Podcast 6
Partnering and MOU Development
Topic/Title: "Partnering and MOU Development"
Description: The City of San Francisco, California, received a COPS 2007 Technology Program grant to continue build-out of the Bay Area radio network. Jurisdictions across the Bay Area, considered one of the Nation’s “Super UASIs” or Urban Area Security Initiative regions, are working cooperatively to expand and link radio systems. The region is considered to be at the forefront in partnering and development of interagency agreements for shared systems.
Participants:
Laura Phillips
Executive Director
Bay Area Urban Area Security Initiative, California
Ben Krauss
Public Safety Technology Specialist
SEARCH, The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics
Recorded: September 29, 2009
Podcast length: 34:05:00
Ben Krauss: The following is another in a series of recorded audio interviews, distributed via website podcast, on lessons learned and best practices on projects funded through the COPS Technology Grants. These podcasts are presented by SEARCH, The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics, through funding from the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, COPS, Cooperative Agreement 2007CKWXK002.
Today's topic is Partnering and MOU Development. Our guest today is Laura Phillips, executive director for the Bay Area Urban Area Security Initiative. I'm Ben Krauss, a public safety technology specialist for SEARCH, and moderator for this podcast.
The city of San Francisco received a COPS 2007 Technology Grant to continue a build out of the Bay Area Radio Network. Jurisdictions across the Bay Area, considered one of the nation's Super UASI's, or Urban Area Security Initiative regions, are working to cooperatively expand and link radio systems. The region is considered to be at the forefront in partnering and developing of interagency agreements for shared systems.
Laura, welcome. Can you tell us a bit about the Bay Regional Interoperable Communications System, BayRICS, and share your background with it?
Laura Phillips: Great. Well, I am the general manager with the Bay Area Urban Area Security Initiative [UASI]. And we've been primarily the key ingredient, to pulling together the interoperability initiatives that were going on in the Bay Area. If you look at historically, in 2006 there had been before 2006 I should say there were three separate UASI areas. There was San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco. And they were all at various levels of embarking on different interoperability initiatives. JPA's [Joint Powers of Authority] were forming and things along that line, and enhancements were being discussed. But in a smaller footprint, in more of a county level footprint, which was all good, right? And then, in 2005, the separate UASI's got an interesting notice from the federal government, that for the next grant cycle they were going to become I call it the shotgun marriage, right? We were all going to get married. And they did that, I think, in a couple other areas, where bodies of water kind of divided UASI areas. And I think there was a concern, you know, with the Bush Administration. At the time, a lot of dollars were flying out for UASI, but there needed to be more collaboration. So this really forced the collaboration over a larger footprint, not just at county level, but looking at things from a multicounty level.
So this shotgun marriage occurred. And remember, interoperable communications was just one initiative, out of many, that deal with response to and recovering mitigation towards a terrorism event, either humangenerated, or a natural disaster. So that's kind of the history. We had these separate initiatives going and then we were merged. And the UASI's been pulling people together, through the government structure, through the monthly working groups, working with the CALSIEC [California Statewide Interoperability Executive Committee] areas, and kind of pulling together what the strategy was going to be, rather than everybody looking at it from that single perspective of their county. So hopefully, that deals with it, and people are all familiar with what the UASI program is.
Ben: Excellent. Thank you. Broadly speaking, what sort of partnering challenges do you face with such a large and complex region?
Laura: If you look at our UASI, and not even look at it from a physics perspective what do I say interoperability is about physics, in many ways. And if you look at the Bay Area, we have very rural areas. We have mountain ranges, we have our coastal ranges. We have very dense areas like San Francisco, I think, is one of the most dense areas in the nation, if not the world. But you've got very diverse needs. In the South Bay has got kind of sprawling — lots of population in the San Jose area, that's kind of a sprawling suburban area. And you've got agriculture in some areas, and then you've got this other industry. So that's one of the biggest challenges — just the diversity. So, similar to how the Bay Area kind of revolts if the federal government tries to say we all need to prepare for a hurricane because that's what has just occurred and that's what FEMA is focused on. We want to be very cognizant and in subregions within our larger footprint, there's very different priorities and different needs. So I think that's one of the challenges. And we've got some structures we've put together, or put in place over the last grant cycle. And kind of test them to see if there's ways that — as we make regional decisions that benefit certain initiatives, and benefit all of us — is there a way to still allow some prioritization of needs at the subregion.
And I think that's been... We're trying them out. They seem to be working, but I would say that is one our biggest challenges is just meeting all those needs with such diverse needs out there.
Ben: Excellent. Thank you. A portion of every COPSfunded project builds upon a MOU for the management of UASI region, designated in 2006. How would you describe that MOU for us? And, have you had to supplement it for BayRICS?
Laura: [laughs] Oh, yeah. Like we talked about before we kind of got into the call, governance agreements are almost ongoing in nature. You learn when you're using an agreement, what you will need to do when you renew the next one, so to speak. So our first marriage agreement, for the shotgun marriage … when we find it — you won't believe this — our very first agreement was only for one year, and it took us almost the first full year to get it signed. So first thing we learned is it takes some time to get agreements signed, in that we needed to look at a more flexible structure. So if you look at the agreement that followed that, it was a multiyear, three-year agreement that was signed. It allowed more flexibility. There's some key language in there that allowed us to do things like manage other grant sources towards an initiative, rather than looking at separate agreements for separate grants, and separate grant cycles. Right? So we learned from that. So it's a very different agreement that we have now. We're actually getting ready — I'm actually crafting the next agreement that will be put in place and signed. Over the next six months or so we'll get another one in place for the next, say, 2010 cycle.
