When it comes to emergency situations, there’s no substitute for a highly efficient 911 program. Best practices in 911 quality assurance include reviewing prior performance, keeping operators informed of how they are being monitored, including transparent assessment criteria, and ensuring the latest in data analytics technology is used for the most accurate results.

There are a number of things you can do to ensure that your 911 calls are being conducted at the highest standard, but in order to do this, you need to be sure your quality-assurance program is looking at the right data. Here are a few things you can do to improve your 911 quality assurance program.

Look at the whole call.

While call intake is important, it’s also important that the entire call is monitored to see how the operator handles the call while callers are waiting for help to arrive, as well as ending the call at the appropriate time. The whole call is important.

Review the most relevant data.

In order to improve quality assurance, you first need to determine what aspects of your program you want to improve so you can monitor the right data. It doesn’t make sense to monitor something that doesn’t have any bearing on your quality-assurance program. That’s just a waste of time.

Involve call operators in the process.

Employee cooperation is key when it comes to a quality-assurance program. Informing staff as to how the quality-assurance process works is of utmost importance. Well-informed staff are happy staff and more likely to cooperate to bring about improvements.

Make the review process timely.

Your quality-assurance program should aim to review and analyze data as quickly as possible so changes can be made and monitored in a timely manner. It’s more difficult for staff to remember a call they took two weeks ago than a call they had two days ago. Timely reviews will help your staff implement changes as quickly as possible.

Let technology do the work for you.

There are a number of software programs that can help you with your 911 quality assurance program. Carefully research which one will help you the most. A great quality assurance software solution will take a lot of guesswork out of the review process.

911 dispatching is much different today than it once was. Not only has the on-the-job technology changed, but so has the technology used to evaluated the process. You’ll want to look for a program that produces results that are easy to interpret so you’ll know exactly where you need to make changes. From performance management to data analytics, KOVA Corp has the quality-assurance solution you’re looking for.

We are all about communication and quality assurance at KOVA Corp. Our public safety software solutions enable 911 call centers to function more efficiently by monitoring calls and analyzing data to determine where improvements are needed. To learn more about how KOVA Corp can help you improve your 911 quality assurance program, contact us today.

When you are in the heat of the moment dealing with an emergency, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Having a good emergency communication plan will help personnel do their jobs to the best of their abilities during an emergency situation. Emergency communications training is key to ensuring that things go as smoothly as possible when you are dealing with an emergency.

Emergency communications plans detail what needs to be done in an emergency as well as any potential risk areas that should be carefully monitored. An emergency response plan should be well thought out in order to consider as many scenarios as possible. It should also be clearly communicated to all personnel involved.

Here are five best practices in emergency communication.

1. Know Who’s in Charge

It’s a good idea to have a team within your organization that is responsible for emergency planning and preparedness. Staff need to know who they should report to in case of an emergency. Depending on the size of your organization, you might want to create an emergency communications team.

2. Use Reliable Technology

In the event of an emergency, you’ll want to be sure your means of communication are reliable. Using reliable technology can mean the difference between a catastrophe and an emergency that is handled with relatively little disruption to your organization. Even if it means advocating for new public safety technology in your organization, it will be well worth the cost and effort.

3. Consider All Levels in Your Organization

Everyone in your organization needs to know what will happen in the event of an emergency. Therefore you need to make sure all levels of personnel are informed of your emergency communications plan and are trained in the appropriate measures should an emergency arise.

4. Know Your Audience

It’s important that your communications plan clearly states who is to be notified in emergency situations during and after the event. Your emergency communication plan should include a hierarchy of all the organization’s stakeholders, so it’s clear who should be notified first in the event of an emergency.

5. Script Your Messages

Your organisation can brainstorm possible emergency situations and create appropriate responses to each one. Scripts are helpful when doing this, and the scripts should be reviewed and practiced on a regular basis. It’s also a good idea to note how the script will be communicated in each situation (text, website, emergency call, etc.) so staff will automatically know without having to think about it in the event of an emergency.

