Planning for the Future of Cyberattack Attribution
Date: Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Time: 11:00 AM
Location: 2318 Rayburn HOB
Opening Statement By Chairman David Wu
Good morning and thank you for coming to today’s hearing focused on interoperability in public safety communication equipment.
We’ve learned an important lesson from September 11th, Hurricane Katrina, and other disasters: interoperable communication is critical to effective emergency response. When time is of the essence and lives are at stake, a clear flow of information is essential. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for police officers and firefighters from a single region, or even a single city, to be using incompatible communication systems. This lack of interoperability has contributed to the deaths of first responders and hindered the ability to rescue people in harm’s way.
Enabling interoperable communication systems, where public safety personnel can talk with each other in real-time, takes planning and cooperation by all levels of government. However, interoperability also demands radios that are capable of communicating with one another. First responders on digital land mobile radio systems built to proprietary specifications cannot communicate. Ad-hoc solutions, like patching technologies or sharing radios, are less efficient than the seamless interoperability offered by systems based on open architecture.
The purpose of today’s hearing is to examine the status of the standards development process for this open architecture. Since 1989, the public safety community and industry have been working together on Project-25, or P25, a suite of standards that will not only enable interoperability, but also promote competition in the marketplace for digital land mobile radio systems and provide other benefits. While there has been a lot of progress on the P25 standards since 1989, the entire set of standards remains incomplete. I would like to understand the implications of this for public safety agencies procuring systems sold as “P25 compliant” and get a better sense of when we realistically can expect all of the standards to be completed.
A second issue that we will discuss today is the lack of a formal compliance assessment process for the P25 standards. A compliance assessment process signals to the purchaser that a product meets all of the requirements of a standard. Any laptop with a Wi-Fi logo, or any toaster with an Underwriter’s Laboratory sticker, had to go through testing and certification to be able to display those marks. P25 does not have an equivalent process. The Department of Homeland Security’s Compliance Assessment Program fills this gap, but we must be sure it provides the highest possible level of assurance to the public safety community that systems sold as P25-complaint actually meet all of the requirements of the standards. It seems to me that there ought to be a formal, comprehensive system in place to ensure that it is not caveat emptor when first responders spend millions of dollars on complex communications technology.
The most important question for the first responders who rely on this equipment is “does it work?” In addition to being mission-critical technology, these systems represent major expenditures for government agencies across the country. Particularly at a time of uncertain and dwindling budgets, cost-effective procurement enabled by an open-architecture is essential.
I’d like to thank our witnesses for being here today. Project 25 is unique in the world of standards development in that the users of the technology—in this case, our public safety officials—are integral to, and directly involved in, the standards development process. It is important that this process move forward, and that the public safety community and industry continue to work together to make further advances in first responder technology.
Witnesses
Panel
1 - Mr. David A. Wheeler
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2 - Mr. Robert Knake
Program Manager Public Safety Communications Systems National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Public Safety Communications Systems National Institu
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3 - Mr. Ed Giorgio
Senior Scientist Harris Corporation Harris Corporation
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4 - Mr. Marc Rotenberg
Director of Business Development Motorola Inc. Motorola Inc.
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