And we'll probably go another three years. We think that's a good plan, to go three years. Now the other thing we do to supplement it is — there's language in that agreement, and it's legal language that was established to give some flexibility to the general manager, to put together other working bodies to get certain deliverables done, or work towards specific deliverables or projects separately. So, for example, the language allows us to… we put together a regional catastrophic planning group. We pulled together emergency managers even outside of our 10county footprint, and we looked at counties that would be affected by an event — like a large earthquake, for example, would impact into the Sacramento Valley.
So, what are those things you need to plan on for the Sacramento Valley, for catastrophic planning? Evacuation, interoperability... And so, we kind of continue that dialogue in that other group. We establish though, this agreement — to stay on track here — we established some language that allows us to put together other groups, without having to draft a new governance agreement. But still bring those forward, and manage them through the processes defined in the governance structure.
So, I would recommend is people put together a structure of any sort or an agreement of any sort, to make sure it's simple enough to allow those kinds of other things to kind of grow out of it, so you don't have to craft a new agreement.
Ben: Got it. Thank you. Were there any national tools that helped in developing further agreements?
Laura: Oh, yes. You know, we really found a lot of the tools out there when we got around to like round two, so to speak, of our agreement. There's a SAFECOM document, I think, that was put together that was very helpful. But, they put together a short list that I thought we looked at internally. I believe we got that from Dan Hawkins from SEARCH. And, SEARCH also did a few conference calls with us. So, as we were going through the process — I don't recall who the staff people were — but I know we did reach out to the SEARCH organization and ask them for some assistance, you know, to help us with some of that. And, I think the National Association of Governors; I think they had some tools out there. So, we kind of just looked out in the environment in general. Because again, governance agreements are very dynamic in some respects. So like, I Googled this morning … I was just looking to see if there was anything new out there because I had heard that San Diego was making some changes to their governance structure. And the one I like to follow a lot is the Palmetto 800 system out in South Carolina. That seems to be a good model. And I like to watch what they're doing out there, especially in light of the broadband issues that are, you know, coming down the pipeline. Those were all very good tools.
Ben: Interesting. Thank you very much. One key interagency connection piece of BayRICS that will be provided for the P25 inter sub system interface. Can you describe how it's going to be used and the partnering challenges?
Laura: The partnering challenges—there are, you know, the test case that we wanted — we've had multiple meetings. And, the discussions are continuing. We've had NIST [National Institute for Standards and Technology] come out and help us. So, we put together like our — where do we want to test this first? And, of course, the area we looked at is the city of Oakland, and the East Bay RCS [Regional Communications System, includes Alameda and Contra Costa Counties], because we've got a M/A-Com, now Harris, system in Oakland. And, the other users, in Alameda and Contra Costa County, are all in the Motorola system. And, they've been making P25 investments over the last three years. And, in many cases, are very close to finalizing both of those systems. But, I think, Oakland, whose coverage stops, you know, at their city border, would like to have the advantage of roaming seamlessly into all of the other parts of the Bay Area. So, ISSI [Inter Sub System Interface] was our way thinking to get there. What we learned when we were meeting with NIST, is that ISSI is still not fully baked, right? So, seamless roaming is a little, I guess, optimistic at this point, to see that we're going to get that out of it. So, I think that's one of the concerns operationally, that if we put it in too early, will it have the functionality?
Well, as you know, when you're rolling out technology, sometimes, with police officers — if it doesn't work to meet their expectations, they have a tendency not to use it and think it doesn't work. And so managing those expectations when the ISSI is still rather limited in some respects — I think that's going to be a challenge out there. So, this is still a workinprogress for us. And NIST is committed to working with us on making that happen. And, there’s still on-going dialogue between all the departments over there trying to make this work.
I'd say the other challenge is cost. I don't think we were aware when we started talking about ISSI, that the costs were going to be so high, to do a testbed like this. You know, you've got costs on the M/A-Com Harris side, so to speak. And, you got costs on the Motorola side. So, we were not expecting that. I guess, in my lack of having engineering knowledge thought that we would buy one, one ISSI and then, that was the cost. And, it's turned out to be a much higher cost.
Ben: How else have you addressed those challenges with ISSI?
Laura: I think we're just going to have to continue the dialogue. But, when you get into talking as better broadband strategy, there's one thing that we're looking at there that might be a cheaper solution, but it's not an ISSI solution. So, while the ISSI is developing, and we continue the dialogue, and decide when it's right to make an investment that large to get that benefit, we're going to kind of watch what's happening out there, just with technology in general, and see. There may be another solution that will be less expensive or we may have to go back to the vendors and say, "You know, knock it off. You're going to have to work with us on this and get the cost down, because we're having a hard time making the case that we would invest this many hundreds of thousand of dollars in something that still is very limited."
Ben: Got it. Thank you. Do you see any changes to agreements on ISSI use over time?
Laura: Well, I think, obviously with TICPs [Tactical Interoperable Communications Plans] and stuff, those are going to have to change depending on the functionality. So, when you have seamless roaming, you could have an agreement that's in seamless roaming, but if you can't really seamlessly roam, then your TICP is going to have to reflect that you have to do this, or you have to do that instead. So, yeah, I think these MOUs are going to have to always be modified. And, we kind of go back, like when we have a big event, one of the questions that I always ask before a big event — when I see a planned event — so I think we're testing our NECP goals here, coming up at a planned event. And, we have other several other big planned events that we do on an annual basis out in the Bay Area. But the question I usually ask in the staff meeting is, ‘Okay, are TICPs up for that?’ And do we need to go back and make any changes even after the event, kind of post-event? Were there any issues — do we need to go back and make changes?