Jan. 25--Glynn County officials say $1 million in upgrades to the joint city and county 911 emergency dispatch system have to be made, and soon.
Relying on existing computer equipment and software to last much longer is "pushing the laws of probability," John Catron, county director of information technology, warned. And if the system would break, it likely could not be fixed, he said.
The county had included a $2 million upgrade to the system in the 1 percent Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax voters rejected in November. Now it has stripped improvements back to bare essentials, cutting the cost in half, County Commission Chair Richard Strickland said.
"There are other upgrades that need to be made, but they don't need to be made immediately. These things, as I understand it, have to happen," he said.
Catron said replacement parts for the telephone system now in use are no longer available because the company that made it is no longer in business.
Much of the software used to locate and identify callers and to map locations for emergency personnel is out of date and no longer supported by vendors, he said.
The $1 million price tag would include a new Internet Protocol-based telephone system to replace the common old phone system now used. It also would provide for updated computer systems, with software compatible with contemporary technology and which is supported through upgraded operating systems, Catron said.
All told, the system, purchased in 2001, is about five years overdue for replacement, he said.
Catron said the system is working, but it is only a matter of time before something major goes wrong.
"Yeah, it works and we can answer calls and all that, but you are pushing the laws of probability," he said. "It's beginning to get more and more difficult to ensure that the system operates as it needs to."
Brunswick and Glynn County residents would not lose access to 911 dispatch service if the communication system failed before an upgrade is made, but dispatchers would have to flip the calendar back 30 years. They would have to jot down caller information by hand and radio officers with directions, he said.
"If the system were to fail today, we would basically go to a standard phone call situation. We would not have that (automated location or identification) information," Catron said.
It worked in the old days, but with call volumes that dwarf those of the past, system failure is not an option, he said.
Aside from staving off possible system failure, a new system would have improved capabilities and would be mobile in the case of a hurricane or other major event.
"With an (Internet)-based system, location becomes less important, because it becomes easier to transfer operations to another location," Catron said.
Glynn County Police Chief Matt Doering said the upgrades could greatly improve public safety.
"The money will maintain the system to reduce the risk of failure, and it will add upgrades," Doering said.
One upgrade addresses an issue police and dispatch officers have been wrestling with since cell phones became popular.
"When we got this (current) system, 70 percent of our calls were from landlines. Now, 70 percent of our calls come from cell phones. The current system does not automatically process wireless locations," Doering said.
The system automatically captures the location of callers on landlines and displays that information for dispatchers. But they have to manually search for cell phone call coordinates.
If a caller's cell phone gets cut off -- perhaps during the commission of a crime -- before the dispatcher can initiate the search, police don't know where the caller is, Doering said.
Also, callers sometimes don't know where they are, or they are under stress and cannot give a dispatcher an accurate location, Doering said.
For firefighters and emergency medical technicians, system failure could be very dangerous, Glynn County Fire Chief Al Thomas said.
Any way information can get to first responders more quickly is a benefit, he said.
"For us, the first line of any emergency is getting that information. Keeping a good system up so that we are able to get that information quickly is important. It allows us to form our game plan as we are responding," Thomas said.
"Anytime that we can shorten response time, shorten dispatch, that will provide us a better chance to mitigate the situation and help us get it to a successful end."
Strickland said the commission has little choice now but to get the project done.
"Right now, those items weren't budgeted, because they had been traditionally on SPLOST, but the important thing now is making sure they get done," Strickland said.
Strickland said the commission plans to take whatever action is necessary to ensure that necessary upgrades are done in the future without having to depend on special taxes that can be rejected by voters.
"(Glynn County Adminsitrator Alan) Ours and some of the other staff members are working on a capital improvements plan to maintain these kinds of things in the future," Strickland said. "It's more fiscally responsible to handle it that way."
Copyright 2012 - The Brunswick News, Ga.
