Ten Years after the iPhone, why don’t we give Cops and Firefighters Smart Phones?

The iPhone is 10 years old.

 

Being from Seattle, Microsoft Country, I’ve always made fun of Apple.  When I see people using Mac’s, I’ll say “oh, you use a computer made by a fruit company”.  I talk about having a “mixed marriage”, as my spouse is a Mac user.  During speaking engagements, if I suggest doing an online search, I’ll say “Bing it” (ok, that’s technically a put-down for Google, not Apple).

When I was Chief Technology Officer (also CIO) for the City of Seattle, we brought the first widespread use of mobile phones with email capability into that City government, in 2005, by introducing BlackBerrys.  We had the support of major department directors as diverse as the Human Services Director and the Police Chief, Gil Kerlikowske.

But when I left City government in 2012, and needed to get a personal smart phone, I purchased an iPhone.  My first-ever device made by the Fruit Company.

Why?

Ease of use. Robust apps and apps catalog.  Integrated camera.  Everyone writes apps for the iPhone first.  Almost Schrier-proof.

In recent years products from other companies have eclipsed the iPhone in some respects.  The Samsung Galaxy S7 (not the infamous Note 7) has a better camera, for example.  But the smoothest, most integrated experience is still probably the Apple iPhone.

 

Today, of course, most companies issue iPhones or Android phones instead of Blackberrys to their field employees.   Even government agencies do so:  when I joined the federal First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) in August, 2016, I was issued an iPhone 6.

But in Public Safety agencies – law enforcement, firefighting and emergency medical response – an agency-issued smart phone to field officers is still a rarity.   Some large cities have done so – New York City for example.   But despite the obvious benefits of having a mobile computer in the hands of cops and paramedics and firefighters, the initial device costs and monthly service fees seem beyond many city and county budgets.

In other words, ten years after its introduction, the capabilities introduced with the iPhone in 2007 still evade the average police officer, firefighter and paramedic responding to 911 calls every day.

That must change.

And it will.

Here’s why.

1. Personal safety of responders.   First responders have land-mobile radios for communication.  They are dispatched by these radio systems which are very reliable, survive disasters and allow great communications.  But these radios are voice only.  No apps, no maps, no data or information transmitted.  On December 17th Mount Vernon, Washington, Officer “Mick” McClaughry was shot and almost died when responding to a report of domestic violence.  The shooter had a long and extensive history of weapons and violence, including the abduction of four people.  This is an all-too-common story.  When police officers, firefighters, paramedics and even child protective services social workers respond to a premise they deserve to have the full history of all calls to that premise, who is likely to be on site, and everything about the history of violence and use of weapons.   Sent to their smart phone, immediately and upon demand, wherever and whenever they are.
2. Phone calls and Siri. Responders need the ability to make phone calls from the field, using official, not personal, cell phones to continue investigations and contact victims, witnesses and suspects.  Hundreds of millions of people simply press a button on their smartphone and say “Siri, call my friend Billy.” And the phone dials (or Facetimes) their friends and relatives.  Siri, and its cousins Cortana, Alexa, Google Now, do much more than make phone calls of course.   They answer questions and do web searches.  Such capabilities would be extraordinarily helpful to first responders as they respond to 911 calls.  We can even envision a “Hey Joe” Friday voice assistant specifically trained to respond to first responder queries.
3. Digital evidence collection. Police officers, arson investigators, paramedics and other responders must collect vast quantities of information:  photographs, interviews, serial numbers, video and so forth.  Today that’s mostly done with spiral-bound notebooks, digital cameras, and pen and paper.  With smartphones and tablet computers, all this information – including video clips of witness interviews and questioning of suspects in the field – could be accomplished more quickly and efficiently.
4. Patient care and tracking. Paramedics still, too often, fill out patient forms in quadruplicate on the patients they treat.  With smart phones or tablet computers this work could be done digitally.  Furthermore, emergency medical techs could access patient healthcare records, contact physicians and hospitals, and access a myriad of other information to better care for their patients.
5. Situational awareness and geography. All the work of first responders involves geography.  Maps, locations, the location of other responding units, the best driving route to a location and even building outlines depend upon maps.  Responders urgently need this capability in their pocket.
6. Many other uses.  Anyone with a smart phone can envision dozens of other uses for such devices in the hands of first responders such as reviewing and uploading body-worn video, viewing building diagrams, finding the characteristics of drugs and hazardous materials, accessing criminal history records, helping with those in crisis or mentally ill, and so forth.

