Submitted by: Communications and Technology Committee Cosponsored by: Division of State and Provincial Police

CT.07.20

WHEREAS, commercial communications play an essential role in the delivery of law enforcement services; and

WHEREAS, the loss of these services directly impact critical communication systems such as enhanced 911 centers (E911) and public safety answering points (PSAP); and

WHEREAS, once a communications disruption is discovered, police play a critical role in directing recovery and restoral efforts, by assisting and directing commercial providers to locations to restore communication services; and

WHEREAS, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has created two systems for reporting commercial carrier outages and infrastructure damage; and

WHEREAS, in 2020, the FCC issued PS Docket No. 15-80 Proposing Rulemaking, which, if approved, would provide all states, through a statewide point of contact, direct access to FCC commercial carrier Network Outage Reporting System (NORS) and Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS) information; and

WHEREAS, although all police agencies would benefit from direct access to FCC NORS and DIRS  disruption information, the FCC has admittedly limited resources to handle these direct notifications; therefore, the FCC considers dissemination to a statewide agencies with an ability to determine who “needs to know” about such communications interruptions within each state and allows those   individual state agencies to then share commercial carrier disruption information with appropriate state, and local public safety responding agencies with a “need to know” about such communications interruptions; and

WHEREAS, each state and territory has an established and federally recognized state fusion center that daily receives and disseminates sensitive law enforcement and other classifications of information on a “need to know” basis, using an established and recognized state and local distribution methodology for sensitive information; therefore, fusion centers provide a natural statewide point of contact for disseminating NORS and DIRS information to state and local public safety with a “need to know”; and

WHEREAS, all public safety would benefit from access to disruption and outages of any commercial carrier information within their respective jurisdictions reported to the FCC; thus, the FCC is encouraged to share information collected in their NORS and DIRS with state and local public safety through statewide fusion centers; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, that the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) urges the FCC to approve PS Docket N0. 15-80 and to provide access to all NORS and DIRS data to every statewide or territorial fusion center for dissemination of qualifying commercial carrier communications outages to local police agencies for situational awareness and to assist commercial carriers in identifying paths to promptly restore their networks.