Connectivity 101: Enhancing Public Safety
in the Age of Mobility
Your organization keeps the peace, protects the public, and saves lives, all at a moment’s notice. Working for a public safety
agency is a stressful job; one often driven by the emotions of those your team serves. For the citizens you interact with on a
day-to-day basis, it may be one of the most stressful moments of their lives. And for your employees, it is just another day at
work. But with connectivity you can help everyone breathe a little easier. How? It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3.
In today’s fast-paced world, public safety agencies must be increasingly proactive to respond promptly and effectively in all
types of crisis situations, including large-scale catastrophes, terror events, and threats to critical infrastructure. Such situations
can be stressful, not only to those affected by the incident, but also to those tasked to respond. Thankfully, your agency can now
meet these challenges in a way that positively affects all involved. How? Through the connectivity of secure networks that bring
together integrated voice, video, and data capabilities. By delivering true connectivity to your emergency mobile communications,
your team members can experience three simple, but potentially life-changing, benefits:
1. Reducing time between incident detection and response
2. Empowering personnel in the field to make decisions based on all available information
3. Disseminating information that is accurate to the right people at the right time.
A faster response, empowered personnel, and delivery of more accurate information: It all adds up to enhanced situational
awareness for your public safety team, and helps everyone breathe a little easier.
Maximizing Your Return on Connectivity
To be effective, your agency must first develop the strategies and capabilities that will lay a strong foundation for connectivity.
This includes developing the ability to support multiple devices and modes of communications: radio, smartphones, video, bringyour-own-device (BYOD) programs. You must also provide access to shared services appropriate for collaboration among local,
national, and defense-related organizations. Your agency must deliver intelligence and knowledge-based tools that facilitate
situational awareness and increase coordination.
There are also two key factors that are proving to have major impacts on emergency mobile communications today. These
are the use of commercial access technologies such as 3G and LTE that are already widely adopted in the United States, and
integration with commercial networks as an access to purpose-built public-safety network infrastructure and services. So, as
you develop your agency’s strategies and capabilities for connectivity, be sure to think beyond your private network and prepare
for future impacts and the opportunities they provide.
How Can Connectivity Increase Situational Awareness?
Connectivity is the key to making your agency faster, smarter, and more accurate. But what tools should you use? To maximize
your agency’s increase in situational awareness, we suggest a focus on the following core areas.
Mobility: Reducing incident detection and response time is priority number one for your team. A secure, always-on network
with integrated voice, video, and data capabilities is necessary to achieve this goal. Check out the Cisco AnyConnect® Secure
Mobility solution to learn how you can use mobility to your advantage.
Rapid deployment mobile field communications: The ability to lead operations from the field is increasingly important in today’s
public safety environment. Your agency must have a highly mobile and rapidly deployable option that works across departments
and organizations. It should be self-contained, preconfigured, and able to survive several days without outside support. Learn
more at Cisco® NERV (Network Emergency Response Vehicle).
Connectivity 101: Enhancing Public Safety
in the Age of Mobility
Video surveillance: New advances in video surveillance cameras, analytics, and automated-response capabilities help make
video a powerful tool that departments can use to extend their vision and increase their speed and precision of decision making.
Networked video solutions protect assets, prevent perimeter breaches, and collect evidence, serving as a great force multiplier
for law enforcement agencies. To learn more, check out Surveillance for Situational Awareness.
Interoperability and collaboration: In times of emergency, especially natural disasters, it is critical that your public safety agency
be able to communicate across platforms in both traditional and nontraditional ways. Radio, videoconferencing, and multimedia;
as well as IP phones, cell phones, PCs, and mobile devices, all become critical tools at these times. Your agency must ensure
that they can all communicate and collaborate with each other. Visit Cisco’s IP Interoperability and Collaboration System for more
details.
Getting Started
Public safety agencies share common challenges in carrying out their missions, whether they are police, firefighters, or
paramedics. They are often faced with budgetary constraints, which can reduce manpower and force agencies to rely on
outdated equipment at times. The public safety community would do well to share a common approach in helping to transform
and improve its systems. It can employ an approach that uses technology and up-to-date collaboration tools to get the most out
of its human assets, to share ideas and methods with agencies across the country and around the world, to create cultural shifts,
and to modernize teaching and training. So, when developing your connectivity strategy, focus on the following:
1. Seek community - Keep your community in mind and encourage idea contribution.
2. Find inspiration - Find best practices of other public safety agencies around the world.
3. Open dialogue - Create a dialogue in an online medium focused on best practices and ways to improve.
4. Join partnerships - Expand your partner network to bring your vision and strategy to fruition.
5. Expand knowledge - Become familiar with the video and collaboration technologies of today.
6. Plan growth - Consider how to scale your technology beyond your agency.
To learn more about recommended strategy implementation and how Cisco can help you transform your public safety
organization, visit us at Public Safety and Security for Government or contact us at [email protected].
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