WASHINGTON– Sen. Cory A. Booker (D-NJ), today participated in a hearing in the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee which examined the progress of the nation’s first ever interoperable public safety network, FirstNet. FirstNet, when completed, will provide critical communications capabilities for first responders and emergency personnel, enabling them to communicate seamlessly during times of crisis.
New Jersey is currently using FirstNet spectrum for a public safety broadband project, JerseyNet, which is overseen by the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness. The project is spread throughout the state and includes areas in the route 21 corridor, Camden and Atlantic City. JerseyNet will consist of mobile systems to be deployed in case of an emergency, like Superstorm Sandy, and will aid emergency responders in the event of communications failures. These sites can be deployed anywhere in the country to assist in nationwide emergencies.
Transcript from today’s hearing, entitled “Three Years Later: Are We Any Closer To A Nationwide Public Safety Wireless Broadband Network?” and his discussion with Susan Swenson, Chairwoman, First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet), follows:
BOOKER:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[To Susan Swenson]Thank you for the work you're doing. You have been tasked with doing something that's really unprecedented – not just in government, but, really – in American history- that is extraordinarily, and absolutely urgently, needed.
All of us – probably – that are serving in the United States Senate know the urgency for this. I spent eight years – almost – as a mayor with crisis and crisis and crisis. And I saw, as the chief could attest from his experiences, that communications – whether it's men going into a burning building with no visibility – how important just a radio is to be able to communicate externally. For us, Hurricane Sandy we saw – in the most painful ways, sometimes – how critical communication was. I even had a situation where we had an earthquake in New Jersey, something people don't think we have. And, after surviving an earthquake in California, I didn't think it was too serious, until all my communications – my police department, all my officials went down. Fortunately, we had a plan to meet, but that suddenly made me realize the challenges. So, really what you're doing is a life or death initiative.
You are making strides that should be celebrated. My state is ecstatic about the contributions that you're making to New Jersey, and I'd like to submit for the record an article about Atlantic City – without objection, Mr. Chairman – about Atlantic City, about the public safety work you're doing there. And how we believe in New Jersey that the mobile platforms that you're creating that can be rolled out in a crisis to key areas, really is something for this country that could be a benefit and model for the nation – whether it's rural areas or urban areas or suburban areas.
So I just celebrate you. And I also celebrate you in the sense that you're working through bureaucracies that are not used to dealing with this very unique public/private partnership that you have. So, I really respect the professionals that are sitting with you on the panel, who have done the arduous work of oversight.
But I want to afford you a couple opportunities to respond a little bit to some of the challenges that you put forward. And the first is your constructive criticism of having to deal with a lot of the challenges – on procurement and others – that are undermining your progress to your goal. It's important for this committee, who likes to remove barriers to get good things done.
This is one of the more righteous things. We may not realize we need it, but let a major crisis happen to this country – if you get this done, you'll make a difference that could be thousands of lives could be saved. So could you talk for a moment about those obstacles that you’re encountering, and how maybe we can do something to remove them for you?
SWENSON:
Sure, I think the way I'd like to characterize it is, we're working with Deputy Secretary Bruce Andrews and his staff, and Secretary Pritzker on improving the processes within the department – within NTIA, and within FirstNet. So, set aside the federal regulations for a moment. There's just a lot of people touching a lot of things today, and we need to streamline that. We're really committed to working on that improvement. I also think it's important that we take – we have the ability to control our destiny, and that we have the ability to have people who are dedicated, where first net is their first priority. Because – this is no pejorative comment about people that we work with, but – FirstNet is a secondary item for them. They have a full-time day job, and we pile on FirstNet on top of that. And so we probably don't get the urgency that we feel about things. So, to the degree we can take accountability and responsibility for those functions – we'll obviously follow all the rules and regulations – I think we would have an opportunity to move more quickly.
So I'd like to see what we can do about improving that, and also taking responsibility from Commerce. And, obviously, we wouldn't do that until such time we're prepared. We went through that process with Commerce and NTIA with our finance organization. Initially, they provided support for us; today, we actually do a lot of that work ourselves. So, I think we have demonstrated that we can bring in the right resources with the right talent and training, put the controls in place to cause people to feel comfortable to fulfill that.<.p>
BOOKER:
Now, let me just interrupt you, because I'd love for you to submit more of that for the record afterwards. I'd love to hear, in detail, some of the things that we could be doing to prevent it. But, I just want to end – one comment, one question.
The comment is: Our first responders, we elevate as senators consistently, but the people that have the first responders' backs should be elevated, too.
And I want to just give you a chance to respond to the cost issue. Really, the bill designed to have a self-funding mechanism. Do you think that's sufficient? Because Mr. Goldstein pointed out that it might not be. Is that sufficient?
SWENSON:
Well, you know, I think what's important to understand in the GAO report is that the information that's in there is built on a lot of assumptions. I think even Mr. Goldstein indicated that – that those assumptions that you saw, $12-47B – had a set of assumptions that he didn’t even have visibility to.
We have built a financial model with a set of assumptions as well. And we believe we understand what we need to accomplish in terms of our spectrum value, in order to make this a self-sustaining network. That's why the RFP is such a critical component to that, because that is really the funding mechanism. While $7 billion is a lot of money – I'm not saying no thank you to that – but, it's not sufficient to continue to operate and upgrade this network over time. So, I believe that the financial model is solid, but we won't know the answer to that until we finish the RFP process.
And, of course, the RFP process is critical for us being able to put together a plan for each of the governors – where we can talk about the coverage we're going to provide, and what it's going to cost the first responders it to subscribe to that. We won't know all of that until the RFP is completed. We have made assumptions. We won't know the facts until the RFP is completed.
BOOKER:
Thank you very much.