Review your organization’s emergency communication plan to make sure it includes these five best practices. It’s important to know who in the organization is responsible for the plan, incorporate reliable technology, make sure the entire organization is informed, know your audience, and practice scripted messages.

Verint Media Recorder Public Safety software by KOVA Corp is a packaged solution that integrates multi-channel recording with critical functionality to improve the performance of emergency communication. KOVA Corp’s public safety solutions allow responses to emergencies to be as efficient as possible. To learn how KOVA Corp can help improve emergency communication in your organization, contact us today.

In 2015, after nearly 50 years in existence, the 911 Association (otherwise known as NENA: the National Emergency Number Association) introduced the new standard for Quality Assurance and Quality Improvement.

The quest for a unified standard was long in coming and today constitutes the backbone of best practices for 911 operation centers and the staff comprise it.

Even so, the Standards left open to interpretation many of its recommendations (answering “what’ but not necessarily “how”), and an exploration and strategic “unpacking” of some of NENA’s central tenets is warranted for further development and delivery of quality-controlled 911 service.

The 911 operators who receive incoming calls are at the “front lines” of dispatch and are a critical component of service quality. The degree to which operators skillfully and comprehensively navigate incoming calls - and the degree to which they are capable of improving their own performance to meet quality criteria - is the degree to which optimal service can be rendered.

As with the improvement of any skill, review of prior performance is necessary in order to learn from mistakes of commision or omission and adjust performance accordingly. It is important for quality assurance (QA) personnel (those who oversee and manage performance standards and ongoing training for 911 operators) to review the entire call with the operator (and not just the intake portion).

The reason for this is that there are many opportunities prior to the intake portion of the call - and following it - to handle the call in such a way that the intake portion is adversely affected. Without operators and QA personnel reviewing the entirely of the call together, an adequate understanding of why a call has not been optimally navigated is difficult if not impossible to grasp, leaving both QA personnel and operators at a loss for how to improve their performance.

It is also important that QA personnel engage operators in a way that conveys that monitoring and random review of calls (a minimum of 2% of all calls taken) is not a way of “spying on” or “micromanaging” them but rather a means by which they can reap the benefit of being informed by their own performance, thus providing a basis for improvement that results in not only better service for callers but in greater ease and efficiency for the operator. (QA monitoring and review must be framed as a win-win proposition for both callers and operators.)

Ideally, operators should be given “freedom within a framework.” In other words, though certain objective criteria must be met that allow little if any room for interpretation or deviation (such as identification of the nature and location of an emergency), there are other more subjective variables that may not apply equally to every call, and operators should be free to use their own best judgment in negotiating these variables.

Assessment criteria and scoring of QA monitoring and review should be transparent to operators and include both objective and subjective factors. Without transparency, operators are put in the unfair position of conforming to QA criteria that is invisible to them (they are “shooting blind”) and will be unable to make connections between their scoring and performance, thus precluding them from targeted improvement.

Without assessment of and transparency to both objective and subjective factors (for example, whether the address is correctly received and how calm the operator remains in the face of a caller’s agitation), critical interrelationships between the two will remain ambiguous and unavailable for continued attention and improvement.

QA personnel also do well to be aware of various “learning styles” through which operators may be most “available” to coaching and improvement. For example, some operators may be visual learners who will make the most of their reviews if they are given a graph, pie-chart, or other “visual aid” of their performance.

Other operators may be audio learners, who will benefit most directly from listening to their call -  being vocally prompted beforehand to listen for the fulfillment - or lack thereof - of specific criteria.

“Relational” learners - those who learn primarily through the emotional rapport between them and QA personnel - will benefit enormously from a warm, supportive, “I believe in you” attitude on the part of the QA agent.

QA personnel and QA programs should “build in” each of these and other learning styles to facilitate the training and improvement of the performance of a diversity of learners.

Reviews of monitored calls should be timely and provide opportunity for feedback - not only from QA personnel but from operators. As front line emergency personnel, operators have an “inside” view or “boots on the ground”  perspective that QA personnel stand to be continually informed by.

