When you drive through rural parts of Ohio there are many symbols of the way things used to be. One of the most idyllic are the one room schoolhouses. As with many cultural “good-old-days” touchstones, we have a picture in our mind of what these places were like. All of the children from the community sharing an education. A blackboard. Maybe those old small desks. One teacher, likely female and not much older than the students, providing a guiding and enlightening voice to the well behaved, mannerly, and i-phone-less generations. Truth be told, my family even has a bell and chair from the one-room school house where my grandfather briefly served as a teacher. The building still stands on a serene country road near Otway, Ohio.
Today, in the 9-1-1 community, we have our own versions of one-room schoolhouses. They are places where, for many reasons, communities continue to support Public Safety Answering Points that are the modern equivalent of a Laura Ingalls Wilder novella. Where the reasons for maintaining the status quo are just as quaint, but also troubling.
I have nothing against the work done in these small centers. I started out in one. Working, by myself, as a Fire-EMS Dispatcher in Central Ohio. I loved it. It taught me how to do my job. Skills such as creativity, prioritization, and improvisation were essential. But I can also say, without any doubt now, that the risk was far greater than the reward.
The time has come to acknowledge that to provide the best possible service to the public, we must have a serious conversation about what is the “right-size” for a 9-1-1 center. The challenges are operational, technical, and human. If the profession of 9-1-1 is to continue, if the service people expect of 9-1-1 is to continue, if we are to leverage all of the technical benefits of a modernized public safety communications environment, then the time is now to have the hard conversations and develop the plans regarding what size a 9-1-1 center should be?
The operational challenges of small (3 person or less) 9-1-1 centers are readily apparent. When these centers experience an overload situation, it is very difficult for them to process all of the calls and provide services such as Emergency Medical Dispatch, Tactical/Incident Dispatch, or to support a full-fledged Supervisor on the Dispatch Floor. This may be true even during normal operations. If the same person is expected to answer the phone and talk on the radio—someone will be forced to wait. That will either be the caller or the field responder. Or perhaps both. And if they are in a life-threatening situation, waiting could be disastrous.
There are technical solutions to this. We have the ability to route calls to other centers if a primary 9-1-1 destination is busy. We are getting better at getting the calls dispatched, which is an order of magnitude more challenging than answering a phone. However, the complexity of a multi-point dispatch system adds a great deal of potential failure points to a life critical system, something that we should avoid at all costs. Moreover, when you involve multiple agencies, you have to have common procedures, common terminology, and consistent service. This adds more complexity. To go one step further, there is a cost involved in technology and which allows agencies to more effectively share information and calls. The more physical locations that you have connected, the more cost. So, if you have to have everyone sharing a system—and they have to have the same policies and procedures—then are they really separate anymore anyway?
The last element is the human characteristics of our smaller PSAPs and those that lead them. Sadly, there are more than a few which exist only to further the ego of the person in-charge. They have long lost their operational necessity but remain because “that’s the way we have always done it” or “we want to keep local control.” The reality is this. An ineffective PSAP that cannot support even a moderately busy period has already lost control. It is dependent on luck—on the help of neighbors—and of the skill of its personnel for success. It has not created an environment that minimizes risk. In fact, it is creating risk every day for both its citizens and its field responders. At what cost shall come the furtherance of tradition or the fallacy of control?
Even more importantly, undersized organizations also contribute to a bigger challenge—how to ensure that professional 9-1-1 personnel remain in the profession and see it as a career. Job Enrichment is a very important element of any successful organization. If you keep people doing the exact same thing for months, years, or decades their skills will actually deteriorate. They will become set in their ways, resistant to change, and lose the desire to improve themselves. The US Military learned this long ago—there are no thirty-year privates. The goal is to advance in your proficiency, ability, and responsibility. A 9-1-1 organization that is overly small, by its nature, lacks the opportunities for people to grow in their organization. They are forced to look elsewhere if they want to promote, or even change job duties. At a minimum, 9-1-1 centers should be sized to support multiple career levels—from starting as a call-taker, to being a fully certified dispatcher, trainer, supervisor, and so on. If someone wants to remain at one level, much like a police officer, that opportunity can be provided, but personnel should have the chance to grow in their organization. This is good for them and for the community and for a field that is experiencing a nearly constant staffing crisis.
In short, the time has come. For many reasons, we need to discuss what the best minimum size of a 9-1-1 center is and work together towards creating those types of organizations. Keep in mind, there is a maximum as well. It may be technically possible for an entire state to have one 9-1-1 call-taking and dispatch facility, but that may equally problematic. Physical and operational redundancy, commuting distances, span-of-control, and many other factors may determine the upper end of the equation. There is also still a need for 9-1-1 professionals to understand the geography of the communities they serve. Perhaps not at quite the same level as 50 years ago, but through a combination of training, technology, and awareness, 9-1-1 professionals are better at their jobs when they have a decent (or better) knowledge of geography. Relationships between 9-1-1 personnel, their community, and field responders are also underappreciated and sometimes forgotten. None-the-less, those are issues which can be solved much more easily than a single person or even two people trying to do all the work entailed in a modern Public Safety Communications Environment. God Bless them for trying—and they are doing amazing work all over this country every day. But we owe it to them and the communities they serve to find ways to do better—to reduce liability, improve service, and modernize our technology. The boarded up one room school houses show that there is a better way, let us ring the bell of the future and of improved public safety and usher in a new era of Public Safety Communications.
No comments:
Post a Comment