Interoperability was a critical issue in the aftermath of 9/11, during the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City and in response to Hurricane Katrina. Interoperability efforts usually focus on establishing radio communication across multiple agencies operating on disparate frequency bands, but they also can involve the sharing of data and other resources, as well as the development of common operating procedures. Achieving interoperability has proved so difficult that as recently as last year, one Department of Homeland Security official could write:

The vast majority of emergency responders … are unable to communicate with command, support teams and other responding organizations present at an incident scene.

Mandates and programs around the country have attempted to create infrastructure and policies to ensure that agencies at local, state, and federal levels can communicate and share resources, especially in an emergency. Yet in many jurisdictions, interoperability remains elusive, limiting communications between first responders from partner jurisdictions, and making it nearly impossible for local jurisdictions to communicate with units from regional, state, and federal agencies.

With as much national emphasis on interoperability as we've seen over the past several years, why is it still so difficult to achieve?

What Interoperability Looks Like

Last summer, a local fire department was dispatched to rendezvous with a Bureau of Land Management crew to fight a wildland fire not far from town. Yet, while en route, the two units could not communicate with each other. Why?

The BLM operates routinely in our county. Yet, as per federal policy, the BLM only communicates on narrowband frequencies. Fire and ambulance crews in our county communicate on an EMS frequency that is still wideband. While the BLM unit did carry a narrowband frequency typically used by our county's sheriff's deputies, the town's fire department did not carry that frequency. Why? Because the sheriff's narrowband channel — which had been activated a year-and-a-half earlier — had not been made available to many county emergency response vehicles.

So, inflexible federal policies prevented the BLM from carrying the wideband EMS frequency, and inefficiency at the local level prevented the town's fire department from being able to communicate on the sheriff's narrowband channel.

A year ago I attended an engine training exercise involving departments from several counties in the region. While most departments (but not all) had at least one tactical frequency, few had more than one, which limited communications options during the exercise.

These are mundane examples of failed interoperability. Yet while the examples are minor, the implications are not. Issues preventing interoperability are systemic, meaning that they are rooted in organizational structures and cultures, and therefore resist the efforts of individuals to overcome them. Furthermore, these issues are common in jurisdictions across the country. Nearly a decade after the 9/11 attacks and several years after the forming of DHS, neighboring and partner agencies in many jurisdictions still cannot reliably communicate with one another. Below are four possible explanations for why this is the case, gleaned from one firefighter's experience over several years at the bottom of the chain of command.

First responders are not present when plans are made. Efforts have been made in many jurisdictions to promote interoperability. In some cases, extensive plans have been drawn up, including interagency cooperative agreements. These agreements inevitably contain tidy diagrams that clearly define chain of command. I know from experience that many first responders have never seen these documents and are unaware of the policies and practices they contain.

Also, I have participated in tabletop exercises that simulate disasters in my jurisdiction to which my department would respond. But other first responders, including firefighters from other departments, ambulance personnel and local sheriff deputies, have not attended these exercises, a failure that often results in leaders making erroneous assumptions about local resources and capabilities.

Interagency agreements and tabletop exercises are irrelevant if the incident management team members base plans on untenable assumptions about first-responder resources, communications and capacities.

Inefficiencies at the local level. Seventy percent of U.S. fire departments are all-volunteer. While volunteers diligently respond when called to incidents and often to training, it is quite difficult to get them to attend interagency meetings or tabletop exercises during the workday, when most are working regular jobs. Local volunteers and even administrators often are overwhelmed simply managing day-to-day operations. Training, maintaining trucks and equipment, writing grants and preparing NFIRS reports are essential tasks needed to support departments, yet these tasks already require several hours each month. Developing and implementing interoperability is complex and time-consuming. First responders can feel that dealing with interoperability issues diverts time and energy away from preparing for the typical incidents to which they usually respond.

Resistance to perceived top-down interference. Resistance to federal intervention is a long-standing American practice. Antagonism between federal and state agencies — and often between state and local jurisdictions — continues to make headlines. Federal mandates — especially those from FEMA and DHS, which typically are unfunded and often require huge investments of capital and person-power — perpetrate such resistance.

The feds mandate policies that often conflict with local policies and procedures. They also mandate new technologies to accompany their interoperability policies, rather than promote the use of existing technologies. Meanwhile, state and local jurisdictions often make working relationships difficult due to provincial attitudes and a sense of protectiveness about their territories. Also a factor is their concern about encountering large financial burdens as a result of unfunded mandates.

