Maryland County Still Fixing Dispatch System
Source The Capital, Annapolis, Md.
Dec. 21--Amid concerns about the county's new $6.6 million computer-aided dispatch and report management system, county officials and union leaders met Tuesday with the developer behind the software.
"We still want this (system) taken off line while all of these problems are worked," said O'Brien Atkinson, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 70. "The good news is that they have finally brought the end users (rank-and-file police officers and firefighters) to the table," said Atkinson, who did not attend the meeting.
The meeting came two weeks after the system went live and five days after the county Fire Department ordered its staff to listen to the scanner and make sure no calls were being mishandled.
"This is like when you build a house and then you give the contractor a punch list of things to fix," said David Abrams, a county spokesman. "The system is only two weeks old, and we are working to resolve the issues identified."
The county purchased the Tiburon E911 Computer-Aided Dispatch and Record Management System in January 2008 to replace two aging computer programs. The old record management software was antiquated and would have effectively stopped working on Jan. 1 due to a Y2K-style glitch, officials said.
Representatives of the county's Office of Information Technology and the five agencies that use the computer system selected Tiburon's system from four proposals.
The new system is used by the county police and fire departments, the county sheriff's and state's attorney's offices and the county's detention facilities. But since it was turned on Dec. 6, the system has been plagued by problems, according to the leaders of several local public safety unions.
Dispatchers complained that the new system -- with its modern graphic interface -- is more complicated to navigate than the old, text-based system.
Firefighters complained that they are being dispatched to calls outside their communities, but not to calls near their stations. And police officers complained that they are no longer able to review an address' prior calls before responding to an emergency.
Concerns are so prevalent among the rank-and-file police officers that the county's largest police union held an emergency meeting Wednesday morning at its headquarters in Crownsville to discuss the new system.
Atkinson said his members are coping with many of the same problems they faced last week and remain concerned about officer safety.
Acknowledging the problems, the county Fire Department issued a general order on Thursday to its firefighters and paramedics: They must listen to their station's radios from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. to make sure no calls are mishandled by dispatch.
If a firefighter or paramedic realizes he has not been assigned to a call in his first-due area and is available to respond, he is supposed to contact dispatch and request to be added to the call.
"All other perceived errors in dispatch assignments should be communicated through the shift battalion chief," the email said.
Craig Oldershaw, president of the union that represents the bulk of the county's firefighters, blasted the county for buying a new dispatch system and then ordering his membership to listen to the radio to make sure it works.
"We have gone back to the late '80s," he said, noting that before the advent of computer-aided dispatch systems all firefighters were dispatched by radio.
Division Chief Michael Cox defended the order.
"As with the implementation of any new system or program, the department wanted to ensure that our personnel increase their level of awareness to emergency activities in the county," Cox said.
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