust us: last November, despite a looming recession, they passed levies to fund more parks, a Pike Place Market renovation, and a $17 billion transit system.  A cyber-incident will damage that special relationship.

3.  Outage of the City’s technology systems. Constituents use technology to report problems and request service from the City.  They call 911 or 684-3000 (utility customer service).  They send e-mail.  The pay bills on the web.  And City employees use technology to coordinate our response – radio systems for public safety, telephone and data networks, electronic mail systems, Windows servers and a 24×7 data center.  I’m proud of 99%+ uptime on those systems to “make technology work for the City.  Cyber incidents endanger those systems.

How can we improve HomeCity Cybersecurity?  Here’s what I’m doing:

1.  Hired a damn fine CISO.  My Chief Information Security Officer, Mike Hamilton, is the best.  Worked for a long time in private industry, came to Seattle ready to give his expertise in public service.  Like all CISO’s, he sees bad guys everywhere.  Unlike many CISO’s, he knows that technology and the Internet are here to stay and we need to take practical measures to make them as secure as possible.

2.  Assemble and train a team of cyber-techies and professional cyber-sleuths.  We have dedicated, skilled IT security professionals scattered throughout City government.  Their departments and agencies spent money to train them, and CISO Hamilton matrix-manages them to patch and secure systems.  We use them as a cyber-incident-management team under Hamilton’s Deputy – David Matthews – to investigate and get to root cause of any potential cybersecurity incident.  They are our best cyber-defense.

3.  Test every doggone Internet-facing application.  Do penetration testing on our Internet connection.  Watch firewall logs.  Apply every Microsoft or Cisco or (fill-in-the-blank technology company) security patch as soon as you can.  No more than five days max from patch release to deployment.

4.  Selectively outsource.  We’ve outsourced management of credit card payments to skilled third parties, rather than “storing and managing our own”.  We can’t outsource accountability, but we can share risk.

5.  Buy some basic tools.  Anti-virus for every computer.  Patch distribution software.  Vulnerability scanning software.  System logging and aggregation software.  Web site blocking software.  Then use it.

6.  Educate, train, harangue and educate again.  The weakest link in every cybersecurity defense is employees.  Employees who transport data from work to home on thumbdrives, potentially losing the data or introducing a new virus or worm.  “Loose lips sink ships” and “Loose laptops sink cyber-security”.  Employees who surf the Internet and hit questionable websites.  We train employees on good security practices, harangue management to enforcement them, and then train again. 

I’m not as concerned about cyber attacks crippling public safety radio systems or the SCADA systems which control the electrical grid and water supply or traffic signal control.  These systems are vulnerable, but have in-depth layers of defense and employees dedicated to protecting them.

I’m concerned about that single lost portable hard drive with social security numbers.  Or that one SQL server database which should be “read only” but is “read-write” and compromised.  Or that employee who goes to a web gambling site and downloads a day-zero cyber virus.

Technology is here to stay. Internet access will only increase.  But we’re working hard to mitigate the vulnerabilities.

And I don’t sleep very well at night.

