Dallas must get public safety basics right
The city lost a huge amount of data from the Dallas Police Department this spring during a routine case file transfer. It was an avoidable management and technology frenzy that is the subject of an FBI investigation and a separate independent review of what went wrong and why.
Meanwhile, serious industrial accidents at the city’s 911 call center have plagued and delayed emergency responses for years. That summer, Dallas police and other department workers took shifts as emergency dispatchers to temporarily reduce caller shortages and call delays. Even then, only a fraction of the calls were answered within the national efficiency standard. City officials are hoping for improvements in the new city budget to hire more than 60 new civilian 911 call center workers.
Reliable public safety in Dallas depends on technology, human resources, and training as solutions, not on persistent problems getting in the way. However, inefficiency can also threaten public safety. City officials recently announced that the automatic voice messaging system that notifies Dallas fire departments of emergency calls is so unreliable that calls have been missed. An emergency dispatcher is now calling fire stations to make sure the fire department does not miss any emergency calls.
Dallas chief information officer Bill Zielinski and fire chief Dominique Artis say the fire alarm system is several software versions old and does not work properly with Windows 7 or Windows 10, the city’s computer operating systems. One anecdote from Councilor Cara Mendelsohn is particularly worrying.
Mendelsohn said she heard firefighters responding to a fire were surprised that firefighters at another station closer to the fire had not responded. “You never heard it,” said Mendelsohn. “It was the middle of the night and the apartment complex suffered a lot more damage than it probably would have had” [Station] 10 assumed. “
The fire warning system will most likely need to be replaced, and Zielinski says the fire department’s new budget includes federal funding to buy a new system. After the missing data debacle, Dallas police and IT officials are now working on a comprehensive review of police data collection and storage to keep up with the increasing volume. According to an important recommendation in the initial investigation into data loss by the city, the police would benefit from the introduction of a centralized data management system and a special group to develop and monitor implementation, guidelines and standards.
Taken in isolation, each of these problems is manageable, even if worrying. Taken together, they indicate a wider dysfunction that is harming residents.
The city needs an answer that will restore confidence that we have mastered the fundamentals of technology properly so that our first responders are ready for their jobs.
Do you have an opinion on this subject? Send a letter to the editor and you might get published.
[ad_1]
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2021/10/18/dallas-has-to-get-public-safety-basics-right/