Of course, many departments put such capabilities in computers mounted in fire apparatus and police cars.  But once the responder leaves the vehicle, all that capability is not available.  Many responders, recognizing the advantages of mobile devices, use their personal smart phones or tablet computers, often contrary to their department’s policy.  That carries significant dangers – giving their personal phone numbers to victims and suspects, for example, or potentially having their personal device confiscated as evidence once defense attorneys learn it has been used to collect photos or other information.

And the smart devices we issue to our responders don’t have to be iPhones.  Many other companies make excellent mobile devices as well.

Private companies give smart phones and other mobile devices to their entire field workforces as well as all managers.  In City governments, most managers and all elected officials have government-issued smart phones.  We place our lives in the hands of first responders.  Shouldn’t we give our police officers, firefighters, sheriff’s deputies, paramedics and other responders that same basic tool?

It is virtually criminal that 10 years after the introduction of the iPhone, we still leave most of our first responders without these devices.

Oregon’s FirstNet Consultation – Impressions

Oregon’s Consultation

In February, 2012 the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) was created and funded with $7 billion by Congress to build a nationwide wireless network for responders to daily incidents and larger disasters.  I sometimes call it a cellular network to connect the smart phones and tablets of cops and firefighters, but, really, anyone who responds to disasters will probably be able to use it.

FirstNet is required to consult with state governments about its plans, and then develop a design and plan for each state.   This state plan will include what parts of the state will be covered, who can use the network in the state, and what the costs will be.

FirstNet is starting to launch the consultation and design process, state by state.  I was fortunate to be present on October 8th when FirstNet staff conducted their initial consultation with officials in the state of Oregon at the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training (DPSST) in Salem.   Steve Noel, Oregon Statewide Interoperability Coordinator (SWIC) hosted the meeting.  This is the third initial consultation of 56 states and territories where FirstNet will be constructed.  The State of Washington is next up for an initial consultation, which occurs on October 16^th.

Here are a few of my impressions from Oregon’s consultation.

I was most intrigued to hear real-world examples of communications needs from Oregon’s responders.

Chief Mike Duyck from the Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue, vice-chair of the Oregon State Interoperability Executive Council, eloquently spoke about the communications needs and possibilities of FirstNet.     He spoke about “geo-fencing” physical addresses, so when responders were called to a specific address, they would know if people with arrest warrants or histories of violence lived or frequented nearby locations.   He talked about crowdsourcing off-duty responders who are physically close to major incidents, video conferencing physicians from the scene of a medical emergency, and interconnecting traditional public safety land-mobile radios with smart phones and other cellular devices.  All-in-all, his talk was an eye-opening vision of the future of public safety communications from an active, engaged fire chief.

Cheryl Bledsoe of Clackamas 911 discusses the Mall Shooter

Cheryl Bledsoe from the Clackamas County 9-1-1 office talked about the combined use of land-mobile radio, cell phones and social media like twitter responding to the 2012 Clackamas Mall shooter.

Bledsoe, who is a prolific tweeter herself, said the first tweets from terrified citizens at the mall occurred more than two minutes before the first 911 call (see also Huffington Post article about that here).   She also related how a senior official of the Clackamas Sheriff’s department got the first word of the shooting from his daughter via a cell phone call.  She was watching social media and noticed news of the shooting, then called her dad.  My lesson from this story:  public safety needs to continue to embrace and enhance its use of smart phone apps and social media, and even the two-way use of platforms like twitter (Seattle Police are one of the best at two-way tweeting.)