- Heroes of 9/11 and Tech

Police at WTO Riots in Seattle, 1999

Original post:  23 May 2008
Life is full of coincidences and crossing paths on the journey of life.  I had such a set of coincidences this week.  On Tuesday night I had a couple glasses of wine with an acquaintance of mine, Gino Menchini, who was in town to keynote a conference.   Gino was CIO of the City of New York for a few years early in Michael Bloomberg’s administration.   I first met Gino at a “Large Cities CIOs” conference he hosted in NYC in 2004.
Tonight (May 22nd) the move “Battle in Seattle“ kicked off the Seattle International Film Festival.  This film purports to depict the WTO riots of 1999, which gave Seattle a huge black eye in the media, but also helped galvanize us to improve our preparedness for disasters.
Sunday morning, May 25th, a team of employees of my department – the Department of Information Technology (DoIT) of the City of Seattle, will give up a good chunk of their Memorial Day weekend to upgrade the major telephone switch serving Seattle’s City government to the latest release of the switch’s software.   Many of these are the same folks who helped put the technology into the City of Seattle’s new Emergency Operations Center / Fire Alarm Center (see my blog entry from May 18th).
What do these events have in common?   Just why are they a “coincidence”?
Just this:  Heroism comes in many flavors.   September 11th, unfortunately, created many heroes, most of which are still with us.  Those are folks who supported the City of New York (and also Washington, D.C.) during those difficult days.  Gino was one of them – although he was working as an account executive for Cisco Systems on September 11th, he ran TOWARD the World Trade Center, and “collected” (appropriated?) a lot of technology from Cisco to allow the City of New York’s Emergency Operations Center to be up and functioning within 24 hours of the disaster.   He stayed on duty for weeks after that, helping to direct Cisco’s resources toward the recovery from that disaster.  
Similarly, the WTO riots here in Seattle created a number of heroes, including Assistant Police Chief Jim Pugel, who was a police Captain and in command of the police officers on  the street during that difficult week.   Jim is one of the most caring, unassuming people you’d ever meet.  But he took care of his officers and protected the people of Seattle despite terrible planning by the City (thank you Paul Schell) in preparing for the event.  
In their own ways, those DoIT employees coming in on Sunday to upgrade a telephone switch are also quiet heroes.  While many people are enjoying their Memorial Day weekend, these folks will be in downtown Seattle working.   The City of Seattle’s phone network is up and available over 99.99% of the time, which is really important in disasters and emergencies, because it WORKS when the public telephone network will be overloaded.  As I mentioned, these are the same folks who worked many long hours to install technology in the EOC to make it quite prepared to weather and manage future disasters.  And on September 11th, 2001, they stayed on the job in a skyscraper in downtown Seattle, keeping City of Seattle technology operating, when all the employees of banks and private companies left those skyscrapers and went home in fear.
These are different levels of heroism, but they all require commitment to keeping the people of the United States, the City of New York and the City of Seattle safe.  And these are the quiet heroes, not the folks who get a medal or have their name on the front page. 
I am so proud to know and work with them.

- Two Seattle 911 Centers?

Click to see calls to Seattle 911

Original post:  18 May 2008
We’ve opened a new fire alarm center (FAC) in Seattle – see yesterday’s blog entry.  This center accepts 911 calls for medical emergencies and fires – anything handled by the Seattle Fire Department.   There is a separate 911 center elsewhere in the City for 911 calls for police service and police dispatching.   How do we manage two separate centers?   The answer:  all 911 calls go to police first, and then, if the situation requires the fire department, the caller is “hot transfered” to the FAC.   “Hot transfer” means the police 911 call-taker stays on the line until the fire call-taker picks up the call.
Gee, this seems quite inefficient – we have two separate groups of folks answering 911 calls, two separate buildings, two separate telephone systems, two separate computer systems to enter the information (“computer-aided dispatch”) and so forth.   Isn’t this much more costly for Seattle taxpayers?
A long time ago, I thought so.   Many cities (e.g. Chicago) have a single 911 center where dispatchers and call takers for all three disciplines (police, fire, emergency medical) work.
But the philosophies and requirements have changed, largely after the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 and that event in New York City / the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.   Now almost every City has a backup 911 center – a separate physical location with a whole set of separate systems.   In most cities, this separate location just sits, unused, most days of the year.  It is only activated for testing and during those very rare occasions where some event makes the primary 911 center unusable.   Such events occur more often than one might think – they could include white power (anthrax) scares or power failures (including failure of backup systems), as well as disasters.
In Seattle we’ve chosen a different – and, in my opinion – wiser route.   Both our 911 centers are active and in use every day, 24 hours a day.   We KNOW all the backup systems work because they are constantly in use – we don’t just test the backup center once a year.   Once again Seattle leads – becoming the City most prepared to deal with a disaster.