NENA Announces Critical Issues Forum on Data Analytics & National Telecommunicator Training Standards

Join NENA in Denver, CO, from October 6-8 for this one-of-a-kind event where you will have the opportunity to not only learn about two of the biggest hot-button issues in public safety (data analytics and national telecommunicator training standards), but also provide input on how they can be addressed and implemented to improve 9-1-1 service from coast-to-coast.

Advances in technology have provided public safety with almost limitless opportunities to revolutionize emergency communications and enable smarter, faster response. As Next Generation 9-1-1 systems and networks come online nationwide, it is imperative that decision makers, PSAP staff, and industry professionals be brought together to learn about and discuss the new capabilities that will turn today's PSAP into tomorrow's information sharing hub, as well as the evolution of the call taker's role in keeping responders informed and the public safe.

Participate in the Data Analytics Track to learn how call information can be collected and analyzed to enable more effective and efficient 9-1-1 systems and provide guidance on NENA activities in support of developing data collection and sharing models for all stakeholders.

Attend the National Telecommunicator Training Standards Track to discuss the big-picture questions surrounding training requirements and contribute to ongoing national efforts to develop baseline and continuing education standards for 9-1-1 professionals.

Register online today or visit the CIF webpage for additional event details.

 

NENA Remembers Carla Anderson

We were saddened to learn last night of the passing of Carla Anderson, Deputy Director of the NG9-1-1 Institute. Many knew Carla as tireless advocate for 9-1-1 and one of NENA’s biggest supporters. To just as many she was a deeply caring, loyal, and thoughtful friend, whose contagious smile, enthusiasm, and passion will be sorely missed but not forgotten. Our thoughts and sympathies go out to her family.

 

NENA President Appoints New Western Regional Director

NENA today announced that Lisa Hoffmann of the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management has been selected by association President Bernard Brown to serve as Western Regional Director on the organization's 10-seat Executive Board.

"I am truly honored by this appointment," said Hoffmann. "I look forward to working with the rest of the Executive Board, NENA Staff, and our committees and working groups to serve NENA's membership and improve 9-1-1 service for all Americans."

Click here to read more.

 

NENA Announces New Committee Leadership

NENA today announced the appointment of Jim Shepard of 911 Datamaster as Co-Chair of the organization's Development Steering Council, the body that oversees NENA committees and working groups tasked with defining 9-1-1 technical and operations issues and developing the standards and best practices necessary to address them.

"I am excited for this opportunity to serve the association at such a critical juncture for 9-1-1," said Shepard. "As we move towards Next Generation 9-1-1, the work done by NENA is more important than ever and will benefit 9-1-1, and the millions of citizens who depend on it annually, for decades to come."

Click here to read more.

 

Save the Date! NENA Development Conference Moving to the Fall

Trade your winter coat for a lightweight sweater: the NENA Development Conference is moving from its traditional February time-frame to October! Exact dates and location are TBD, but be sure to plan now to attend the next NENA Development Conference in October 2014! If you just can't wait that long, be sure to check out our upcoming Critical Issues Forum on Data Analytics & National Telecommunicator Training Standards, taking place October 6-8, 2013 in Denver, CO!

 

NENA Education Advisory Board Seeks New Members

The departure of two Education Advisory Board (EAB) members has created vacancies on the committee. NENA is looking to fill the open seats with NENA members in good standing who possess the desire and dedication to become part of the team charged with carrying out NENA's educational mission. For more details, please see the Statement of Purpose and Duties for EAB Members, the EAB Candidate Application & Questionnaire, and the Applicant Information Submission Instructions. All documentation from applicants must be received by close of business on Friday, August 23, 2013 in order to be considered for the position.

 

ENP Certification: Deadline Approaching for Summer ENP Examination & New Fee Structure Announced

The deadline to apply for the Summer 2013 ENP Examination is June 24. The examination window is July 20 - August 3. The Fall 2013 ENP Examination period is October 5-19, with applications due by September 10. A schedule of examination periods for ENP Certification is available at www.nena.org/enp.

Effective October 1, 2013 the re-certification fee will increase from $275 to $300. ENPs who must re-certify before the end of the year are encouraged to do so prior to September 30 to take advantage of the current fee. Effective with the Winter 2014 Examination in January, the ENP Application fee will increase from $395 to $420.

 

Articles Sought for Publication

 

ENP Study Group Now Forming

 

Save the Date & Budget Now to Attend...