Jackson County Vehicle

Some of Oregon’s first responders are actively adopting commercial high-speed mobile data networks for innovative use today.   Sheriff Mike Winters, Sergeant Rick Kennedy and Jenny Hall from the Jackson County Sheriff’s department (tweeting here) brought their communications vehicle and demonstrated their use of wireless video.   They showed live video from their communications center 150 miles away, and talked about the use of live video from helicopter feeds as well as fixed locations.  They are hungry for more bandwidth and eagerly await the implementation of FirstNet to help with that.  All Jackson County deputies use smart phones which include both GPS location (so they know where other deputies are located) and applications like an interconnection to their Land-Mobile Radio network.   They also can access video from schools in the county (when authorized by the school).

David Buchanan, Rich Reed and Brian Hobson led the FirstNet team meeting with Oregon.   David has blogged about his observations here.    I was impressed by the team’s attentiveness to the concerns of Oregon’s responders, and by their honesty.   Rich Reed, FirstNet’s director of state plans, says “there are some things we know, many things we don’t know, and some things we believe” about how FirstNet will roll out nationwide.   By coming to Oregon and other states they are hoping to expand the “things they know”.

Rich Reed addresses Oregon’s Responders

A few other observations, in no particular order:

• FirstNet staff emphasized again and again that the network needs to be self-sustaining – FirstNet has to find sources of income to match its operational costs and investment needs. At the same time it must be affordable to responder agencies, many of whom do not use commercial networks today, or only use them in a limited fashion.
• Oregon responders urged FirstNet to make the per-device cost equal to or less than the costs they presently pay to commercial carriers.
• Police Chief Rock Rakosi, chair of the Oregon SIEC, eloquently spoke about the need to provide coverage for rural agencies, even though there will not necessarily be significant income for FirstNet from a rural build-out.
• Some of those present in the room cited the need for subsidies for responding agencies with very limited budgets and potentially for volunteer firefighters or search-and-rescue volunteers.
• Rich Reed discussed the challenge of getting FirstNet’s band 14 chips into commercial devices. He noted the new iPhone 6 has 20 different LTE spectrum bands/chips but not Band 14.
• Karl Larson of the City of Portland raised the need for procurement contracts and vehicles in each state, so that cities, counties, state agencies and other responder entities could legally procure FirstNet services and devices.
• Brian Hobson said FirstNet has acquired Mentum Planet modeling software to help it design coverage for states.
• Each of the 56 states and territories who will be FirstNet partners has a “State Point of Contact” or SPOC.  Steve Noel invited SPOCs from each state bordering Oregon to attend this event, and we all did:   Rob Feeley of Idaho, George Molnar of Nevada, Karen Wong of California and my team from Washington.
• Another critical success factor is adoption by public safety agencies and other responders.
• According to FirstNet’s market research, sustainability is achievable as FirstNet doesn’t have to make a profit, support high overhead costs, pay spectrum licensing fees, turn a profit to (or satisfy) shareholders.   (Schrier’s note:   although FirstNet does have to satisfy its public safety user base, who are a tough crowd).

I’m looking forward to FirstNet’s coming to Washington on October 16^th to have a similar dialog with our public safety leaders and other responders.  More details about that event on Washington OneNet’s website here.

(This post was slightly updated on October 15, 2014, to add the comment from Chief Rakosi and correct a minor spelling error.)

My Love-Hate Thang with Ballmer’s Microsoft

Today (October 17) is the debut of the “real” Windows 8, thank goodness. And a perfect time for reflections on my love/hate affair with Microsoft.