Reviews should not be “monologues” or one-way communications between QA personnel and operators, but ongoing dialogues (two-way communications) between them in which both stand to be generatively informed by the other in the service of ongoing recalibration and refinement of QA standards themselves.

Last, QA systems that incorporate the latest in data analytics to detect overarching trends across calls are of paramount importance. Even with optimal allocation of resources, human QA personnel can monitor and productively review only a tiny fraction of overall calls. (The reason that NENA issued a benchmark of 2% of total calls monitored is not because this is an ideal number for quality assurance assessment and improvement-coaching - far from it - but because 2% is the uppermost limit with which most QA personnel can reasonably contend.)

Advanced data analytics systems can successfully track and monitor 100 percent of calls, thus identifying critical QA-related trends that are only detectable across large sample sizes. Additionally, while a human QA agent can identify, interpret, and effectively manage perhaps two dozen criteria, data analytics can identify, interpret, and effectively manage hundreds of criteria (while generating new criteria through “smart” algorithmics), “compressing” these criteria into manageable categories scaled by order of priority toward delivering optimal service.

At KOVA, you’ll find the data analytics that are central to NENA’s best practices and that lead to the highest levels of service while streamlining operations and freeing up valuable resources. Contact us today and see why we’re the industry leader in digital service solutions.

It comes down to the “capacity question.” U.S. police forces are routinely confronted with crime that they lack the capacity—that is, the on-the-ground manpower—to successfully contend with.

An officer, after all, can only be in one place at once, and traditionally, has been forced to rely primarily on his or her personal training, field experience, and limited communication resources to make sense of the situation and be in the right place at the right time with the right backup.

Increasingly, however, the capacity question is being answered through a new kind of officer: the “connected” officer of the technology-augmented, digital age.

The connected officer is an emergent phenomenon of predictive policing - policing that relies on technologically augmented, data-driven interconnectivity between manpower, crime data, gang data, personal data, environmental data, locational data, and an expanding meshworks of sensor and surveillance sources.

The connected officer is no longer an island among a sea of other officers and dispatch personnel. Rather, the connected officer is a “smart” node amongst a “smart” network of devices and data that collect, store, sift, sort, and analyze a volume of digital clues so complex that without this advanced technology, it would be impossible for even the largest and most well-trained police force to make sense of or manage.

These leading-edge devices and their data-driven, technical applications include license plate recognition, “wearables,” embedded sensors, drone-collected aerial imagery, digital fingerprint scanning, and data-capturing apps.

This technology makes it possible for police forces to accurately predict when and where crimes will occur, what their nature will be, who will be most likely to perpetrate them, and how officers can be optimally deployed.

For example, connected officers are relying on daily “crime forecasts:” digital maps that are alight with red areas of algorithmically generated (and uncannily accurate) predictions of criminal activity.

These forecasts are the results of years of collected data that has been crunched by A.I. to precisely identify “hot spots” of potential crime that connected officers are priority-routed to during their shifts. The idea is to head crime off at the pass - to arrive on the scene as a deterrent before any criminal activity even occurs.

“Real-time” data is the name of the game in today’s data-driven police force. Facial-recognition software is functioning to connect existing surveillance cameras and biometric databases to identify and flag individuals with outstanding warrants, and Facebook and other social media feeds can be algorithmically assessed for immanent signs of gang warfare or other criminal activity.

Smartphone based apps are key to the data-driven police force and connected officer and are among the leading edge of digital tools used in the service of public safety.

SilentPartner, for example, is the only public safety app on the market that works with a smartphone to capture data generated via smartphone us (phone calls, texts, photos, downloads, and so forth), to automatically label this data in order to effectively manage it, and immediately and securely transmit it to an organizational or personal database for future review and analysis.

Rather than a force needing to rely on multiple pieces of cumbersome and expensive field equipment, the SilentPartner system combines the functions of a camera, voice recorder, laptop and cellphone into a single, user-friendly app. With a tap of the touch screen, public safety personnel can instantly label, categorize, store, and securely transmit data directly from the field.

