When I started in public safety over 20 years ago, we used punch cards, typewriters and radios that would sometimes interfere with our music radio in the room. Paper blotters were filed, microfiche was common and 9-1-1 was a novelty. The rapid technological advancement in society continues to amaze me and the impact on our public safety communications center is at times overwhelming. Getting hardware and software to communicate and operate cohesively with other devices is always challenging and with most new technology, things are always changing.
The Illinois Chapter of APCO has embraced these changes and strives to keep the membership updated on legislative items, industry trends and future concerns. The days of mailings have been replaced by frequent e-mails and supplemented with websites and list serves. Illinois APCO and Illinois NENA have used Yahoo List Serves to blast information out to the membership quickly and to allow members a place to ask and comment on industry questions/concerns. This has posed another challenge though, since some IT departments have blocked these sites making it more difficult to communicate effectively to all.
