CRITICALCOMMUNICATIONSCASE STUDYFINLAND, SUCCESS IN MULTI-AGENCY COOPERATION

INTRODUCTION: Tero Pesonen onFinnish critical communicationsand the first user driven countrypavilion at CCW

CASE STUDY: Next generationmulti-agency mobile commandsolution (KEJO)

CASE STUDY: VIRVE TETRA askey enabler to transformationfrom separate agencies to jointoperations

This case study on Finland’s success in multi-agencycooperation coincides with its marked position as CriticalCommunications World’s first user driven country pavilion in itshistory. Organised in conjunction with the TCCA, the aim of theFinnish Pavilion at CCW2016 and this complimentary casestudy paper is to foster information exchange and cooperationacross users and solution suppliers from different countriesand backgrounds. Learn from countries that have workedtogether towards more efficient, integrated criticalcommunications systems.

Emma Banymandhub, event director, Critical Communications World

The world we live in isquite different - internet,mobility and globalisationare pushing operationalneeds.

In the 90s, Finland was one of the first

countries to introduce a nationwide shared

TETRA network for all governmental

authorities. Back then a number of user

representatives such as Janne Koivukoski,

Heikki Riippa and Matti Sivula to name just a

few contributed strongly to the formation of

TETRA standard and its capabilities to

address the needs of cooperative public

safety operations. Since then, field operation

has continuously been developing,

embracing further user groups, addressing

new needs and shaking previous structures.

COOPERATION IS KEY

The resourcing in terms of financing as well

as in manpower are limited and Finland

cannot alone set course of development,

which has led to the Finnish critical

communications community seeking for

cooperation possibilities, as well as finding

ways to enhance and support mutual trust

between stakeholders.

Three great examples of this cooperation are:

1. The Common Emergency Response Centre

(ERC) provides a service to all agencies

nationwide. From an administration and

technical point of view, it is one entity with

six physical locations.

2. Police, customs and the border guard share

same rights and obligations. So, they can be

assigned interchangeably to missions

providing great flexibility. This is particularly

effective in the countryside, where units

might be far apart.

3. Utilities and public transport are invited

to the same shared critical communications

network. Ensuring energy supply is critical

in modern society and the needs of railway

communication can be fulfilled together

with public safety as long as sufficient

attention is given into details.

MANAGING EXPECTATIONS

Now, there is strong recognition that the world

we live in is quite different – internet, mobility

and globalisation are pushing operational

needs. The post Google-born generation is also

graduating to public safety professions with

new expectations as we speak. This new era

calls for re-inventing critical communication

This new era calls for re-inventing critical

communication. Now is the time to put joint

effort in it. This is why Critical

Communications Finland is now advocating

seizing the moment for common good.

SPOTLIGHT ON FINLAND

At the Finnish Pavilion, Finnish authorities

and the national public safety operator VIRVE

will be sharing how Finnish safety and

security agencies, social stakeholders and

solution providers have made progress

through co-operation and collaboration. A

visitor will have a chance to learn first-hand

how far Finnish critical communication

users have come, as they open their way of

working, sharing cooperation methods and

how they addressed common challenges. An

emergency services joint field commanding

unit will be part of the Finnish Pavilion,

demonstrating the technical solution in use.

Cyber security has also been considered - from

the state security smart phone usage down to

the last fire fighter. The ability to build

independent back-up transmission for base

stations will also be addressed. But it is not only

about the technology. It is also about finding

solutions of how to plan and test field operations

and train end users to harness the benefits.

“

INTRODUCTIONFOCUS ON FINLAND AND THE FIRST USERDRIVEN COUNTRY PAVILION AT CCW

Tero Pesonen, Critical Communications

Broadband Group chairman, TETRA and

Critical Communications Association

LEARNING FROM EACH OTHER

The target of the Finnish Pavilion is to trigger

a dialogue with visitors for mutual learning in

order to foster practical and tangible

discussion. To enable this, fourteen leading

providers will showcase their critical

communications solutions that together are

enabling the end-to-end field operations.

There are great things happening all

around the world in our industry at the

moment, including the remarkable cross-

border work between Norway and Sweden.