Advanced features of the SilentPartner system include Speech Analytics, which allows software to “listen” to the content of officers’ and safety personnels’ calls to identify automatically reported trends to public safety authorities to help them piece together commonalities between cases that could not otherwise be detected. This is especially useful for detective bureaus that span multiple precincts, because it enables investigators to easily identify related cases. Rough transcription of calls, keyword and phrase searches, and indexing of communications are also options available with SilentPartner.

The technologies of the data-driven police force and connected officer are many and steadily growing and constitute the law enforcement and criminal justice model of the future. To avoid the threat of surveillance overreach, law enforcement objectives must guide the implementation of these powerful technologies, whose capacity for good is guaranteed only by the ethos of the human agencies that rely on them to make their communities safer.

At KOVA, we’re industry leaders in tech-driven public safety enhancements and solutions. Contact us today and see how our products can take you one step further into the future.

There are parts of the country right now where the community’s confidence in their police departments is shrinking. With various incidents being documented on civilian cellphones over the past few years, the issues of force, and when that force is justifiable, are more in the public spotlight than ever before. These incidents have led to an erosion of trust between the public and those charged with keeping them safe.

As a possible response to this situation, both citizens and legislators have called for more accountability, sometimes in the form of officers using body-worn cameras (or BWCs), so that their actions are recorded.  The question is, are these BWCs an effective way to increase both trust and accountability? The fact of the matter is that so far, we’ve only been able to gather mixed information as to whether or not that’s the case.

Over the past few years, many different law enforcement agencies have begun using BWCs in random trials, choosing when their officers wear the cameras and when they don’t. This is sometimes done by shift, as well, so that every officer on duty during a particular shift is wearing a camera, while another shift isn’t.

Through randomization, these agencies could compare the behavior of officers who were wearing the cameras and those who weren’t.

In previous randomization studies, both in the U.S. and abroad, the results showed that officers wearing body cameras tended to have fewer citizen complaints filed against them, while the use of force wasn’t affected much, if at all.

This time around, in a study conducted late last year in Washington, D.C., the results were, if anything, even more ambiguous.

In D.C., there wasn’t a significant difference in the number of civilian complaints OR the use of force between officers with and without body cameras, and further study proved these statistics correct: There was no remarkable difference in the way officers behaved when they were using BWCs.

In a sense, this could be considered a positive. If a police force’s behavior hadn’t changed significantly while they were being recorded, perhaps that suggested that the frightening incidents of excessive force, or perceived excessive force, were aberrations, not the norm. But that still leaves the problem of perception: People might still have trouble trusting their law enforcement professionals to do the right thing.

But it’s hard to discount the use of BWCs for just that reason: The simple knowledge that these officers are wearing cameras could be just as helpful as their more practical uses. If the public believes that an officer will behave differently, or if they at least have some sort of objective form of recourse to address their issues, like a recording of their interactions, that could lead them to feel safer and more trusting of law enforcement as well.

And it’s worth pointing out that BWC footage can be very important in situations where an officer is accused of excessive force or receives a general complaint of some sort. With an objective recording of an incident, both the citizens and the officers have material with which to argue their side of the story. After all, the adage remains true: The camera doesn’t lie, even if we’d like it to sometimes.

Crime prevention, while a the primary concern for law enforcement agencies, is a difficult thing to achieve. There’s no magic formula when it comes to preventing crime before it happens, but many agencies are trying to hone in on better ways to do so using data analysis.

Through analysis, agencies are able to find correlations between one seemingly unrelated factor and another, such as a connection between truancy from school and an increase in local robberies. The true future of policing is in examining complex patterns of data and developing a theory or method based on what that data tells them.

The Smart Policing Initiative and other programs

One of the most promising programs that seeks to use data analysis in crime prevention is called the Smart Policing Initiative, or SPI. The SPI is a program of the Bureau of Justice Assistance that provides funding and training for data-centered crime prevention. The SPI is currently in use in 38 local police departments around the United States.