Constant changes in technologies and radio frequencies. Radio communication is the lynchpin of effective interoperability. However, technologies associated with wireless communication are ever-changing and expensive. Every few years we are confronted with overhauling our communication systems: first narrowband technology, then digital technology, now 800 MHz technology. While these technologies seem promising at first glance, they don't always work as intended. Firefighters have lost their lives due to failures of new, untested, technologies. Furthermore, implementing these technologies requires huge outlays of cash for purchasing new radios, modifying and/or installing repeaters, and changing related infrastructure and operating procedures.

FEMA and the DHS mandate changes based on the military model, which assumes partner organizations possess large capital reserves, and which is characterized by tight coupling throughout the system, meaning that mandates from the top filter to the bottom relatively efficiently. But state and local governments do not have large capital reserves for swiftly changing technology demands, nor are such agencies tightly coupled administratively. Emergency-services agencies nationwide would be more aptly characterized as a collection of underfunded, independent entities.

As local jurisdictions struggle to keep up with the demands of changing technologies, their interagency partners likewise implement new technologies at different rates, further hindering interoperability. Some agencies operate on narrowband, some don't. Some use 800 MHz technology, while others still use VHF.

Even when technologies align, maintaining effective communication is more of a challenge than it should be. It takes approximately six hours to reprogram our department's 20 handheld radios, six mobile radios and base station. But it can take weeks to find the correct frequencies to program into the software. We have to contact authorities at local, state and federal levels to get the necessary frequencies to program. Often, these authorities are not sure of the current frequencies.

Recently, while looking online for current frequencies from our regional fire center, we discovered that three of the eight federally assigned interoperability frequencies (i.e., Tac 7, Wide Area, and CommUse) had changed sometime between 2007, when we first programmed them in, and when we discovered the change in February 2010.

Presumably, there are good reasons for changing frequencies. But failure to notify partner organizations of these changes exposes the weakness of NIMS organizational charts. If the word can't get passed down the chain of command in a non-emergency situation, how can the system be expected to work during a disaster?

Working from the Bottom-Up

Incident command for any large, interagency response begins with first responders. These are local fire, law-enforcement and ambulance personnel who may or may not have success communicating with each other locally on a day-to-day basis. When interoperable communications aren't in place, still first responders still may be able to communicate with members of local partner agencies to the extent that they can find overlapping radio frequencies without jamming them.

But as a large incident progresses, state and federal officials from multiple agencies may assume incident command. When these officials arrive, they are likely to find that the frequencies they expect to use are not implemented on the ground, making communication from the top impossible.

Earlier, I referred to the 2009 engine-training exercise during which many departments lacked tactical frequencies. This year's engine training was held last month, and this time most departments had at least two tactical frequencies programmed into their radios. Officials at the state level acknowledge that "it is getting better," meaning that communication is improving between state and federal agencies and local first responders. As a firefighter who may rely on state and federal resources in a large incident, I find this reassuring. But the question still must be asked: How can interoperability be better assured? Here are three possible answers:

• 1. First responders from the lowest levels of NIMS must be at interagency meetings and exercises in order to inform higher-echelon personnel of the obstacles their plans will encounter during an actual incident. Furthermore, communication of important information and interoperability procedures cannot depend solely on already overburdened administrators in local jurisdictions. Important information about interoperability procedures must be communicated directly to local fire chiefs, EMS personnel and law-enforcement officers.

• 2. Federal and state jurisdictions must take into account local constraints. Unfunded mandates and failure to negotiate operating procedures with local jurisdictions hinders interoperability and threatens the lives of first responders.

• 3. Interoperability policies and practices must be stabilized. Local jurisdictions cannot keep up with the newest technologies, nor can they constantly spend time researching the newest radio frequencies or reprogram their fleets every year.

The state of Virginia — recognized as a national leader in promoting interoperability — organized its interagency agreements based on the realities faced by first responders:

As more than 90% of the public-safety communications infrastructure in the United States is owned and operated at the local and state level, any successful effort to improve public-safety interoperability must be driven by the local public-safety community.

In many jurisdictions across the country, this wisdom is not being followed. Interoperability, when effectively implemented, saves lives. But if interoperability is going to be anything more than an academic exercise, planning must include first responders, and top-down policies must accommodate local realities and constraints.

Gary Lichtenstein is a captain with the Bluff (Utah) Volunteer Fire Department.