COPS Monitoring Bulletin Newsletter #39

OUR ASAP TO PSAP INTEGRATIONWILL SAVE TIME, IMPROVE ACCURACY, & ENHANCE COMMUNICATION EFFICIENCY WITH PSAPs INTEGRATION WITH ASAP The ASAP protocol was founded through the joint partnership of Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO), The Monitoring Association (TMA) and National Law Enforcement Telecommunications Systems (Nlets) with the goal of improving public safety. When will ASAP to PSAP be available with COPS? We expect to be onboarding our first city this fall, with many more to come in the months to follow! Where is ASAP Available? ASAP is currently active at 64 PSAPs and in the testing or implementation stages in 21 PSAPs. Additional cities are being added frequently. Visit tma.us/asap/ for the current list. What do PSAPs say about ASAP? ASAP is supported and endorsed by the National Sheriff's Association, International Association of Chiefs of Police, and the International Association of Fire Chiefs, as a public/private partnership that improves public safety. In a recent report from the Integrated Justice Information Systems (IJIS), the Guilford County, North Carolina PSAP was quoted as saying "ASAP will not only save lives but will reduce the number of calls received by 911 operators by about 20,000 a year. This should potentially free up the emergency lines and get residents help much faster. Residents had a positive reaction to the program and said the time savings was crucial, and getting help more quickly was better for everyone." We say, if ASAP can have such a big impact on Guilford, a county with a population just over 520,000, imagine what it can do for larger metropolitan areas! What does this mean to our alarm company customers? There are a four improvements coming over the next several months before we officially launch ASAP to PSAP: 1. We are creating standard “dispositions” on what happens at various steps during an alarm (calls-to-verify, dispatch, and responding party notifications). This will help standardize and simplify the notes we record in alarm history. 2. Subscriber address details will be entered and stored following a national address standard – no more free form address storage that may confuse responding agencies! We will simply expand the number of fields used to collect and store data. In ASAP to PSAP cities, the addresses will be electronically verified as being correct at the time the data is entered – long before an alarm is ever tripped! This will improve address accuracy and also prevent response time delays. 3. The way we store information in alarm history for alarms with multiple signals will be simplified. When handled by the same operator, there will be a “master” record that will contain all of the dispositions and steps we took. This eliminates having documentation on multiple signals and will make the chronological steps we took easier to follow and understand. 4. We will be offering a new real-time alarm handling update service. The new service will have the ability to send real-time email or SMS text updates to your customers (or you) on the actions we take related to an alarm (calls to verify, dispatch, responding party notifications). This will improve the speed in which we provide feedback on the results of our actions. What is ASAP to PSAP? The A utomated S ecure A larm P rotocol (ASAP) is designed to increase the efficiency and reliability of emergency dispatches by changing the way monitoring companies and Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) communicate time-sensitive information about alarms. Using the ASAP to PSAP service, telephone calls between the monitoring center and PSAPs are replaced with secure electronic two-way communication. Critical information relating to life safety events is delivered digitally directly to PSAP CAD systems in seconds through the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications Systems (Nlets) nationwide public-safety network. Built using ANSI standard protocols, ASAP was meticulously designed to improve communications and save lives. The use of electronic data communications is not only faster, it virtually eliminates errors and misunderstandings that are inherent in voice communications and ensures PSAPs receive complete and accurate information in just seconds, not minutes. What's more, ASAP is bidirectional, which means in addition to sending faster and more precise information to the PSAPs, COPS can also receive electronic information and status updates – some of which may be available to you and your customers in real-time future enhancements. ASAP Provides Fast Bidirectional Electronic Communication with PSAPs Alarm Dispatch and Updates Transmitted to PSAP Confirmations and Status Updates Received from PSAP