Creative Problem-Solving through Emergency Notification

We all know success stories (and some failures) about how emergency notification technology has helped inform the general public. Newspapers, TV, and web sites are full of the stories.

What the general media doesn't know are success stories about how automated notification has helped creatively solve internal challenges of making sure public safety personnel get important information they need. Some of the best stories we've heard come from the City of Los Angeles.

Here's a particularly interesting one: When L.A. Fire Department has a troublesome incident to deal with (almost every day), their staff resource decisions must be made quickly and effectively. If they devote too many resources, their payroll costs go way up and people get yelled at. If they devote too few resources, well, you know what happens.

LAFD's exceptional notification system administrator, Ron Corona, came up with an idea to interface their notification solution to payroll records. Here's what happens when a department manager gets ready to issue a notification: An interface built by LAFD takes the list of names for that particular notification, queries payroll records, and produces an accurate estimate of the payroll cost of activating the notification. The manager can then adjust the list before the notification is issued, if desired.

In a perfect world, managers wouldn't have to think about costs of call-outs...but, taking into consider costs is simply a fact of life - particularly in a department that responds to so many things so often.

The most important point of the story, though, is that through creative problem-solving, Ron and company came up with an important tool that takes their notification system to another level. There are other examples of creative notifications from LAFD. (I'll never forget seeing eyes pop out at a Microsoft seminar when Ron demonstrated his notification interface with an old, very old, pre-DOS scheduling solution.)

We can all learn from people like Ron Corona.

All the best,

Rick