After Radio System Implementation, There Is Still Much to Do

A radio system implementation is an enormous undertaking that requires months, sometime years, of planning followed by years of deployment. The process starts with development of technical specifications and creation of procurement documents, usually in the form of a request for proposals. Vendor responses then must be scored and evaluated. A vendor must be selected, and a contract negotiated, including performance requirements. The system then must be designed, staged, built, and tested to ensure that it is performing as designed. Finally, the system goes live.

And that’s when the real work begins.

Once the new system is operating, it must be managed and maintained, which requires a considerable time investment and an equally considerable amount of expertise and experience. Mission Critical Partners has developed a checklist of 67 tasks that must be performed to effectively manage and maintain a radio system, with most of these tasks falling to the agency to perform.

One Way To Keep Public Safety Technology Procurements from Derailing

Emergency communications centers need a lot of gear. They need wireless communications systems to communicate with first responders in the field. They need call-handling systems to process 911 calls. They need computer-aided dispatch systems, as well as mapping and automatic vehicle location applications, to dispatch the appropriate emergency response. And those are just the backbone systems. The ECC technology ecosystem that enables effective emergency response is quite expansive.

Three Tips for Navigating Public Safety Vendor Consolidations

Vendor consolidations happen all the time across all business sectors, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it is to eliminate the competition. Other times it is to expand into new markets. Still other times it is to acquire new technology—generally, it is far less expensive and time-consuming for a company to acquire technology than to develop it on its own.

The Three Components of an Effective Vendor Support Agreement

When it comes to public safety vendor management, times have changed—dramatically.

A decade and a half ago, information technology (IT) managers and agency leadership dealt principally with a small number of support vendors. Service agreements were simple and easy to understand. Today, in stark contrast, the landscape is much different. The average agency has nearly 30 agreements—covering a plethora of systems—on which to stay current. The vendor support agreements themselves have become dramatically more complex. And many of the personalized relationships that were formed in the past no longer exist. What’s more common today is that customer support is provided by network operations centers or help desks where service and troubleshooting might be addressed by a different technician every time a new ticket is opened.

So, what does it take to be more effective at navigating the complexity of vendor support and management in today’s public safety communications environment? How can you begin to trust your maintenance and service providers again?