Crisis Communications Planning for Mission Critical Agencies: The Basics

Public safety and other critical-infrastructure agencies responsible for providing mission-critical and lifesaving services to their communities must be able to do so under any circumstances. To ensure that they are able to maintain operations, agencies develop continuity-of-operations (COOP) and disaster-recovery (DR) plans to help mitigate the impact of a crisis. What these plans often forget, however, is how an agency will communicate with its stakeholders, both internal and external, during a crisis.

Honoring Two Public Safety Visionaries

In Memoriam: Chief Robert Full, Pittsburgh, PA, and Robert Bloom, Alexandria, VA

The Mission Critical Partners (MCP) team was saddened to learn of the passing of two incredible public safety leaders, and friends of MCP, this past week – Former Allegheny County (Pennsylvania) EMS chief and fire marshal Robert Full and Robert Bloom, Public Safety Systems Administrator, Alexandria, Virginia, Department of Emergency and Customer Communications (DECC).

MCP Celebrates National Women's History Month

Public safety, like so many other sectors, has been historically male dominated. However, just as the technology the sector uses continues to evolve, so does the number of women entering the sector, and growing within it.

2019: The Year in Review

This year has brought a lot of change, and excitement, to the public safety industry. From the announcement of 911 grant funding for states and tribal nations to advance their efforts to implement next generation 911 (NG911) to an increased, industry-wide focus on cybersecurity and preventing cyberattack, the groundwork has been laid for continued improvement for emergency response in 2020 and beyond.

Five Things Happening in Public Safety We’re Thankful for This Thanksgiving

As we kick off the start of the holiday season and give thanks for the successes of the past year, as well as the change underway in the public safety communications sector, there’s a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

Here’s what we’re thankful for.

CASE STUDY: Supporting the National Capital Region's CAD2CAD Initiative

Background

Real-time, effective, interoperable data-sharing is essential for supporting emergency response today. For nearly a decade, jurisdictions within the National Capital Region (NCR) have benefitted from the NCR Fire and Rescue Computer-Aided Dispatch-to-Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD2CAD) Data-Exchange Hub (DEH). The DEH automates what was once a manual process in coordinating an effective mutual-aid fire department response effort.

Mission Critical Partners Helps Florida PSAP Take Steps to Resolve a 911 Staffing Crisis

CHALLENGE

It has never been more challenging to be a public safety answering point (PSAP) official. Many are dealing with funding and budgetary shortfalls, while others are left wondering how they will implement Next Generation 911 (NG911) technology. These challenges alone are enough to keep PSAP officials up at night. However, staffing, which has historically been an issue for the 911 community, is arguably the most worrisome challenge facing the 911 community today.

A Look Back at 2018

2018 was an exciting year in public safety and for Mission Critical Partners (MCP). We celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the first 911 call and learned more about how social media data can impact PSAP operations and emergency response now and into the future. Meanwhile, the conversation around location accuracy continued to grow louder and technology and system upgrades, cybersecurity and staffing struggles remained top-of-mind for those in agency and PSAP leadership roles.