The exceptional thing in Finland is the

critical communications ecosystem that

everyday tries to address challenges too

large for any single participant, but

achieves this due to a vast collection of

experience and competence. It has its

founding in the academia, it is humble

enough to listen, sufficiently patient to look

beyond the horizon, while being practical to

deliver needed solutions today.

But, the journey to deeper co-operation, better

performance and greater innovation continues

The target of the FinnishPavilion is to trigger adialogue with visitors formutual learning in orderto foster practical andtangible discussion.

“

By enabling more workprocesses to be executedin the field, authoritiesare able to focus on theircore functions instead oftravelling to the backoffice for daily routines.

KEJO is an ongoing unique joint project for

the police, rescue services, social- and health

services, border guard, defence forces and

customs. The new KEJO-system will replace

current systems and give the next generation

a platform for presenting, capturing and

sharing mission critical information.

ATTACKING THE PROBLEM

With this project we are trying to tackle the fact

that structural changes in public safety

organisations and decreasing resources put

pressure to be more cost-effective. At present

there are different ICT-solutions used on the

field environment - causing parallel costs and

technical boundaries for information sharing

and for integrated workflows among the actors.

We know that there is and will be more work to

do in the future and there is an uprising trend

of demand for public safety services.

PROJECTED OUTCOMES

The top-level scope is to execute the

development project cost-effectively and

produce added value for the agencies

involved. The outcome will be

implementation of new common field

operations information systems and new

harmonized operational models that help

authorities to work more efficiently, safely

and collaborate on the field. Project outcomes

set the situational awareness to the next

level, especially when talking about the

mission critical data and field leading.

The Finnish 112-renewal (which started in

2007) was one of the main drivers for the

KEJO-project. In Finland there is one

nationwide governmental and centralised

112-organisation for multi-agency ERCs (6

networked emergency response centres).

Project targets are effective co-operation and

collaboration between the agencies and

better shared situation awareness.

Also implementation of new work processes

in the field conditions ("mobilisation") and

("getting out from the office") are recognised

targets. By enabling more work processes to

be executed in the field, authorities are able

to focus on their core functions instead of

travelling to the back office for daily routines.

We hope that this improvement and

rationalisation will result in shorter

turnaround times.

The main benefits are going to be cost-

efficiency, a larger portfolio of better quality

public safety services, better work safety,

enhanced situational awareness and

collaboration, better capability to manage

joint operations, better preparedness for

crisis, in addition to improved and more

focused resource planning.

BUMPS ALONG THE WAY

This project covers multiple stakeholders and

we have to balance between different kinds

of interests; despite of the idea of operational

harmonization, there are still varying

organisational and operational cultures - this

leads to different kinds of operational needs

that has to be taken into account.

Because of this, we have to maintain

common trust and shared vision from the

very beginning to the far end of the project.

To ensure commitment we need continuous

negotiation and open discussion about the

roadmap. When building one common

system for all agencies, it is not always so

easy to achieve needed compromises when

defining requirements for the system and

their priorities.

“

CASE STUDYNEXT GENERATION MULTI-AGENCYMOBILE COMMAND SOLUTION (KEJO)

Markus Asikainen, project director,

Finnish Police Board

It is also fair to say, that this kind of multi-

agency project is forced to carry a weight of

being the pioneer with its wide meaning; many

developmental acts are done for the very first

time. This means in practice that we have to

continuously be able to create innovative new

ways for solving different kinds of problems

and be agile enough for making rapid

decisions. Because of this project stakeholders

are coming from the different sectors

(governmental, municipal and private service

providers), the governance model and

common planning are faced challenges.

MOVING FORWARD

The key word will still be "doing things

together" - also integrated work processes

among the agencies will become more

general. In Finland at least, agencies will

execute joint operations, where the citizen is

at the centre of the service; a first responder

in the future will be any nearest appropriate

resource, despite of the agency or "colour of

the vehicle".

The use of mobile-services grows and with

this trend also comes the need for new ICT

platforms and solutions that support daily

routines and are easy to use on the field. The

increasing need for mobilisation demands

better network capacities and dedicated

bandwidths.

Integration will mean in the future both

technical and operational integration.

