In the sea of organizations and acronyms floating around in our information-heavy world, here's one to remember.  NPSTC, the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council, is a volunteer federation of 15 public safety organizations, whose mission is to improve public safety communications and interoperability through collaborative leadership.  NPSTC's members are the organizations representing fire, EMS, law enforcement, transportation, and other telecommunications organizations.

NPSTC combines the many voices of its member organizations to enhance the power of public safety's voice.  We monitor and study public policy and submit comments to governmental organizations on behalf of public safety.  We work to make sure public safety has the spectrum needed to communicate in life-threatening situations without interference and we explore technology, standards, and interoperable communications solutions.

The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC), a federation of organizations, was organized to encourage and facilitate implementation of the findings and recommendations of the Public Safety Wireless Advisory Committee (PSWAC), established in 1994 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to evaluate the wireless communications needs of local, tribal, state, and federal public safety agencies through the year 2010, identify problems, and recommend possible solutions.

In 1997, thirteen national-level organizations set aside individual agendas to unite in support of vitally important issues that affect public safety telecommunications.  "For the first time in my 30 years of public safety communications experience, all of the key associations are working together within NPSTC, with one voice, to bring about change", says Douglas M. Aiken, NPSTC Vice Chair, International Municipal Signal Association (IMSA).  NPSTC has since added two organizations to increase its membership to fifteen.

To improve public safety communications and interoperability through collaborative leadership.

There is no other forum that includes all of the key national-level public safety organizations that collaborates and develops consensus positions for legislative and regulatory bodies, along with addressing a broad range of topics impacting public safety communications.  NPSTC provides an unquantifiable benefit to local and state public safety organizations, federal agencies, regulatory bodies, and industry.

NPSTC's fifteen organizational members are represented by a voting Governing Board.  In addition, NPSTC includes four non-voting, associate organizational members.  The NPSTC Charter identifies goals and objectives of the Governing Board, along with policies pertaining to accomplishing these goals.  The Governing Board governs the affairs of NPSTC, subject to the provision of the Charter.

NPSTC pursues the role as a resource and advocate for public safety organizations in the United States on matters relating to public safety telecommunications.  NPSTC explores technologies and public policies involving public safety telecommunications, analyzes the ramifications of particular issues and submits comments to governmental bodies with the objective of furthering public safety telecommunications worldwide.

NPSTC's responsibility is to provide a collective voice on communications issues for the approximately 2.5 million public safety first responders in the United States working for 18,000 local and state law enforcement agencies, 26,000 fire departments, and more than 6,000 rescue departments, plus federal law enforcement, tribal law enforcement, and other agencies, such as transportation and the public utilities who need to talk to one another during critical incidents.  These objectives are accomplished by:

• Developing and making recommendations to appropriate governmental bodies regarding public safety communications issues and policies, promoting greater interoperability and cooperation between local, state, tribal, and federal agencies.
• Serving as a standing forum for the exchange of ideas and information, and works to identify and promote methods for funding development of public safety communications systems.
• Monitoring new technology research, supports studies of public safety communications, and uses research to stay abreast of user needs.
• Communicating information on technology, research, and policy issues to the field through its website, www.NPSTC.org and through its quarterly newsletter.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is committed to using cutting-edge technologies and scientific talent in its quest to make America safer.  The Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate is charged with researching and organizing the scientific, engineering, and technological resources of the Department and leveraging advanced technological tools used to protect the homeland.  Within S&T, the Office for Interoperability and Compatibility (OIC) focuses its efforts on interoperable communications issues for the local, state, tribal and Federal practitioner community.  As authorized by Sections 314(a) and 315 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (codified at 6 U.S.C. § 195(a) and 6 U.S.C. § 195a), OIC is responsible for establishing a comprehensive research, development, testing, and evaluation program for improving interoperable emergency communications.  Among its responsibilities, OIC is authorized to identify interoperable communications requirements, support and promote the ability of emergency responders to communicate, and conduct pilot projects to test and demonstrate technologies.

In response to the communications challenges resulting from Hurricane Katrina, Congress established the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Emergency Communications (OEC) to serve as the focal point for emergency communications preparedness activities at the Federal, State, local, and tribal levels.  Authorized through the Fiscal Year 2007 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act (Pub. L. No: 109-295), OEC's mission is to support and promote the ability of emergency responders and government officials to continue to communicate in the event of natural or man-made disasters, and work to ensure, accelerate, and attain interoperable and operable emergency communications nationwide.  OEC leads multiple initiatives that support the development, implementation, and coordination of interoperable and operable communications for the emergency response community at all levels of government and across all jurisdictions.  OEC works to strengthen emergency communications through five service offerings: Policy and Planning, Coordination and Collaboration, Demonstration Projects, Grants, and Technical Assistance (TA).  Opening its doors on April 1, 2007, OEC is the newest office within the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Cybersecurity and Communications (CS&C) within the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD).

NPSTC continues to play a key role in providing input to both DHS OIC and OEC regarding the issues of public safety wireless communications and interoperability.  Its members have been involved in helping DHS to address these issues and continue serve on the Executive and Steering Committees of DHS’s SAFECOM Program.