What’s perhaps most interesting about the trend towards smart policing is that it’s not an especially new concept. The idea of deeply analyzing data to look for potential crime patterns has been in existence since the mid-1990s, when a program called CompStat was created. CompStat was a model that tracked the location of crimes and the status of various crimes and allowed for a primitive level of analysis.

Since then, there have been much more in-depth analytical models created, programs like GIS mapping, that allow police departments to look for less obvious, more deeply ingrained trends in crime and find reasons why those trends are occurring.

How does analysis help improve policing?

Analysis can also lead to better methods, like a concept called “hotspot policing,” which is the idea of focusing policing strategies on a small geographic area or places where crime seems to be concentrated. The decision on where to focus these strategies is made through intense data analysis, and it has delivered concrete, encouraging results.

When the Philadelphia police department tried it in 2009, for example, by increasing foot patrols in crime hot spots, they were rewarded with a 23% decrease in violent crime over a three-month period. Once that initial step provided encouraging results, the police department submitted a proposal to SPI for a larger experiment based on crime hot spots, and the training to take that concept to a larger scale.

By 2014, there were 26 officers training in data analysis in an area with 21 districts across the city, meaning that each district had at least one officer analyzing data at any given time.

Since that expansion, home burglaries decreased by 39%, and auto theft is down by a stunning 64%. And Philadelphia isn’t the only city that’s had success with data analysis and smart policing.

Indio, CA police analyzed data about truancy rates and used it to predict the potential areas where robberies were likely to occur. Within months of that analysis and the implementation of data-driven policing, there was a 2% decrease in robberies.

While it might be a daunting idea for some law enforcement agencies to consider retraining or reassigning their staff, it seems like the data-driven model is producing such positive results that it might be unavoidable. There’s so much potential for reducing crime or even preventing it from happening in the first place, that smart policing seems firmly entrenched as the wave of the future in the arena of public safety.

Are you ready to improve the technology at your police department or public safety agency? Take a look at our public safety recording app, SilentPartner, to see how it can help you better equip your officers in the field.

Just as artificial intelligence is entering so many other industries, AI is also becoming a vital part of the public safety world - and the innovations are coming fast and furious.

The advantages of using AI, whether as part of an actual robot or as software in law enforcement situations seem obvious: They can help keep humans out of dangerous situations while doing jobs that once fell to police officers or firefighters (chief among them search and rescue).

But there are also more intelligence-based, administrative, and even commonplace activities where AI can help out, and public safety agencies all over the country are investigating the possibility of incorporating more artificial intelligence innovations into their daily operations.

According to a recent study by Stanford University called “Artificial Intelligence & Life in 2030,” public safety and law enforcement are two of the eight areas most likely to have an explosion in AI technology over the next decade. Here are some of the areas where AI will become more vital than ever.

Robotics

This isn’t a new area of AI use and investment for law enforcement - in fact, since 2010, agencies have spent over $55 million since 2010 on military-style robots.

But today, we’re seeing a new level of sophistication in these robots. For example, we’re familiar with the idea of robots being sent in to investigate potentially explosive devices, but that’s merely one potential use. Experts predict that these robots will increasingly be used to deactivate explosives, and in Dallas in 2016, police used a robot to take down an active shooter.

Drones

Again, it’s not new for either the military or law-enforcement to use drones for any number of tasks. But there’s a new level of improvement in drone technology that can help with crowd control (using speakers so that officers can address crowds) and facial recognition technology that would allow law enforcement officials to identify suspects before crimes even occur.

Social Media Monitoring

As organizations like ISIS and Al Qaeda, and even drug cartels, have begun conducting more and more of their business through social media, local and national law enforcement agencies have had to step up their own monitoring of various social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The potential development in AI as far as social media is concerned is in two areas. The first involves developing algorithms that search both hashtags and general online activity that might indicate the sale or purchase of illegal drugs. Once one of those targets is identified, the technology behind the algorithm can pass that information to the law enforcement teams so they can launch investigations.

The other area of development is comprehensive scanning of social media for individuals who might have become radicalized. The Stanford study mentioned above discusses how public safety agencies are using AI to analyze conversations on different media platforms to watch for signs of domestic or foreign terror groups communicating with individuals susceptible to radicalization.

