3 Areas the First Responder Community Needs Industry Support

Tomas O’Keefe, Consultant, Market Intelligence

Interoperability was the buzz word at AFCEA Bethesda’s Law Enforcement IT Day. Government speakers gave first-hand accounts of the challenges they’re experiencing and where they could use some industry support. Interoperability is a persistent challenge for government, as agencies struggle to work with each other and properly share information across different devices in different environments. The law enforcement and public safety community are increasingly struggling in their information sharing efforts with State and Local municipalities and the COTS community can offer support to our government end users.

There are three main areas of concern among federal law enforcement and public safety groups when it comes to interoperability with their state and local partners.

1. Information sharing across different devices and different platforms, particularly in localities where small budgets have prevented law enforcement or first responders from updating to the most advanced technology.
2. Security and levels of classification, the ability to properly tag metadata and be able to remove sensitive information quickly to ensure critical information gets to the state or local first responder. Because legally, federal authorities are obligated to retain sensitive information, but still need to be able to alert local communities when they receive intelligence that’s linked to a credible threat.
3. Speed of implementation, is critical during crisis scenarios, so an effective first responder response can be developed and deployed ensuring maximum citizen safety.

While interoperability is a constant challenge for first responders, there are examples where it’s really working. The federal government works together with state and local partners at fusion centers staffed by personnel from all levels of government. Also, information sharing efforts are put into practice at the National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center. But, it’s your product that could help enable the mobility solutions to benefit the first responder in the field, alleviate security hang ups federal end users have about information sharing, and help provision resources for law enforcement and public safety professionals when disaster strikes.

If you sell technologies that better enable information sharing, mobility solutions, metadata tagging, security of data-at-rest or in-transit, or help provision bandwidth or data transmission, be on the lookout for opportunities from DHS, DOJ, and FirstNet (the First Responder Network) that can benefit both your federal customers and state and local end users.

Need help identifying top decision-makers and opportunities within federal law enforcement or the state and local markets? Contact immixGroup’s industry-leading Market Intelligence team today to learn about specific states and agencies that have a pressing need for your solution.