The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) comprises 15 Voting Members and 4 Associate Members.  Also, from various federal agencies, there are an additional 9 Liaison Members.

Three NPSTC Committees, through Working Groups, are responsible for conducting research and studies, writing position papers, and giving presentations at various meetings and conferences at the request of the Governing Board.  Working Groups interact with each another and the member organizations to provide details of their findings, by reaching out to subject matter experts and developing positions for the Committee Chairs, who in turn forward those positions with their comments to the Governing Board for approval.  Committee Chairs are responsible for FCC filings on issues pertaining NPSTC's objectives and upon receiving approval from the Governing Board.

NPSTC's success is in providing a forum for discussion and finding consensus within the community.  The following link is from OEC/OIC testimony and reflects our relationship with them:

Broadband for public safety offers amazing applications for incident management, enhanced safety, and situational awareness.  Broadband would allow firefighters to use heads-up display-based applications to provide periodically updated infrared imagery of buildings showing possible ignition/combustion activities.  Firefighter safety would be enhanced by unit health status monitors to check vital signs, oxygen supplies, and ambient temperature information.

The 700 MHz broadband public safety network that makes those apps possible is much closer to reality today.  The Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST) became the licensee of the 700 MHz public safety band.  While decisions about how it will be built are being made now in Congress and at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), many cities want to begin building their own broadband networks.  To ensure these cities would be interoperable with the national public safety network, the PSST asked NPSTC to create a Broadband Task Force (BBTF) to develop the minimum recommendations necessary to ensure roaming and interoperability among localities and regions that submitted waivers to the FCC to build out 700 MHz broadband networks ahead of a nationwide network.  The BBTF issued the BBTF Report with those minimum recommendations in August 2009.

In 1996, the Public Safety Wireless Advisory Committee (PSWAC) published its report on public safety's needs through the year 2010.  That groundbreaking report eventually led to public safety spectrum assignments in the 700 MHz and 4.9 GHz bands.  In late 2009, NPSTC created a new Working Group to assess the operational needs of public safety through the year 2020 and the technology and spectrum impacts of those needs.

The PSWAC:  Assessment of Future Spectrum and Technology (AFST) Working Group began meeting in January seeking as much input as possible from each public safety discipline to ensure that the report properly captures their operational requirements, and, in June 2010, issued a questionnaire seeking those operational needs.

They will rely on technology experts for the various systems public safety uses (land mobile radio, broadband, microwave, satellite, etc.) to translate the projected operational requirements into technical implementations and spectrum experts who can develop the models that can translate the requirements into meaningful spectrum needs and develop a plan for meeting the operational needs through 2020.

One very important issue for mutual aid response is simply designating the same name for the same channel.  Common channel names allow responders to quickly and easily select the mutual aid channel at a multi-jurisdictional scene.  In response to requests from public safety organizations, NPSTC solicited input on a set of common names for the channels designated by the FCC for interoperability use and created a consensus NPSTC Channel Naming Report, that became an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard in June 2010.

When a systems manager from Virginia wanted to institute two-way paging for emergency group alerting, he approached NPSTC for help.  The problem was that paging spectrum in the 900 MHz band wasn't available to public safety.  Paging provides affordable communications for public safety, in particular for the fire service, where many firefighters are volunteers and must be dispatched from wide geographic areas to an incident.  NPSTC conducted a review of defaulting paging licensees to demonstrate how that the spectrum is available and submitted a Petition for Rulemaking (PFR), still under review, asking the FCC to consider allocating some of those channels to public safety.

Last year we created a Technology Education page.  Come learn more about E911, LMR 101, or browse our Best Practices for In-Building Communications.  Visit the COML page [Communications Unit Leader] for course descriptions, forms, and curricula.  And be sure to check out our Narrowbanding page; only until January 1, 2013, before narrowbanding must be completed.

If you would like to participate in one of the quarterly Governing Board meetings, you may register at the meetings webpage.  If you wish to receive email updates on meetings and other relevant public safety communications issues, you may sign up for the NPSTC Participants list on Yahoo Groups at:  NPSTC-PARTICIPANTS-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

For over 15 years, the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council has played a key role in influencing national policy and regulatory issues regarding wireless communications and interoperability.  The nation has come a long way throughout these years and much has been accomplished; however, a great deal of work lies ahead before our country achieves a robust public safety communications infrastructure.  NPSTC is sure to play a significant leadership role in the years ahead in helping to advance our nation's emergency communication systems which have proven so vital to the protection of lives and property in events such as the terrorist acts of Oklahoma City and 9/11, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and just as important, the day to day events that require collaboration of our public safety servants.

NPSTC's ongoing dialogue on national public safety telecommunication issues affects policies and technologies that affect local organizations every day.  NPSTC actively seeks your participation as a person interested in public safety telecommunications.  As a NPSTC participant you can impact national policies of tomorrow and be a part of planning the future course of public safety communications today by being part of the debate and discussion.  For more information, please free to contact us.