Service management for enhanced safety networks

Interoperability between different agencies has been highlighted as one of the key challenges to improve emergency services’ responses to incidents - ranging from accidents to natural disasters and terrorist attacks. Mark Ward, national business development manager for Airwave Solutions Australia, explains the benefits of taking a ‘service management’ approach to address this challenge.

For emergency services to carry out fast and effective rescue and relief, it is essential for different agencies to be able to communicate directly with each other. Often referred to as ‘interoperability’, this facility allows separate organisations to exchange crucial information in a timely manner.

Moreover, it enables all agencies to base their decision-making on the latest collective intelligence and to react with an informed, efficient and coordinated approach.

However, without interoperability in place the efficiency and effectiveness of the response will necessarily be compromised. There is likely to be a ‘disconnect’ between command levels across different agencies and this may manifest itself as a lack of clarity regarding the incident status.

As a consequence, agency personnel may receive incomplete briefings and this, in turn, might lead to important decisions being made in isolation.

Overall, this disconnect in communication can result in delays in the deployment of needed capabilities to the incident scene and can potentially instigate the mobilisation of the wrong resources.

Increasingly, public safety organisations are being held to account for these institutional shortcomings - by the public, the media and through judicial process. An example of this is the Royal Commission established to investigate the handling of the Victorian bushfires in February 2009.

Here, the lack of interoperability - both on an inter- and intra-service level - has been highlighted as a key area in which improvements need to be made to optimise future capabilities.

A commitment to improve on interoperability performance necessitates the devotion of extensive resources to planning, training and exercising by all agencies involved. For the best results, it also requires that all communication network service providers are very much included in these activities.

As with the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, reviews following countless other major incidents around the world have highlighted poor interoperability between agencies as a key area for targeted improvement.

It is often assumed that technological issues restrict inter- and intra-agency communication, but the development of current communication standards - such as TETRA and P25 - have overcome many of the hurdles that once existed.

In the modern environment, most surviving communication deficiencies endure as a result of organisational cultural barriers and from parochial planning and process issues.

Here, the service provider is well placed to participate actively as a resource to help cut through these obstacles - providing invaluable insights into the health of multiple technology networks being managed and deliver crucial real-time status information to the incident commander.

This real-time information can be used to improve the level of response, limit the amount of danger people are placed into and potentially save lives.

Figure 1: Network health information can be used to improve the level of response, limit the amount of danger people are placed into, and potentially save lives.

During an incident, for example, a network site may be affected either by the incident itself or by secondary factors and these may cause coverage to be reduced. In this instance, it would be beneficial for the despatcher to be given a visual indication of the extent of coverage degradation.

Given this information, an incident commander could make real choices on whether to apply a different communications medium and would be further empowered to make informed decisions on the advisability of deploying additional resources into an area with known limited communications coverage.

However, with few exceptions around the world, it is not usual for service providers to be included in operational activities to this degree - an oversight now regarded by many as a missed opportunity.

Figure 2: The service provider is well placed to provide invaluable insights into the health of the technologies being managed.

It is commonplace today across public safety networks in Australia and New Zealand for communication services to be outsourced to third-party service providers via a contracts management group within an agency. Often, the contracts management group will manage this at arms length, characteristically with little involvement from end-users.

A service provider is typically required to ‘manage a service’ against a set of contractual key performance indicators (KPIs) drawn up by the contracts management group. These usually reflect the risk profile of the outsourcing arrangement of that service, rather than how the end user actually wishes to operate the network.

Moreover, while real-time network monitoring capabilities are available, the service provider tends only to report those elements that the contract requires them to report, rather than the actual issues that an end-user incident commander or despatcher needs to know for effective operational decision-making.

This approach can leave the service provider somewhat blind as to how the end user wants to use the service and generally does not address any failures of the service delivered.