I love Microsoft. I envy Steve Ballmer’s hairline. Microsoft Office is the greatest thing since the invention of the personal computer. I love Office so much I refuse to buy a tablet computer (iPad, Galaxy, Note, Surface RT) because almost none of those plastic/glass doo-dads will run my favorite programs – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher and OneNote. Microsoft employs 40,000 people in my hometown area of Seattle, which vastly improves the quality of life here. Microsofties leave the company to found their own startup companies which makes for a really exciting technology scene – just ask Todd Bishop or John Cook at Geekwire. I love the X-Box 360 and I love Microsoft Research with products like web-based translation. And the Kinect is leading us into the future of gesture-based computing.

I love Microsoft so much I say “bing it” when others say “google it”.

Steve Ballmer

I hate Microsoft. Steve Ballmer laughed at the first iPhone because it didn’t have a keyboard. His answer: the “Kin” twins which lasted one month. Microsoft completely missed the tablet revolution, until it finally, three years after the iPad, came out with the Surface RT with zero apps and almost complete incompatibility with everything else in tech.

Windows 8 and its Metro interface is a travesty.  What were Ballmer and his brain trust thinking when they rolled out Windows 8? They urinated off on every Enterprise and Enterprise desktop user of Windows, a billion or more users in all.

There is zero zip nada which is nice about Windows 8 and the #@%! “metro” interface for folks using a keyboard and mouse. I resisted buying a Windows 8 computer because I don’t have a touch screen and I knew it would be tough learning to use Win8, but I had no idea how bad until now, when I actually have to use it. Finding simple stuff like the control panel is a monstrous chore, as are other simple tasks such as closing a Metro window for Adobe reader. How the hell do you “swipe up” with a mouse? Half the time the “charms” never appear when using a mouse.

I could go on-and-on but I’m totally baffled why Microsoft would spend all this time and effort on a new, touch-screen optimized OS when their bread-and-butter is enterprise customers using desktop computers with no touchscreen.

Does Steve Ballmer have a death-wish for his company?

Even folks who use touchscreens spend little time in Metroland and most of their time on the “traditional” desktop interface, if they can find it. There are plenty of rants about this on the web of course, too, including ones on microsoft.com.

I could go back and forth all day with my love/hate of Microsoft and its products:

• Love Windows Phone 8 smartphones.
• Woulda bought one when I ditched my Blackberry in May, 2012, but only Windows Phone 7 was available and that hardware was NOT upgradeable to version 8. Had to get an iPhone instead, unfortunately.
• Love all the apps available for Windows desktop computers.
• Hate all the apps not available for the Surface and Windows Phone.
• Love tablet computing – I used a Gateway tablet running Windows for years starting in about 2003, and my 3.75 year old kid uses a gen 1 iPad all the time.
• Hate Ballmer and Microsoft’s failure of vision to miss the whole smartphone and tablet computer revolution. Especially since Microsoft partners HAD tablet computers using Windows XP and developed the Surface tabletop computer.
• Love all the power of the Internet with websites, web apps, open data and all the rest.
• Hate that Microsoft basically missed the whole Internet revolution, brought us stuff like Front Page and Silverlight and MSN, and is playing catch-up ever since.
• Love that the entire world uses Windows desktop computers and Office as THE standard for productive computing. So much so that some of those cities and places which have converted to gmail and Google apps are regretting that decision (i.e. Los Angeles).
• Hate Microsoft running after consumers with the ill-fated Zune and poor Windows 8 implementation, dissing their cash-cow livelihood: Enterprise customers.

Redmond sign – how about software?

So after all the harping and carping on my favorite hometown company (although Boeing and Amazon are actively competing for that “favorite” spot), do I have some advice for my friends and their new CEO in Redmond? You bet.