One such monitoring tool has been dubbed iAWACS, an umbrella term for the military’s information-gathering intelligence systems. These systems monitor online activity that might indicate active shooter situations or other scenarios that have a high likelihood of involving extremists.

There are potential privacy concerns to be weighed against public safety with some of these AI-related systems, and that discussion, while justified, could possibly slow the advance of artificial intelligence and robotic law-enforcement solutions. But even if that slowing does occur, it’s apparent that tech-based innovations will greatly affect the future of public safety.

To learn more, read our post “The Latest Developments in Public Safety Technology.”

It’s easy to take first responders for granted, but they sacrifice a lot every day for public safety. You can show your appreciation for police officers by saying thank you, paying for a meal, making a donation or writing a letter to the editor. Here at KOVA Corp, we work hard to improve public safety software solutions officers might use on the job. We’d like to show our appreciation for police officers by sharing some of the heroic stories we’ve come across.

Kenneth Minnes, Gloucester Township, New Jersey

Even though Kenneth Minnes was off-duty when he came across a serious single-vehicle crash, he still acted quickly to save two lives. Minnes, a rookie New Jersey trooper, removed two people from a smoking car before it became fully engulfed in flames. One of the occupants of the vehicle was losing blood rapidly and Minnes acted quickly to create a tourniquet out of a tree branch and a shirt which helped reduce the victim’s blood loss until EMTs arrived.

Brandon Lavin, Mesa, Arizona

Officer Brandon Lavin was working a marathon route when he noticed one of the participants having trouble walking. The woman suffered from Multiple Sclerosis and was forced to walk a mile to work because of the marathon. Lavin noticed the woman kept falling so he threw her over his shoulder and took her to work.

Alex Frazier, Los Angeles, California

After an infant was thrown to the ground during a fight between its parents, Officer Alex Frazier performed CPR on the infant, saving its life. This was also the first time Officer Frazier had performed CPR. The infant’s father was later arrested for throwing the baby to the ground.

Donald Thompson, Los Angeles, California

Donald Thompson witnessed a car crash into a wall and explode into flames. He took action to rescue the driver and climbed right in, suffering first and second degree burns. Thompson was able to cut the driver free from his seatbelt and get him to safety before the car became completely engulfed in flames.

Aaron Blumer, Topeka, Kansas

On his way to a burglary alarm, Officer Aaron Blumer noticed a child playing near a pond. The three-year old autistic boy had wandered away from home and by the time Blumer reached the pond, the boy was in the water, near drowning. Blumer pulled him out and brought him to safety.

Rick Bohlmann, Fayette County, Texas

A concerned citizen stopped Deputy Rick Bohlmann to tell him about a stalled vehicle with blood around it. Upon arriving at the car, Bohlmann found a man in the driver’s seat with a gun beside him. Bohlmann secured the weapon and a boxcutter also at the scene and called for emergency medics.

Whether it’s a domestic dispute, an car crash, or a fire, police officers are at the ready and an integral component of public safety. KOVA Corp is proud to provide software solutions for first responders. Whether it’s reliable communication, situation management, or quality assurance, KOVA has the software solution to meet your needs. Contact us today to learn more about our public safety software solutions.

Improving your software systems to better your contact center’s customer service is vital - but you can’t stop there.

Simply putting new programs and processes in place, whatever they are, isn’t going to be effective unless you can obtain and analyze the data that comes out of those efforts. That’s where data analytics comes into play.

So how do you find out if your new policies, technology or incentive programs are delivering the specific results you need? There are several different KPIs your data analytics program should measure.

Overall customer satisfaction

Nothing is more important that customer satisfaction for a call center tasked with providing customer service.

By conducting regular surveys of the customers you deal with, you’ll get hard data on how many of your customers would rate their level of satisfaction as extremely or very satisfied. And while these surveys aren’t always objective, they can at least give you a good idea of whether your efforts are helping or hurting.

