Public Safety Technology Alliance (PSTA) announces launch, focus on open standards for public safety

Maggie Goodrich, a consultant who is the retired CIO for public safety for the city of Los Angeles, is another industry representative on the PSTA board.

PSTA announced that some of its initial industry members include AT&T, JVCKenwood, Microsoft, Secured Communications, Sonim Technologies, TRX Systems, and Verizon as some of its initial industry members.

“The PSTA is a critical next step in ensuring nationwide wireless interoperability for public safety, and we look forward to making significant contributions by bringing the public-safety community and industry together to create a public safety focused framework of open standards,” Plaschke said in a prepared statement.

PSTA also has “committed participation from a broad spectrum of public-safety executives,” from the law-enforcement, fire and EMS communities, as well as representatives from government CTO and CIO departments, according to the PSTA.

This collaboration of public safety and industry participation is important, Kennedy said.

“By having strong public-safety participation and industry participation, it’s kind of a coalition of the willing. It’s really trying to ensure that industry does this, because they know what public safety wants, because they’re in the room,” Kennedy said. “And public safety coalesces around one standard in each area of key technology, because they know that it’s going to bring economies of scale, more certainty and more interoperability.

“If you think about it, it’s about aligning incentives for public safety and industry to work well together."

More information about the PSTA can be found at the organizations web site, www.pstalliance.org.