Different Pieces and Systems

Guest: Russell Becker, Director, Science and Technology Directorate Office for Interoperability and Compatibility, Department of Homeland Security

Host: Deepak Saini, Media Relations Chief, Science and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security

[00:00:00] Russell Becker: You're Joe Public, right? You're just looking at, I want help. When I need help, I want it fast. That's all you want. That's all you should be worried about. 

[00:00:10] Dave DeLizza (Intro): This is technologically speaking, the official podcast for the Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate or S&T, as we call it. Join us as we meet the science and technology experts on the front lines, keeping America safe. 

[00:00:24] Deepak Saini: Welcome to Technologically speaking, the DHS S&T podcast that dives into research and development innovation, shaping America. We're joined by Russell Becker, director of the Office for Interoperability and Compatibility at S&T. We're living in an era where first responders rely on seamless communication across agencies, and Russell's work ensures that technology functions smoothly when it matters most. Welcome, Russell.

[00:00:50] Russell: Thank you, Dee.

[00:00:50] Deepak: I'm so glad you're here. So, let's start off with what's in your title; interoperability and compatibility. What does that mean, and how is that important, and vital to S&T's mission?

[00:01:01] Russell: So this office was born right out of the 9/11 commission report, where it said that first responders could not communicate with each other in the most critical time period. The Homeland Security Act stressed interoperability as a key mission for S&T. We have first responders that need to…it needs to work. At the core, the Office for Interoperability and Compatibility is about the ability for all emergency responders to securely communicate with whomever they need to, when they need to, at the most critical times we continue to work on that.

[00:01:32] Deepak: What would you say since 9/11, it's been over 20 years, right? I would say that the types of disasters and emergency response services must have changed over two decades. How would you say that this goal has changed over time, over the last 20 years?

[00:01:54] Russell: You know, I've talked to some folks that have said, “Oh, hey, interoperability is solved, right? I mean, good grief, it's been over 20 years, right?” And, we have made great progress, however, just to your point, technology changes. When this problem occurred, everybody was on analog. We're moving to digital, and I say moving, so many are already in the digital age, but we still have people in rural America, I say first responders, that are still on analog systems. So, technology evolves, absolutely. And part of the way it evolves, you get someone who breaks out and does something different and unique. Well, it's proprietary. It's their solution. Then someone else looks and says, “Hey, I can do better.” And they create something, a solution. And again, it's proprietary. And now you have potentially two or three, systems and or more out in the market and they don't talk to each other.

[00:02:49] Deepak: Yeah, so emergency personnel can work together more efficiently. I would love to just kind of dive into the importance of that mission.

[00:02:58] Russell: There's a lot of technical processes that go through looking at the different protocols, developing test procedures that allow us to effectively test when they work, or don't work with each other.

[00:03:10] Deepak: And this all happens in your Office of Interoperability and Compatibility, which is nestled within S&T's Technology Center Division.

[00:03:19] Russell: Right. The Technology Center Division's purpose is, we house the subject matter expertise, and we do research on those things that are maybe at a little lower technology readiness level. We look to find solutions. People don't even know what to ask, but we can see the technologies coming down the pipe and we can tailor those to homeland security needs or use cases. 

[00:03:45] Deepak: What are some of the mission critical projects you're working on?

[00:03:49] Russell: Oh wow. So, I would say one that we're working on right now is, push to talk, which allows your smart device, your phone, to operate like a radio. There's a number of those apps out there that do not work with each other or are not interoperable. We are also we're working on NG911 and the 911 centers needing to be able to provide each other mutual support. You need those systems to be interoperable.

[00:04:20] Deepak: Next generation 911, interoperability, you know, growing up in the eighties and nineties, for me, that was in the analog era, seemed pretty simple. Switchboards, you know, landline to landline, but the way that people reach one another on their independent cell phones with cell towers and 5G networks and whatnot, it seems like technology has changed so fast.

[00:04:44] Russell: So just like you, when I was a kid, I definitely remember the 911 analog, very much so. If you called 911 and a problem was crossing jurisdictional lines, then you very likely got hung up on or disconnected because they were not able to cross those lines.  We're technical, we're not policy, there are policy challenges associated with next generation 911 that are not mine to solve. But we look at the technical side. There are at least 30 different equipment providers that each support one or more elements of that, that make up the next generation 911 ecosystem, and when a provider goes to install these systems, there's a lot of integration cost. What we are striving to do is establish end-to-end testing, so going all the way from you or me dialing 911 through the 911 call center dispatch, and potentially crossing over to another call center or dispatch if the primary is overloaded or fails. There are times when we need me calling 911, the public, to be able to communicate directly with that officer or first responder in the field.