Improvement in customer satisfaction

Another effective way to gauge your customer service rating is to keep track of changes in the level of satisfaction over time.

Take a look at the trends in your surveys from before you implemented your changes until a few months after the changes took effect, to see how customer satisfaction may have changed.

Just be ready to accept what the data tells you. Sometimes, the results might not be what you expect; changes don’t always cause a positive trend, and it might take time to find the solution to declining satisfaction. It’s even possible that the older methods you were using were more effective, and you should go back to them.

Customer retention rates

It’s important to think about the future as well as the past, so in addition to keeping track of your center’s satisfaction levels over time, make sure to include questions in your surveys about whether or not a person would use your services again, or if they would recommend your call center to others.

The level of customer recommendation is also known as the Net Promoter Score, and it can often reveal if your changes, your staff and whatever automated services you’ve begun using are truly going the extra mile.

After all, it’s one thing for a customer to say they had a satisfactory experience; it’s another for them to go out into the world and tell others about the experience they had. The Net Promoter Score is therefore a valuable metric for measuring your success.

It’s also important to find out how many of your customers would be likely to purchase further products from the company you represent at your call center. This measurement, also called the Conversion Rate, is another important KPI.

Additional data

Those survey questions are a great general way to proceed, but there’s plenty of hard data you can use to measure your call center’s customer service effectiveness. Has your center’s resolution time improved? How high are your employee productivity rates? How are your employee retention rates?

An effective data analytics program can give you the ability to measure these more intricate statistics and make a determination about your contact center’s effectiveness.

Learn more about our contact center software here.

In October 2017, the Public Safety Aviation Accreditation Commission (PSAAC) and the Airborne Law Enforcement Association announced new guidelines and regulations for public safety agencies using drones as part of their efforts in law enforcement and search-and-rescue operations. These new guidelines were designed not just to get the best possible use out of this still-young drone technology, but to assure the public that public safety agencies were operating their drones both ethically and safely.

These new regulations were specifically designed so that drone operators bore the same obligations to operate their craft safely as manned pilots, and the policies were based around five key points.

Chain Of Command

The PSAAC has stated that any program involving drone use will have a strictly defined chain of command, and that all members of the program will be familiar with it. It will be clear who each member of the program reports to and answers to, and exactly who they will turn to in the event that a decision about drone use has to be made.

Furthermore, all related agencies are required to create extensive and detailed organizational charts listing all authorities involved in the program. Any independent contractors must also sign documentation stating they are aware of and will work within the chain of command.

Program Budget

The new PSAAC guidelines state that any public safety drone program will fully disclose its budget, as well as the source of the funding. The budget must also be enough to comprehensively fund the program, from pilots to repair and maintenance of the drones themselves.

The purpose of this new regulation is two-fold: It ensures that all drone programs have enough of a budget to be effective, and that the public can tell where their tax dollars are going, as that is often the main source of public safety departments’ budgets.

Transparency

The third regulation involves consistent communication between the authorities of the drone programs and the community. The PSAAC policy states that in order for the public to fully embrace a form of technology that is still in its infancy, relatively speaking, they have to have the opportunity to know as much as possible about it, and they should know everything that drone equipment is being used for.

Annual Report

The PSAAC requires that each agency have a policy regarding mandatory annual reports that summarize all of the previous year’s operations. The reports must contain measurements of the drones’ effectiveness, the state of the equipment and how they plan to make improvements. That report must be made available to the public upon request.

This report keeps the public informed on how agencies are using their drone technology.

Inquiries and Complaint Processing

The PSAAC states that there is a mandatory policy for how inquiries and complaints should be handled, and how investigations into the complaints will be conducted. The reports on the complaints will include any member of the agency involved and the employees mentioned in the complaint or inquiry, and it also requires that any cases of drone misuse be immediately reported.

The theme of these new regulations is to ease the mind of a public that’s heard a lot about drones in the news, but might not know many of the facts about how they’re used in public safety. And interestingly enough, the new PSAAC guidelines inspired a less binding list of guidelines for amateur pilots of UAS (unmanned aerial systems) drones.