National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week (NPSTW) is April 10-16 and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) joins responder agencies and citizens across the U.S. in recognizing those whose communications skills, knowledge and quick judgment save lives. The Association of Public-Safety Officials International (APCO) established the NPSTW blog where agencies can share their pride and citizens can share their gratitude and personal stories.
For citizens
NPSTW is more than a recognition of communications professionals in public service; it is also an effort to educate citizens on how to interact with public safety professionals. How to Report an Emergency is an excellent guide for reference.
The basic rules:
- don’t panic,
- think and
- listen.
For responder agencies
The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) deals with public safety telecommunications issues. NPSTC receives funding from DHS S&T to support the homeland security mission and to steadily improve public safety telecommunication technologies and policies. Managing a number of high-priority issues, NPSTC could use your input and participation to resolve these issues and improve public safety communications in the future.
Among the issues under discussion:
- What are the best practices for implementing body-worn video systems for law enforcement?
- How can deployable long term evolution (LTE) systems best be used by public safety agencies?
- How should input/output channels created at the state and regional level be named?
- What capabilities should be designed into the marriage of existing public safety radio networks (land and mobile radio systems) with voice-capable broadband LTE data networks?
Visit NPSTC.org to participate in any of the organization’s working groups currently addressing these and many other public safety communications concerns. If you would like to become a member of any NPSTC committees or working groups, please use this link to submit the NPSTC Participant Form.