[00:05:55] Deepak: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:56] Russell: This is so important for the safety of not only the public, but also the officers.

[00:06:03] Deepak: Yeah, I mean, that helps you with a lot more functionality as well. That's been something that we haven't been able to do before, right? Because it seems like instead of one-to-one way communication, this provides you multiple prongs to reach some of the most important people, to help a person get the care they need, or the safety they need to get to. 

[00:06:22] Russell: I've talked to law enforcement, first responders that have talked about, “Hey, I need to be able to talk to that person when I'm out in the field. I'm about to go into a house, because there's something urgent, I need to hear what's going on. I need to talk to that person if it's possible.” I've also talked to call center operators and they've talked about yelling across the room, or writing stuff and handing it back and forth. I've talked to a first responder, law enforcement, that was about to knock on a door, and the 911 operator heard a shotgun click on the call. Thankfully, the 911 operator was able to quickly say “Step away from the door” and stop the officer from going in. But the officer would like to have heard that, you know? Been connected and heard that on the call. So, a lot of challenge, and by the way, you know, you mentioned earlier, all the new technology, well, who doesn't have video now? So, you've got people calling 911 and they've got video, but not just one person. When you have a serious event, let's just say it's an auto accident, or something even more serious, you could have four, or five, 20 different people dialing 911 and trying to not just talk, but also push video. And how do we get the right video or right message or connection to the officers, to the first responders in the field? That can be overwhelming for a call center. I'm stressing the call centers quite a bit here, well, they're the go between to get that connection and that information to the officer in the field, but ultimately it’s that officer in the field that is going in harm's way and interacting directly with the public.

[00:08:08] Deepak: I assume you would've had to spend quite a bit of time in your research and development to interview, or to get their use cases and, you know, just kind of get their pain points to figure out how to provide them solutions?

[00:08:21] Russell: We have spent quite a bit of time, and at the same time we never feel like it's enough. We have numerous meetings through the year where we’re talking to first responders, and they keep bringing up their stories, their problems. I know in the last year we went out to Chicago, and we had the fire chief out there talking to us about having lost three firefighters in a short period of time. That's not an anecdote, that's people's lives. It really, it's very impactful. So we're very passionate about what we do because of that.

[00:08:58] Deepak: How does your team, with your collective areas of expertise, even begin to tackle something like this?

[00:09:07] Russell: I'm passionate about working with the first responders and industry and it takes a lot of time and effort, a lot of negotiation, a lot of patience. Most of my team members have been here longer than I have, and they're so passionate about it. They're patient, they're trying, but all I can say is you take it a day at a time and you do your best to work with folks.

[00:09:30] Deepak: It seems instead of a phone or a landline-based system, we're trying to steer things more toward an IP based system. 

[00:09:37] Russell: I will tell you, there are still some analog landline systems out there, and there are a lot of digital landline systems out there.

[00:09:43] Deepak: We hear a lot about AI, and how AI is going to take over the world, it seems like it's being integrated into almost everything that we use, in almost every function of our systems. Does AI have a role here?

[00:09:59] Russell: Oh, heck yeah! So if you go back to the example I gave you, you have an incident where multiple people are calling 911 and they're sending video. In some cases, they may not be able to talk. Maybe they're not safe, but they're sending video. And then other people are yelling and screaming to try to get heard and may or may not be sending video. So, you’ve got all these different inputs coming into the system, and you may have only one or two call center operators. How do they process all that? How do they pick the video or the information that's best, and get that to that first responder out in the field that's about to be in harm's way? We're going to need an artificial intelligence to be able to help us select that video and say, man with gun, or something that indicates what's happening in the video, so that we can prioritize, that's the video we need to send forward, or that's the voice, we need to send forward. You don't necessarily want it to be the first call that comes in because the first call may not be the right call, may not have the right information, may not have the right view. I don't see how we're going to do that without a degree of artificial intelligence helping us.

