Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Emergency Communications: The Quest for Interoperability in the United States and Europe Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 03:50:41 -0400

Emergency Communications: The Quest for Interoperability in the United States and
Europe Viktor Mayer-Schönberger
ESDP-2002-03
BCSIA-2002-7 March 2002

This document appears as Discussion Paper 2002-7 of the Belfer Center for Science
and International
Affairs and as contribution ESDP-2002-03 of the Executive Session on Domestic
Preparedness, a joint
project of the Belfer Center and the Taubman Center for State and Local
Government. Comments are
welcome and may be directed to the author in care of the Executive Session on
Domestic Preparedness.

<SNIP>

THE PATH TOWARD INTEROPERABILITY-AND ITS THREE OBSTACLES

Over the course of the last decade, numerous public- and private-sector
organizations have studied interoperability and the difficulties involved in
achieving it. Three general obstacles that need to be overcome to establish
interoperability emerge from these studies: finding a suitable technology;
defining a common frequency and standard; and securing the necessary funding.
These obstacles may reinforce each other, rendering the triad potentially even
harder to tackle than they would be as individual barriers.  As an example,
suppose five people speaking five different languages want to communicate with
each other. First, they have to understand that every one of them is capable of
learning a new, common language. In the interoperability context, this represents
the technical hurdle. The next step is to define this new language, its grammar
and its vocabulary. This is the frequency and standards hurdle. Finally, they need
to have the resources available to actually learn this new language. This
represents the third hurdle, the need for appropriate funding. Obviously,
overcoming one hurdle is necessary to overcome the next, but it does not make
overcoming the next hurdle any easier, as each hurdle has its own unique
difficulties. Worse, focusing energies on overcoming one hurdle may divert
necessary resources to tackle the next thus making it harder to overcome all three
of them together.

More:

http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/d745629e080d1fe88525698900714934/c6a5af55afe4f3a285256bc20050530c/$FILE/Emergency%20Communications%20-%20The%20Quest%20for%20Interoperability%20in%20the%20United%20States%20and%20Europe.pdf

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