The highest ratings in a 179-page assessment released Wednesday went to the regions centered on Washington, D.C.; San Diego; Minneapolis-St. Paul; Columbus, Ohio; Sioux Falls, S.D.; and Laramie County, Wyo. The lowest scores went to regions centered around Chicago; Cleveland; Baton Rouge, La.; Mandan, N.D.; Yellowstone County, Mont.; and American Samoa.
All 75 areas have policies in place for interoperability, the report said, noting that "cooperation among first responders in the field is strong." However, "formalized governance (leadership and planning) across regions has lagged."
Of the areas checked, more than 60 percent are able to talk to each other in a crisis. But only 21 percent showed the "seamless use of equipment" needed to communicate with each other and with state and federal officials, the report said.
The assessment looked at many factors for why firefighters, police and medical personnel in cities, counties and towns fail to provide top-notch interoperability, including their reliance on older technology. But DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said outdated technology is not the only impediment to progress.
"Interoperability...is more than just a matter of technology," he said in remarks posted on the DHS Web site. "People tend to think about it as 'We've just got to find the right radio or the right communications device and then everybody can talk to everybody else.' But in fact, true interoperability also involves matters of governance, policy making...[and] standard operating procedures."
The most difficult element is reaching agreement on interoperability standards and protocols, Chertoff said, although cultural resistance has also played a role. "In some communities, not all, there are some long-standing cultural differences between different kinds of responders -- police, fire and EMS -- that have caused resistance to working together," he said.
For example, officials in some regions differ about whether their communities should drop the short-hand 10-code for a more universal language, especially since the codes can vary from place to place, he said.
Chertoff warned against comparing one region to another in the assessment, noting that Chicago had previously scored well in an assessment of interoperability in 2004. The reason the Chicago region as a whole rated in the lowest group in the latest ranking was because of the inclusion of all of Cook County, which includes 128 municipalities along with Chicago. "What the scorecard identified was these two entities, the city [of Chicago] and the county, needed to come together and work more effectively as a unified whole to building interoperability across the entire region," Chertoff said.
Chicago's Office of Emergency Management and Communications issued a statement shortly after the DHS evaluation was released, saying, "We strongly disagree with the results of this study, and feel the parameters of the study were inconsistent and limited." Chicago's own emergency communications have been lauded by DHS in the past, the agency noted, adding that the Chicago region was the largest urban area evaluated in the DHS scorecard.
"Surprisingly, technology capabilities were not included in the DHS evaluation of interoperability," the statement added. If that had been done, "it would have found the City of Chicago is fully capable of communicating with radios from Cook County and any of our 128 other municipal jurisdictions in the county." Further, a new IP-bridging technology helps the region communicate with equipment from New York to Los Angeles "and any jurisdiction in between."
"We have confidence in our ability to effectively and rapidly communicate with other municipalities in the Chicago region, as well as [with] our local, state and federal partners -- and we have proven this on multiple occasions."
Some regions in the assessment had to provide interoperability only between a handful of communities, including Boston -- where nine jurisdictions were measured. The result was a high rating on all areas. By comparison, Kansas City, Mo., got the same high rating but was assessed on interoperability between eight counties and more than 100 cities.
The regions were judged in three areas: operating procedures in place, use of communications systems and how effectively local governments coordinated in disaster preparations. For each of those three criteria, there were four possible ratings: early implementation, intermediate implementation, established implementation and advanced implementation.
Chertoff talked about why Washington, D.C., rated in the highest group, noting that all first responders in the National Capital Region from Virginia, Washington or Maryland can communicate with each other either directly or through use of bridging or gateway technology. In addition, the region has a backup system of 1,200 interoperable radios that are pre-positioned across the jurisdictions to be brought to a disaster scene within two hours. Also, various entities have established mutual aid agreements to allow first responders to operate on each other's radio channels. The region also uses a common data platform to allow various emergency operations centers to plug into the same system for greater situational awareness, Chertoff said.
in his remarks, Chertoff reiterated his commitment to reach an advanced level of interoperability in all three rating categories by 2009. He did not discuss the costs involved, noting instead that the government has provided more than $2.9 billion to communities around the nation, since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when interoperability was identified as a great need.
Some Democrats have criticized Republican attempts to bolster interoperability, and measures have been introduced in Congress to mandate higher spending for interoperable technology.