 

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NENA CMCP Coming to CO, AB, & FL!

NENA's Center Manager Certification Program (CMCP) is designed to equip recently hired, newly promoted, and aspiring PSAP and 9-1-1 Authority managers and supervisors with the tools needed to effectively manage their agency through a rigorous 40-hour course of lecture and lab-based education. For more seasoned 9-1-1 professionals, the CMCP may serve to fill in some of the gaps and strengthen core competencies required in emergency communications center management.

The CMCP, unlike many other upper-level emergency communications training programs, utilizes a real-world, hands-on approach that is focused on topics encountered daily by managerial and supervisory level personnel: Business Writing, Financial Management, Human Resources, Legal Issues, and Communications Skills. With a curriculum built by current and former 9-1-1 center managers with decades of combined supervisory and training experience, the program will provide you with knowledge and skills that can immediately and drastically improve your on-the-job effectiveness and enhance your agency's everyday operations.

Register for upcoming CMCPs:

 

Not Receiving NENA Mail?

Make sure the addresses (email and postal) that we have on file for you are current! Please log in to your online member account to verify or update your information, or send an email to Bri Robinson.

 

NENA Seeks Participants for Succession Planning Working Group

NENA PSAP Operations Committee is looking for members to work on a Succession Planning information document.  The document is meant to provide ideas for having a human resource succession plan to maintain operational ability during times of transition. If you are interested, or have someone who is interested, please contact John Haynes.

 

Stable Form Notice: NENA Information Document for Handling Text Message Calls to 9-1-1 in the PSAP

Having adjudicated all comments, the subject document is now considered "stable." Per NENA IPR, Section 4.2.2 a "Stable Form Notice" is being issued and is shown at the bottom of this email.
 
4.4.2 Disclosure During Review Period
When any Deliverable is in stable form, but before it undergoes review by the NENA Process Review Committee the Committee Resource Manager shall send a Stable Form Notice to all NENA Development Group participants giving notice of a deadline, at least sixty (60) days from the date of the announcement, by which all Patent Holders with respect to the Deliverable must submit a completed copy of the Licensing Declaration Form in Annex B to the Committee Resource Manager. All Stable Form Notices shall also be posted to the Committee Management Website.
 
Once the 60 days have passed, the document will go to the Process Review Committee for approval.
 
Stable Form Notice 
 

Background 
The NENA Intellectual Property Rights ("IPR") Policy, available at http://www.nena.org/?IPR, requires Participants in NENA Committees to disclose certain Patent IPRs during the process of developing a Deliverable such as a Technical or Operations Standard Document (i.e., any Standard). After receiving this notice, all Patent Holders have 60 days in which to submit a Licensing Declaration Form.
 
Notice 
The Deliverable listed below has reached stable form and will be submitted to the NENA Process Review Committee in 60 days. Any and all Participants who hold Patent IPRs which may be implicated by the Normative Requirements of this Deliverable must submit a Licensing Declaration Form to the Committee Resource Manager within that time. 
 
Deliverable Information 
Title: NENA Information Document for Handling Text Message Calls to 9-1-1 in the PSAP
Document Number: NENA-INF-XXX (Not assigned until approved by NENA Executive Board)
URL: http://dev.nena.org/apps/group_public/document.php?document_id=1819&wg_abbrev=psapops-text-msg
Date of Notice: July 18, 2013
Submission Deadline: September 18, 2013   
 
NENA Intellectual Property Rights Policy - Annex C - Stable Form Notice

 

Call for Volunteers for a Forest Guide Working Group

NENA is seeking participants for a Working Group to focus on the NG9-1-1 functional element known as the Forest Guide. The forest guides (FG) are related to the LVF and ECRF functional elements. The FGs are necessary to have multiple instances of LVF/ECRF interact with each other.

This working group will provide the specific and detailed information that could be used by an entity to identify what is required to develop, deploy, and support a forest guide. This information may be in the form of a Request for Information (RFI) that would allow entities to identify specific functions that must be done and evaluate the effort to provide that function. The output of this working group may be more specific by providing requirements that an entity must meet and detailing specific implementation options.  