For example, a contract might allow a specified number of outage hours each month. If these targets are achieved then, from a contractual perspective, the service levels are being met, irrespective of the fact that they might have occurred during an incident when full coverage was needed.

Here, the contractual arrangement is actually hampering the effective delivery of communications services and this tends to result in a continual disengagement between the service provider and the end user.

To better align the efforts of both user and service provider, there is a need for a greater collaborative understanding of the operational needs of the end user. This can be achieved through the ‘service management’ approach.

Figure 3: For emergency services to carry out fast and effective rescue and relief, reliable communications are essential.

This methodology ensures the service provider applies customer-driven Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)-compliant processes that consider both change management and capacity management.

Instead of being wholly focussed on KPIs - as is the case in some current managed-service environments - the service provider can now monitor the health of the network in real time and correct deficiencies as they arise.

The user has transparent access to the same real-time network information, creating a partnership of trust that focuses on corrective and preventative activities. With this approach, the commercial KPIs end up looking after themselves, instead of being the prime focus.

An example of where this has worked well is Airwave’s implementation and overhaul of Britain’s public safety communications infrastructure. Here, the company has provided training on the network technology to tactical advisors within the end users’ organisations and these personnel are able to advise incident commanders how different responses will affect the performance of the network.

These tactical advisors are also able to liaise directly with Airwave operatives to make network changes in real time - such as to dynamic talk-group configurations or real-time priority changes - to allow a better flow of information during an incident.

Underpinning the service management approach is a combination of service culture and IS0 20000-accredited service management systems and processes. Well-developed IT support platforms are essential, but without the service-oriented values service providers cannot reach the high standard of care their customers demand.

For the service provider to be in a position where it can deliver effective service management such as this, there needs to be a fundamental shift in established roles - such that the service provider now acts in a true partnership position with the end-user agency.

Ideally, the service provider should be involved in all planning, training and exercises, thereby gaining the understanding required to be able to tailor the network performance to the exact requirements of the agency. This is a far cry from the situation many agencies find themselves in today, where the technology itself dictates how they respond to an incident.

Planning can be conducted for predictable events, such as New Year’s Eve, where it is known that large numbers of people congregated in certain areas will cause stresses on both the police and ambulance services.

For these events, a service provider can plan the requirements of the network in advance in collaboration with the agencies likely to be involved and - if necessary - redeploy resources where they are most likely to be needed.

By contrast, an incident response - such as an accident - cannot be pre-planned to the same degree. Here, it might be necessary to reconfigure the network ‘on the fly’ to ensure all involved agencies can communicate adequately within their own chains of command and with each other.

The ability to engineer network changes on-demand delivers unprecedented flexibility and responsiveness to changing requirements, and allows the focus to remain where it is needed - on supporting the front-line staff at the incident scene.

To put a system like this in place in Australia and New Zealand would be relatively easy from a technological standpoint. However, the challenge here is to overcome the cultural hurdles embedded within the agencies and legacy service providers to combat the natural resistance to change that is a feature of any established relationships.

While many agencies have already come to the realisation that the systems they currently employ do not cater for all their needs, most are uncertain how to achieve their expectations.

Airwave experienced exactly these challenges in the delivery of its countrywide public safety communications infrastructure in Britain. By working in partnership with the agencies and determining firsthand what their operational requirements were, many of the cultural humps were smoothed away.

Over time, these agencies have come to understand that the service management approach offers the operational flexibility they need and also delivers a greater transparency of service in the way the information is captured and displayed.

The Australia and New Zealand public safety networks stand to gain the many advantages already being enjoyed by their counterparts in Britain. The service management approach provided by specialist public-safety service providers enhances the responsiveness of the communication network to changing conditions.

This allows safer deployment to - and recovery of resources from - an incident. The end result is emergency service operatives on the front line who are better equipped and better informed to safely serve and protect their communities.

Figure 4: Service management ehances the responsiveness of the communication network to changing conditions, allowing safer deployment to an incident.