Regulative norms such as legislation will be

improved to a direction where mission

critical information sharing and use of open

data becomes more dynamic.

We have to maintaincommon trust and sharedvision from the verybeginning to the far endof the project.

“

Our ambition was toachieve better radiocommunication systemsusing the same budget wealready had.

Without going back in the history to tell the

whole story of our Finnish TETRA-project, we

had big troubles trying to solve all our

communication problems at the beginning of

90s. At the same time there was also a need

to get better integration between different

emergency call authorities. There were

parallel projects to solve both problems.

Now we have been running the TETRA radio

network over 18 years and it has been

countrywide since 2002. With that TETRA

radio network and our emergency response

centers we have saved a lot of money and

lives. I cannot see any other project which

has been so beneficial to our safety and

security in Finland.

A NEED FOR INTERGRATION

To get better co-operation and faster

response time between units which were

working on the field there needed to be better

integration between different emergency call

centres too.

The first problem was to find a solution to

getting new radio communication systems to

replace earlier analogue radio systems in

Finland. Our ambition was to achieve better

radio communication systems using the

same budget we already had. The second

problem was a need to build a totally

integrated emergency response system to

cater for all authorities.

During the planning phase, we already had a

pilot centre where we recognised that we

could achieve the best quality and fastest

operation by using the same operator for

different authorities. We also developed a

unique training programme for the

emergency centre operators.

OVERCOMING CHALLENGES

The biggest challenge at the beginning was

to get common understanding of the target.

Every authority thought that they had their

own needs and specifications which were

impossible to fit together. It took several years

to reach the consensus and some people

needed to retire during the process to achieve

it. Of course, limited financial resources were

also a big challenge for us. But there we could

convince political leaders at that time so well

that we got the money. The third challenge

for us was that there was no standard

solution for us and we were the first in the

world to do this.

A SUITE OF BENEFITS

The benefits for us were that we could, as

forerunners, lead the path to success and

organise the systems suit our needs.

Additional benefits were those we had set for

ourselves: a new digital shared radio network

for all authorities which has enabled our

integrated emergency response system and

enhanced our communications ability.

If we had built several radio networks the

costs would have been much higher than our

solution to use the same network for all. Also

to get the same benefits which we can

achieve via integrated network (common

talking groups), we would have needed to

have more investment.

If we take the police as an example user

group, the new system was cheaper to use as

their earlier networks were there. For some

local users the user fees were more

expensive than the old ones, but they got new

co-operation possibilities with other

authorities.

“

CASE STUDYVIRVE TETRA AS KEY ENABLER TOTRANSFORMATION FROM SEPARATEAGENCIES TO JOINT OPERATIONS

Janne Koivukoski, deputy director

general, Ministry of the Interior Rescue

Services for Finland

Maybe the best examples of how the

integrated network has helped to save

lives are the complex multi hazard

accidents. One example of that kind

accident was a sudden, severe weather

traffic accident near Helsinki where there

were several hundred vehicles involved

and only three deaths.

Through one call, our system offers a

complete evaluation of the accident, direct

alerting to appropriate units and also

information support to various authorities on

the field, in addition to informing the caller.

EUROPEAN CONSENSUS

I can see that there is a need to find a

standard solution to critical broadband data

communication in the near future. The

critical voice will stay for several years in

TETRA systems because big financial

investments have been made to support it in

its mature phase and it will continue to serve

users for many years to come.

The biggest work is to see a common target

for all European actors and find consensus

in that.

It took several years toreach the consensus andsome people needed toretire during the processto achieve it.

“

The Critical Communications Finland Pavilion is free to attend and is

located at stand C.23 at the main entrance to the exhibition hall.

Critical Communications Finland will host Finnish authorities and the

national public safety operator VIRVE, who will share their practical

experience on how national, regional, local operations and incidents are

successfully taken care of. Finnish technology providers will also be

showcasing their solutions and will share their experience of how these

solutions have been implemented and used.

The Finnish Pavilion opening will take place at 16:30 on May 31,

inaugurated by Mr. Esko Koskinen, director general for Rescue Services at

the Ministry of the Interior Department.

Register today to ensure you do not miss out on the opportunity to visit

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