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State of Hawaii Civil Defense
Chooses e/pop Web Conferencing
for Statewide Emergency Preparedness Communications
Under President Bush’s directive, the Secretary of
Homeland Security developed the National Incident
Management System (NIMS). NIMS’ integrates effective
practices in emergency preparedness and response into a
comprehensive national framework for incident
management. In a nutshell, NIMS will enable responders
at all levels to work together more effectively to
manage domestic incidents no matter the cause, size or
complexity.
NIMS will help improve the ability to coordinate
communications in the case of All-Hazards’ emergencies
and disasters. It will make communications processes,
procedures and systems and support information
management systems interoperable and will also designate
that voice, data, information, data display systems and
specialized technology also function together through
standardization of systems, procedures and equipment.
The creation of NIMS propelled the need for city,
county, state and federal government entities to create
Virtual Joint Information Centers (VJIC) in order for
the coordination of disaster response and recovery
information.
One particular state, which is posed with some unique
challenges when faced with disasters and emergencies, is
the State of Hawaii. Hawaii is an ideal vacation place
with unparalleled weather and lush tropical scenery.
However, when it comes to protecting its more than 1.2
million citizens, not to mention the thousands of
tourists that visit the islands each day, Hawaii was
forced to address its geographic issues in order to
create a comprehensive public safety plan for the
state’s seven islands. Most of the state’s population
resides on Oahu, with Honolulu being the island state’s
largest city and its capital.
When the State of Hawaii Civil Defense Department set
out to create its own VJIC it decided that in order to
efficiently coordinate communications between agencies
on all seven islands it needed to go one step beyond and
find a suitable web and video collaboration solution to
support the mission of the VJIC.
In order to gather Public Information Officers and other
public officials from Hawaii’s county, city and state
governments quickly during a crisis, the State of Hawaii
Civil Defense department rose to the challenge of
finding a web-based conferencing system that would
support their needs for communicating and interaction
between islands, reducing time out of the office for
travel and associated costs.
Billy Gomban, an IT consultant retained by the State of
Hawaii to build the IT resources for the VJIC, found
WiredRed’s e/pop Web Conferencing through a standard
Internet search and, because of its comprehensive
feature set, including multi-party video, VoIP, remote
control, plus complete desktop, application/document and
dynamic presentation sharing, and security options, he
decided that it was a good fit for the VJIC being
developed by the Civil Defense Department of Hawaii.
“I found many web conferencing solution providers on the
Internet, but not many met all the criteria we had for
the VJIC,” explained Gomban. “One of our highest
priorities was to find a secure conferencing product,
and e/pop Web Conferencing provides the highest level of
security including third-party certificates, which was
certainly a major selling point.”
e/pop Web Conferencing was installed and quickly
integrated into the State of Hawaii Civil Defense VJIC,
which consists of four information sharing components:
- Alerting: this system provides and email and short
messaging alert notification limited to registered
users.
- Telephone Conferencing: Registered users are provided
with a PIN to access conference calls that are initiated
to support the VJIC.
- Web Site: Designated users are provided with access to a
restricted web site used to share an incident log,
incident related documents such as news releases,
talking points, briefings and other related information.
- Video Conferencing: The web-based conferencing and
collaboration system provides interactive information
sharing and coordination tools. The type of incident and
agencies involved will dictate priority access to these
tools and the host server. The system is accessible
24/7.
Prior to installing e/pop Web Conferencing,
teleconferencing was the traditional method whereby
Public Information Officers, officials and other
agencies stayed in touch. But getting everyone on the
phone at the same time proved difficult and meetings
weren’t as interactive and effective as they could be.
Ray Lovell, the Public Information Officer for the State
of Hawaii Civil Defense Department, believes that using
an interactive system like e/pop Web Conferencing lets
him and his fellow PIOs accomplish more in less time.
“e/pop Web Conferencing allows us to see each other and
talk to each other while we pass around and edit
documents in real time,” said Lovell. “In the event of a
disaster, when everything must be done in real-time, the
ability to gather information quickly, create talking
points for press conferences and share this information
is invaluable. Not only does it save us time but it
helps us to get accurate information out to the public
that much faster.”
All four counties in Hawaii, including Oahu, Maui, Kauai
and Hawaii work with State Civil Defense to coordinate
emergency relief and disaster recovery efforts and work
at the local level with First Responders and other
agencies.
“e/pop Web Conferencing makes state and county
boundaries disappear,” explained Lovell. “We can talk,
see each other via web cameras and text chat if
necessary so it provides multiple levels of
communications. And it is so simple to use. If you can
use Word or Excel than using e/pop Web Conferencing is
just as easy.”
Lovell noted that if he is traveling outside of the
state all he really needs is a laptop, web cam and a
high-speed Internet connection to access and join VJIC
web conferences.
The State of Hawaii Civil Defense found that web
conferencing met their needs for collaborating,
coordinating and communicating in real-time about
emergencies and crises, and in the process found that is
a time-saver and helped to reduce costs attributed to
business travel. From an end-user perspective, e/pop Web
Conferencing also fulfilled the requirement that it be
easy to use, especially important in a time of crisis.
“Although the VJIC is our primary mission for the use of
e/pop Web Conferencing, I plan to train other
departments on how to use it to further reduce travel
costs and also reduce time out of the office for
in-person meetings,” added Gomban. “The staff will be
able to use e/pop for online meetings, presentations and
trainings, which will help us to decrease unnecessary
travel.”
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