[00:11:22] Deepak: Can you just dive in a little bit as to the importance of working with partners that have expertise in other areas of DHS, or outside? 

[00:11:32] Russell: I'm so glad that we have all those folks because the technical folks - while I have an operational background, my operational background is in the military. I've never been, and I'm not law enforcement, I've not done emergency management, I've not been an EMT, right? So, it's so important that we have their inputs, because they're the ones who are going to live it.

[00:11:58] Deepak: Yeah, I mean, they're the ones that are going to have to be the end users, at the end of the day.

[00:12:03] Russell: Well, and you as a public, you want that too, right? 

[00:12:05] Deepak: No, exactly.

[00:12:06] Russell: You don't want me sitting in a cubicle, figuring everything out, without having talked to the firefighter, or the police officer, it just wouldn't make sense. It's really a wonderful experience working with these folks, the first responders. You feel the challenges, but also the inspiration, the hope, you know, they're coming to work with this. 

[00:12:29] Deepak: Yeah, I mean that's what I have always appreciated about first responders. They always seem to have a growth mindset and, you know, look at the world glass, half full, right? Because you're always hanging on optimism, because you are doing some of the hardest, you know, jobs - and lives are at stake, and there's so much technicality involved in their jobs for things to go right. To get a little bit technical, what is the public safety answering point? It's also known as psap.

[00:13:01] Russell: Yeah, Public Safety Answering Point. That's a fancy way of saying, the 911 operator, where your call goes when you hit 911. It's going into a PSAP. Those PSAPs can vary in the way they're set up. You can have some that are very large, and you can have some that are, you know, a one person show. And then right next to that PSAP, whether it's virtual or literally, there'll be the dispatch. And now we're moving to computer aided dispatch, folks that are dispatching those first responders, communicating with those first responder agencies to say, “Hey, here's what's going on, here's what's needed, go there.” In many cases they are one and the same, or they are across the room, or right next to each other, and they need to very quickly connect, forward calls.

[00:13:49] Deepak: Yeah, their work is so important, especially the attention to detail, and focus, and concentration. That takes a special kind of human.

[00:14:00] Russell: The folks in that call center deal with a lot, they go through some pretty tough times. They hear people die on the line with them as they're trying to keep them alive, and they're only able to talk and listen. So a lot of stress there for them.

[00:14:12] Deepak: It's our jobs at S&T to focus on the technical aspect of things. But I think what drives us, and what can help projects like NextGen 911 be more successful, is remembering the human element, right? Just remembering that these are the types of people, and the types of stressors, and the types of incidents, that they have to go through, that helps you give more fuel to your fire.

[00:14:38] Russell: Yeah, those stories do keep us, moving, keep us, passionate about what we do. Because, I mean, ultimately, what is technology? It's a bunch of gadgets that, what does it matter? None of it matters if it doesn't provide a better quality of life for us, if it doesn't impact and do goodness for us.

[00:14:55] Deepak: Russell in doing this kind of R&D, did any of the findings, as you've been working on this, surprise you?

[00:15:01] Russell: You know, Dee, I think that what people would really be surprised about is the amount of technicality, and also the amount of challenges behind the scenes for interoperability. They have no idea how many different systems there are, how many of them are not interoperable. They just know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You know, hopefully more times, a whole lot more times than not, it works, but they don't realize where those seams and those challenges are. And they would be really surprised to see how much is being done by the operators, the 911 operators, and the folks on the backside to connect the dots and make things work manually.

[00:15:46] Deepak: Russell, talk to me about the difference between competition and innovation on one side, and then there's interoperability and compatibility on the other.

[00:15:54] Russell: There's a little bit of tension there. From an innovation side, folks will create some amazing new technologies or capabilities. However, when they do that, they're typically focused very specifically on, “How do I make this happen? How do I provide this capability?” And if they're doing something that's not been done before, or using technologies not used before, then they don't have a standard to follow. They're just making stuff happen, making great products. You get more and more folks enter into that space, but his stuff is proprietary, he doesn't have to share with anyone. Maybe he's got, patents, et cetera. Well, then I'm going to have to create my own, I know there's a market for that. So I'm going to create something else. Well, as we do that, and then all of a sudden we realize they need to work together because, fire department bought this, the police department bought that, and all of a sudden they need to work together. So, now you could say there's another opportunity. A business can come in and work a translation capability or, an interface. Then when they do that, if everyone is different across the nation, then you start getting all these one-off unique solutions to connecting these systems. When you look at cybersecurity, that creates all kinds of challenges for cybersecurity.