• Keep your Enterprise friends happy. You do a good job serving corporate America, governments and businesses. Don’t screw them with crap like Windows 8. (Fingers crossed for a decent Windows 8.1).
• Microsoft Research is great at innovating. Use them. For just one example, capitalize on Kinect gesture-based computing. Actively encourage people to link Kinect to all sorts of other tech from computers to TVs to cars.
• Continue to develop the Xbox into the all-purpose home device for entertainment and personal business. · Concentrate on voice. Voice control of computers will leapfrog the touchscreen interface. I spend a lot of time in my car – I’d love it if my smartphone could read me my email and text messages allow me to compose tweets and Word documents, all by talking to it. Voice would allow my 3.75 year to say “I want to watch Caillou” and her tablet would start Netflix and ask her “Do you want Caillou the Chef” which it knows is her favorite.
• Embrace the “internet of things”. Over the next 20 years, sensors will be deployed everywhere – electrical grid, roadways, autonomous vehicles, medical patients, appliances, even toilets and toasters. Myriad opportunities exist in this space, starting with just crunching and making sense of all that data.

Microsoft, I love you. I desperately want you to succeed. Please stop shooting yourself (and your customers) in the foot.

– Kurmudgeons and Kids

Bill Schrier: Mac or PC?

Oh gee, I think I’ve become a Kurmudgeon. Or maybe a naysayer. Or maybe just a Buttoned-Down Corporate IT Technocrat. Or maybe, and this is most frightening of all, PC – and I don’t mean “politically correct” – but rather the character played by John Hodgman in the “Get a Mac” advertisements. 

Bill's Draft Card and Blog

But I know I’m anti-establishment, because I marched and protested the Vietnam War. I actually participated in a sit-in demonstration. I crossed a police barricade during an anti-war protest in Madison Wisconsin (ok, so it was St. Patrick’s Day, I was drunk, twenty-three years old, on my way to work, and headed to get a cup of coffee to sober up – I still “crossed the line”, ok?). Gee Whiz, I almost burned by draft card (oh my gosh, am I that old, that I still have a draft card?)  How could a militant activist plebeian, farm-kid like me become the ultimate embodiment of “The Man“?

What happened?

Elections.

Yup, we’ve had a few recently in Seattle.

We have a new Mayor, a new County Executive, a new City Attorney, and two new City Councilpeople.

And they are all younger than me.

Worse yet, their campaign staff – who are now working on their transition teams – are college kids or twenty-and-thirty-something young people who have all these odd and annoying habits.

They use I-Phones. Gee, I can’t even spell I-Phone (correctly).  We corporate IT types use proper BlackBerrys or proper mobile phones that fold out when you want to talk.  (Although I did give my wife an I-Phone for Christmas – does that count?)

They use Macs. Yes, Apple Macintosh computers – (not the Ronald McDonald type of Mac).  We corporate IT types use proper Windows XP computers manufactured by prim and proper corporations like Hewlett Packard with proper advertising campaigns, thank you very much. (My always-suffering wife is a Mac person – does that count?)

They don’t use anti-virus software.  Anathema! Heresy!   My Chief Information Security Officer is writhing on the floor. There ARE viruses which affect Macs, he says.  And how about all those I-Phone (I still can’t spell it right) apps which are written by hackers and can be downloaded?  Oh wait, I-Phone hackers aren’t trying to create bot armies, they’re just trying to modify the software in the phone and bend it to their will.  Gee, does that make Apple Engineers and Programmers and Executives Buttoned-Down corporate IT types like me?

These kids – they tweet and twitter and blog and facebook (is that a verb?) and post video they take with their danged I-Phones to YouTube and create legends for their innovative use of cell phones to collect last minute ballots on election night. 

Where is my defense from all this anarchy?   Where is my official City of Seattle Information Security policy when I need it?   Where are my guidelines for the use of social media like Facebook and Twitter and Blogs (oh my)?  Where is that holy grail of all Chief Information Officers and Buttoned Down corporate IT types – “standards“? 

At least I can take comfort and wrap myself in my reduced budget (Macs and I-Phones cost more to buy and manage) and my economic development (gee, Microsoft DOES employ 40,000 people in the Seattle area and it DOES, after all, make software for Macs, too).

They are challenging my policies, these kids. They are challenging my assumptions. They don’t care for my technology standards. They have taught me how to spell iPhone.

They are challenging my very identity as the Chief Technology Officer for the City Government of Seattle.

And I love it.