A CAD for All Comers: Specs Will Detail Needs of Combined Centers

   You have a spanking-new state-of-the-art unified 9-1-1 call center in the works, and it's time to start soliciting proposals for computer-aided dispatch systems. What do you need in a CAD, and how do you communicate those requirements to vendors?

   If you're just dispatching cops, it's easy enough: You have a document produced a few years back by the Law Enforcement Information Technology Standards Council, Standard Functional Specifications for Law Enforcement Computer-Aided Dispatch Systems, easily located online, that outlines the functionality you'll want. But if yours is a combined center--dispatching EMS and/or fire in addition to law enforcement--you lack such a handy template.

   In another six months or so, you won't. Working under a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, APCO International and the IJIS Institute are engaged in a project to broaden those functional specs for law enforcement CADs to encompass EMS and fire as well.

   APCO is the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International. IJIS is a nonprofit consortium that works to improve public- and private-sector information sharing in public safety and homeland security. Together they will manage a project to produce functional CAD specifications for centers serving law enforcement, fire service and EMS applications. The project is known as UCADS.

   "There seems to be a growing momentum for consolidation" in dispatch centers, says Stephen Wisely, APCO's director of comm center and 9-1-1 services. "With that consolidation, many centers require CAD systems that are not only for law enforcement, but serve a unified mission. The law enforcement specifications document is several years old now, and technology can change pretty fast, and so the BJA saw value in coming up with a unified functional specification."

   The goal is to help the EMS, fire, law enforcement and emergency communications communities with support for the planning, acquisition and management of CAD applications. Those implementing systems will know what to ask for in RFPs, and vendors will have guidance to help provide it.

   The effort acknowledges that, while many public-safety CAD systems were designed around law enforcement needs, many have inherited the responsibility of dispatching fire and EMS as well. They've typically managed that well enough, to a point. For an EMS system to serve its patients optimally and run its operations efficiently, though, a bit more is needed.

   Most of that has already been mapped out. Last year, as part of their Public Safety Data Interoperability Project, IJIS and APCO completed a Revision Assessment for the Incorporation of Fire and EMS Functions into the Law Enforcement CAD Functional Specifications. Available from IJIS, this document identifies and describes the fire and EMS CAD functionality to be added, along with various changes to language and format needed for the law enforcement document.

   Now, for the APCO/IJIS project team, it becomes a matter of integrating those functions--plus whatever else members identify--into the new CAD document.

   "It really gets into operational capabilities, so we really want to make sure the integration of EMS and fire is seamless," says Wisely. "This document needs to help everybody understand how to move forward and actually facilitate CAD systems appropriate for all first responders."

   The work will be completed by a broad-based project team that includes subject-matter experts in communications/dispatch, EMS, fire and more. As well as the specifications document, the team will produce recommendations for maintaining and updating unified CAD systems.

   Members got down to business in December, and the project is anticipated to conclude by the end of August 2011. For more: www.apco911.org, www.ijis.org.