Background from NENA Issue Statement:

RFC 5822 and NENA's 08-003 define a hierarchy of Emergency Call Routing/Location Validation Functions (ECR/LVF's) service response mechanism as "trees" that can be represented by their geographic coverage area. Information is organized hierarchically, in a tree, with tree nodes representing larger geographic areas pointing to several child nodes, each representing a smaller area. A collection of ECR/LVF's servicing separate ESInets is called a forest. A forest guide (FG) keeps track of the coverage regions of all the trees for one service and location profile. So for example there may be a national forest guide that knows about all of the state forest guides. The state forest guide knows about all of the ECR/LVF's within the state. When a validation application or routing application wants to validate a location or route a call the application only needs to know about one forest guide and by interrogating that forest guide it can be directed through the hierarchy to obtain validation or routing information. A server that does not answer the query can refer to a Forest Guide to determine what server should provide the response.

NENA 08-003 states "The Forest Guide must be managed nationally (agency not yet identified) and may evolve to an entity more representative of all public safety agencies. State ECR/LVF operators are responsible to arrange for their mappings to be provisioned in the national forest guide. The national forest guide operator will maintain well known contact information so that other national forest guides can arrange to exchange their coverage regions and mappings."

As pointed out in the quote an agency to manage the national forest guide has not yet been identified.

Feel free to pass this information along to any colleagues who may not be part of this distribution. Interested parties should contact the Working Group chair, Jim Shepard (512.656.7713). Please note that this Working Group has a short timeframe to complete its scope. Active attendance and participation will be required if you choose to sign up.  

 

NENA Registry System Now Available

NENA is pleased to announce the public availability of the NENA Registry System or NRS. We are excited about this important milestone and want to thank Brian Dupras for all the hours of personal time he spent in developing and coding this critical system. Without his commitment to NENA and 9-1-1, the NRS would not be available today. NENA would also like to thank Jason Horning and Delaine Arnold for the time they have spent making the NRS a reality and available to all parties requiring this information. The NENA Registry System may be found at http://technet.nena.org/nrs.

The NRS was documented in the NENA Registry System Standard (NENA STA 70-001) to serve as a central repository and access point for registries created within NENA standards. Registries are the byproduct of thoughtful workgroup consideration and serve as consensus on the allowable identifiers, constants, and other well-known values that are exchanged within NG9-1-1. Today the NRS holds many of the registries created by NENA's Detailed Functional and Interface Specification for the NENA i3 Solution - Stage 3 (08-003 v1). In the future, the NRS will hold new registries already under development. As NENA's standards work their way through the necessary comment and approval processes, updates will be made to the NRS.

Through the NRS, NENA is also offering everyone an opportunity to submit new registry values. Each submittal will be considered in accordance with the NENA Registry System Standard and, if approved, added to the NRS.

 

Call for Volunteers to Update the FGDC United States Thoroughfare, Landmark, & Postal Address Data Standard

NENA and URISA are calling for volunteers to assist with an update to the FGDC United States Thoroughfare, Landmark, and Postal Address Data Standard.

URISA's Address Standard Working Group (ASWG), a collaboration of volunteers from over 50 federal, state, tribal, local and private organizations, was convened in 2005 to draft an address data standard for submission to the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC). That task culminated in February 2011 with the formal endorsement of the United States Thoroughfare, Landmark, and Postal Address Data Standard by the FGDC. The US Census Bureau is the maintenance authority for the Standard.
 
Since the endorsement in 2011, some issues and problems with the current version of the Standard have been brought to light, and opportunities for collaboration have been identified to improve the standard.
 
Under the auspices of the US Census Bureau, the ASWG is reconvening  to draft a revision to the current version of the Standard to: Correct typos, errors and omissions in the standard; make adjustments to improve and ease the implementation and usage of the standard; improve its coordination with other national and international standards; and correct any issues that have arisen due to implementation of the Standard.

If you have professional or academic expertise in address or information exchange systems, you are encouraged to volunteer by sending an email to Keri Brennan at URISA Headquarters by Monday, July 15.

 

Nena Files Comments in FCC Technology Transitions Policy Task Force NG9-1-1 Trials Inquiry

More than 10 years ago, NENA recognized the effects that the impending transition to IP-based access networks and originating services will have on consumers and Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs).
Learn More...

 

Get the Emergency Communications News That Really Matters With Public Safety SmartBrief

NENA recently launched a FREE email news service called Public Safety SmartBrief. It provides a weekly summary of news, trends and updates on public safety issues - not just 9-1-1, but police, fire and EMS. Knowledgeable editors handpick key articles from hundreds of publications, summarize them, and provide direct links to the original sources.

 

Enhanced Career Center Now Available

 

Locating the Future Conference