Orange County, Calif., May Be Successful Model for Interoperable Communications Systems

The assertion that all responders from cities within one county should share an interoperable communications system really isn't debatable in the United States. The delays caused by a lack of interoperable communications between fire and police at the World Trade Center on 9/11 are common knowledge. But many counties still struggle to persuade first responder agencies in cities to agree on uniform system specs.

Their concerns are serious. In 2003, the National Task Force on Interoperability outlined five obstacles to achieving county interoperability. The task force blamed:

• aging and incompatible equipment;
• fragmented budget cycles;
• limited and fragmented planning and coordination;
• limited and fragmented spectrum; and
• agency resistance to uniform equipment standards.

However, four years before that report, Orange County, Calif., managed to connect all of its responders in 31 cities on the same 800 MHz trunk radio system. The system supports more than 17,000 radios and averages about 55,000 transmissions daily. The trunk system uses 81 channels and has nearly 400 talkgroups.

Local governments that still struggle to achieve similar levels of interoperability can look to Orange County for insight on how to make it happen.

Resisting the Standard

Motivating agencies that control their own budget to agree on unified standards can seem out of reach. It's a paramount obstacle to interoperability in most counties, according to Harlin McEwen, chairman of the Communications and Technology Committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. First responders continue to fear that losing control over the system will keep them from ensuring that it meets their needs. Also, if the system doesn't perform to their liking, what recourse do they have?

But that wasn't a problem in Orange County, said Scott Maddy, communications specialist for the Anaheim Police Department (APD), which shares the Orange County system. Maddy, who joined the APD in 1972, oversaw the agency's migration in 1999 to the new system.

One key to this end was a technical-liaison committee that met monthly for six years to assure that the technical and operational issues were resolved. The committee included sworn and nonsworn personnel, technical and nontechnical personnel, field and dispatch, and all disciplines -- including fire, police and public works.

In addition, Orange County's communications staff branched off into several radio shops, each specializing in a particular aspect of responder communications. One shop focuses on dispatch needs, another on mobile radios, and so forth.

"Say a packset [multichannel radio] no longer functions. I drop it off with the county communications staff, and I usually have it back within a couple of days," Maddy said. "They are very attentive to anything that law, fire or public works need. I don't think it could get any better."

Even if centralized communications teams understand how to address multiagency concerns enlisting those agencies into a centralized system would sometimes be difficult because the agencies are focused on their own budget agendas. However, Orange County didn't have that problem, either. Since the 1930s, Orange County has had a communications department, in one agency or another, orchestrating communications for the entire county. That led to a cultural embrace of countywide communications strategies, said Robert Stoffel, division director of the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

"We kind of looked out for all of the cities, and everything we did, we did in concert with them," Stoffel said.

As for the fragmented budget problem, Orange County also had a solution for that.

Each responder agency is usually on a different budget cycle, so it's difficult to combine funding to purchase