[00:17:20] Deepak: Yeah

[00:17:21] Russell: When you look at, it being in the digital age, and needing to update your software. All kinds of challenges. So that's why we try to move towards the interoperability and compatibility we want. We want systems to be able to operate together. One, they operate better, faster. Two, it drives down the cost for our public safety, our first responders systems, which means it drives down the cost for the American taxpayer. But it's a point of contention. What do you do with those companies that have developed products, and they're not interoperable? Hey, wait, I might have to redesign my product. That's going to drive up my individual cost. So there's a lot of challenges or stressors there. You want innovation, but once things get big enough, we really need the interoperability, and the first responders really want the interoperability. They want systems they believe best suit their needs, but then they need them interoperable, and so that's where I'm trying to help. 

[00:18:36] Russell: You're Joe Public, right? I mean, you should, you're just looking at, when I need help, I want it fast. That's all you want. That's all you should be worried about. 

[00:18:39] Deepak: Let's rewind back to when you were a kid. I mean, did you imagine yourself, you know, serving our country one day, falling into this line of work, or were you thinking you were going to head toward a whole different path?

[00:18:53] Russell: I grew up in, Texas, Houston, and I think somewhere around high school I realized I wanted to be in the military, did a lot of research and decided I wanted to be a Marine. Went to, did the college thing, and then, one thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was 28, almost 29, and I hadn't yet entered the Marine Corps, so I then entered the Marine Corps. Started off as an infantry officer and moved into communications. Did acquisitions, that's where I got my Master's in Electrical Engineering, bounced around the country, then went to, Okinawa, Japan for three years, and then over to US European Command for four and a half years and retired after 21 years out of US European command there in Stuttgart, Germany, and returned to the US and, started working for DHS S&T, in 2020. Been here five years.

[00:19:48] Deepak: You know, I feel like you have a very important mission that you work on, and you know, a lot of your work is very technical. A lot of your work helps the larger mission of homeland security for DHS, but you also have the side of yourself that is very nurturing with nature, and I want to dive into that. You have a farm, with geese, and chickens, and bees, that produce hundreds of pounds of honey. I feel like a lot of this also gives you some therapy right in your own backyard.

[00:20:20] Russell: Yeah, you know, it does help clear the mind. Most of that stuff my wife and daughters take care of during the week, and then I, you know, I may get up early and take care of the chickens or put them to bed at night, but, a lot of times, because of my work schedule, I'm on the weekends, so I come out on Saturday and spend a few hours in the, apiary working the bees. I saw something about another veteran beekeeper, commenting about how it helped with his PTSD. It helped. And I went, huh, you know, I think he's right. It does. That's not, we didn't get in that way, my wife got us into beekeeping. She said, “I want bees”, so we get into that and then I'm the one who reads all the manuals and the details and so forth.

[00:21:05] Deepak: Yeah, I feel like a lot of your background, or your technical expertise sometimes plays into just the setup and the maintaining of, you know, your farm animals, so I kind of feel like, during the day, you're this technical ranger that's helping solve a larger homeland security mission to improve emergency communications. And by night, you're providing for your neighbors.

[00:21:29] Russell: You know, actually, I would say, by night I'm husband and I'm dad. So having been in the military, moved around, one of the things I did everywhere we went is I made a point to make sure to integrate my family. How do I get my family integrated? Okay, we are going to have some chickens, but I got more chickens, because I wanted us to sell the eggs, because that got us interacting with the public, with our neighbors. People it might have taken us years to meet are coming up and stopping, “Hey, you got eggs?” And then the honey, the same thing. So, it's really been, I'd say more out of my husband and dad role that came, then, anything else. And it just really worked well. 

[00:22:10] Deepak: That's such a great story. Thank you, Russell. You were amazing. You were easy to talk to. Thank you so much.   

[00:22:17] Dave (Outro): Thank you for listening to Technologically Speaking. To learn more about what you've heard in this episode, check out the show notes on our website, and follow us on Apple Podcasts and YouTube, and on social media at DHS SciTech. D H S S C I T E C H. Bye!