DHS funds target interoperable messaging capabilities

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science & Technology Directorate (S&T) recently awarded funds to a firm to advance first responder interoperable messaging capabilities.

The $1,545,286.03 allotment to Mobility 4 Public Safety (M4PS) would aid in developing the Bridge 4 Public Safety (Bridge4PS) messaging and collaboration platform.

“With no dedicated public safety messaging and collaboration platform, many public safety and emergency response officials are leveraging non-secure, consumer-grade messaging tools,” DHS Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Under Secretary for Science and Technology Kathryn Coulter Mitchell said. “S&T recognized the need to have secure, industry-wide interoperability and information sharing and turned to industry to help solve this challenge.”

Bridge4PS was initially utilized two years ago as a Proof-of-Concept (POC) via funding from DHS S&T to study secure and interoperable public safety platform demand and feasibility, which, after testing, resulted in DHS authorizing the Bridge4PS expansion nationwide.

“Collectively, we worked hard to bring Bridge4PS, an innovative collaboration tool dedicated to providing first responders the ability to work more efficiently, to reality,” Norman Speicher, DHS S&T program manager, said. “The secure platform supports multi-agency collaboration with features that include messaging, sharing multimedia files, and video conferencing to communicate in real-time with the goal of increasing first responders’ own safety and saving more lives simultaneously.”

Officials acknowledged the platform needs compliance certifications to maximize usability and adoption across the public safety user base.

“We can now concentrate our attention on obtaining compliance certifications,” Speicher said.