Radio network upgrade necessary, but expensive

The Statewide Interoperable Radio Network (SIRN) is a topic that has dominated budget talks for local emergency organizations this year, including the Eddy County Sheriff’s Department, the New Rockford Fire Department and the Community Ambulance Service of New Rockford.

Even with a large appropriation during the last legislative session intended to provide substantial cost sharing measures from the state, local entities’ budgets will be stretched, as they work together with the state to provide a fix for a radio network that is close to becoming obsolete.

The goal of SIRN 20/20 includes statewide strategic planning and implementation among all emergency responders and designated public organizations that serve the residents of the state and providing interoperability for public safety and support providers–law enforcement, firefighters, EMS, emergency management, public utilities, transportation and others – to communicate with other responding agencies, to exchange voice and/or data communications on demand and in real time.

The term interoperability can mean day-to-day operability or routine public safety operations. It also means mutual aid interoperability for joint and immediate response to accidents, incidents and natural disasters; or task force interoperability, for agencies to collaborate for an extended period of time to address a particular problem. Interoperability has been in the sights of the state legislature for several years. During the 63rd Legislative Assembly, the Legislature established the Statewide Interoperability Executive Committee as a permanent body under NDCC 37-17.3-02.1 under the premise that a statewide integrated radio communication system will more effectively serve the goals of law enforcement and emergency response personnel. The committee prepared recommendations regarding a statewide integrated radio system with consideration for all stakeholders reliant upon a radio communication system. 

In 2014, several member organizations of the SIEC jointly funded a study to explore options and determine whether the state needed to consider changes to mission critical communications. Based on this initial report, the Statewide Interoperability Radio Network (SIRN 20/20) initiative was funded by the 64th State Legislature to determine the feasibility and desirability of implementing a statewide radio interoperability network. Considerations for SIRN 20/20 assessed the feasibility and desire for a collaborative state and locally funded first responder mission critical land mobile radio communication system supporting day-to-day, mutual aid, and task force interoperability across North Dakota.

The resulting feasibility study showed a collection of networks lacking local and cross-jurisdictional interoperability, meaning that city, county, tribal and state personnel are limited in their ability to operate transparently across jurisdictions and public safety communities.

In addition, they found that North Dakota saw a population increase of over 18% over the past ten years, making it the fastest growing state in the nation. The growth in those fossil-fuel-rich counties has slowed significantly in recent years, but the permanent population of several counties, has significantly increased. That growth has placed a higher demand on all facts of public safety emergency incident response and mitigation.  

The crime index has risen 12 percent since 2009, EMS incidents have risen 45 percent since 2006 and 911 call volume has increased 80 percent since 2006 and have placed a great burden on the voice and paging communications networks currently being used by the public safety community.

At the same time, public safety response and communications procedures have evolved, placing a higher emphasis on planned and well-coordinated responses to both small and large incidents. That evolution makes the case for modern and interoperable communication procedures. While some entities within the state of North Dakota have been able to invest in communication technologies to maintain pace with these growing needs, most of the systems that are so mission critical in an emergency are systems that are running on technology from the 1970s.

Some of the more populated countises and oil-rich counties have invested in recent years in solutions that have helped to support their growing needs. However, smaller rural counties are using aging legacy systems, or the State Radio Network, which is a statewide communications network originally architected in the 1970s. The State Radio Network is operated by the Department of Emergency Services, in collaboration with the Department of Transportation. It operates a 43-site land mobile radio system with associated dispatch services and serves as the primary mission critical voice and paging communications system for all State agencies and 24 North Dakota counties. Nearly 5,000 radios within the State Radio Network will not be supported by their vendor in 2019, with 13,000 that are already past their serviceable lifespan. They will face vendor support termination and cannot be used on SIRN 20/20 technologies.

Legacy equipment technology is also becoming obsolete, placing a larger burden on these entities. Between 2017 and 2019, thousands of portable and mobile radios, dozens of radio dispatch consoles and infrastructure elements will no longer be supported by their manufacturers. North Dakota is not alone in facing these problems with aging equipment and lack of vendor support, as many other states are, or already have, implemented integrated statewide radio communications.

The State Legislature specifically requested that the desirability and feasibility of SIRN 20/20 be anchored on consultation with affected stakeholders. As a result, stakeholder outreach, education and assessment activities have been conducted over a four month period of time with 16 conferences and workshops in eight regions, an inclusive online survey, multiple educational and informational newsletters and web materials, dozens of individual county web-conferences, requirement gathering sessions and interviews and hundreds of electronic and telephone correspondence. Through these efforts, they have made the effort to involve all 53 counties.

The 65th Legislative Assembly passed House Bill 1178 in 2017, an act to amend and reenact sections of the ND Century Code relating to the governance, purchase, financing and operation of the statewide interoperable radio network, to provide for a legislative management study, to provide an appropriation, to provide for a transfer and to declare an emergency. The assembly also stipulated that the SIEC consist of public safety communications experts.

Governor Burgum signed HB 1435 into law in April of 2019. While this bill provided appropriation funding for the state’s cost share of the radio equipment, it recognized that the counties and cities would also share the burden of responsibility for the statewide interoperability radio network. Although it is still a little uncertain what amounts will be needed at the local level, the affected Eddy County departments have added additional amounts to their equipment budgets to offset their share of the costs of the radio equipment.

The legislature approved the transfer of $20 million from the current earnings and accumulated undivided profits of the Bank of North Dakota to the statewide interoperable radio network fund. They also appropriated out of any moneys in the strategic investment and improvements fund, not otherwise appropriated, the amount of $20 million plus $80 million line of credit from the Bank of North Dakota for the purpose of statewide interoperable radio network projects, declaring it to be an emergency measure.

Securing and sustaining the required resources to fund IT infrastructure of this scope is no easy feat – even for a system that serves a vital lifeline for the preservation of life and property. The feasibility study proposes potential revenue sources, discusses the prospects of gaining support for these sources at the state and local levels, and estimates annual funds that each could generate. Other states have used a mix of state funds, federal funds, 911 fees, user fees, motor vehicle funds, bonds, and criminal offense and traffic fines.

The study explored various new funding initiatives focusing on taxes, fees and fines where: nominal increases could generate significant monies and face limited constituent opposition, current state rates are significantly lower than comparable states in the nation, no increases have been assessed for long periods (e.g., 1993 for tobacco taxes) or the intended source is specifically related to a public safety function (e.g., 911 fees, traffic citations), the affected persons are typically tourists and other transient population, not North Dakotans (e.g., hotel fees)

The state’s recent economic boom has been directly tied to the substantial increase in natural resources revenue. While there has been a notable decline, the natural resources revenue over this “bust” time frame still exceed historical levels by a factor of five times.  

Due to this significant boom, the state may elect to use a small fraction of these oil tax allocations to fund an important public safety cause in the near term. The state has set aside money for part of the costs and is considering other options to increase revenues. The cost of updating this technology comes is high, but the cost of not updating could be monumental. You can learn more about SIRN 20/20 at https://www.nd.gov/itd/statewide-alliances/siec/sirn/background.