You are in:
- Back Issues » 2006 » August
A controlled recording
Dawn Read discusses the impact that the merger of regional control rooms is having on voice recording solutions, and explores the advances in technology with Paul Manyweathers, managing director, Activa Solutions and Adam Smith, public safety marketing manager, Nice Systems...
What impact is the merger of regional control rooms having on voice recording solutions? Paul Manyweathers, managing director, Activa Solutions: "It is somewhat of a mixed blessing. It enables many of the forces to consolidate platforms tothe latest technology perhaps in use at one ofthe regional control rooms, or even enables anentirely new system to be installed to record anewly formed control room. However in mostinstances it means making the most of varioustechnologies in use by each joining force, andworking with a multi supplier system."
Adam Smith, public safety marketing manager, NICE Systems Control: "Room mergers are having a significant impact on regional police forces, predominantly on decisions regarding purchasing and ICTstrategies and technologies. Many forces are unsure of the future plans for their regional control rooms, they therefore hold off frommaking any purchasing decisions. In addition to purchasing many forces are facing technical uncertainties, creating doubt over future ICT strategies and technologies."
The mergers will generate the need for more advanced voice recording solutions to copewith migration from what is currently a reasonably simple single site system to more distributed systems which will need to deliver centralised administration operations and applications, giving forces partitioned and centralised views of the solution data and information. This will have a major impact for many vendors, as the migration will involve new platforms and large system outages to deliver a roll out of this type of solution, if available at all.
Because NICE’s solutions are designed for this type of environment, upgrades and centralisation can be done as part of a seamless roll out providing constant coverage of critical recording and adding seamless functionality tothe organisation as required. Regional control centres create larger organisations, expedite consolidation of technologies and create a need for moreadvanced solutions to leverage the economies of scale that the new regionalised forces will beable to demand. This trend for regional mergers is one that plays to NICE’s solution strengths. NICE’s solutions are ideally suited to this type of infrastructure.
Not only is its technology scaleable, allowing each force to create an infrastructure to suit its unique demands, it also allows small localised recording for remote locations that can be networked to the larger central sites creating a single virtual system. NICE also has additional technologies available to forces, like Video, Screen, Email, GIS,recording allowing for additional consolidation of technologies and a faster reproduction anddisclosure of evidence.
Reassurance: There is no need for forces to delay in makingdecisions on its recording systems, as NICE is able to offer advanced solutions that are capable of adapting to any environment. Failure to consider future recording solutions could have significant impacts on operations andprosecutions if older systems start to fail and critical evidence is lost. NICE can offer greater reassurance to all of its customers as the NICE product set can easily be redeployed and reconfigured to meetany future need. This allows forces to move from traditional analogue recording to full VoIPsolutions within the same solution, keeping all user interfaces the same, removing the need for retraining and redeployment of applications.
NICE not only offers competitive voicerecording solutions, it also has the worldsmarket leading quality applications andevidence disclosure tools, ensuring any systemspurchased today will deliver the very bestperformance for any force or joint forcemoving forward.
Compatibility: Many forces are also concerned about the basic infrastructure decisions that will need to be made around networking, voice switching and communications and eventual architecture of the call handling operations. Generally the detail or strategy of these plans is not fully developed so forces are very concerned about spending public funds on technologies that may have to be replaced prior to receiving value formoney. Due to NICE’s total compliance with all types of IT and voice infrastructures, forces can be reassured that a NICE system will support anytechnology decisions made in the future.
Not only that, NICE works with the likes of BT, Nortel, Cisco, etc to ensure the solutions areconstantly certified with the latest releases anddeliver the optimum level of service and functionality to the user. How has advances in technology affected recording systems?
Paul Manyweathers, managing director, Activa SolutionsRecording systems always did and always will do what they say, record calls. However this isn ot what makes a good voice recording system, as recording a call is pretty pointless unless you can quickly and easily pinpoint the recording you want and replay it. This, apart from the physical size reduction in modern systems, is the key to development. It is possible with today's solutions to be sitting at your own desk, without any special software on yourstandard PC, and locate a recording from acentral system on the LAN or even WAN, within seconds of inputting data such as telephone number, CLI, incident number, or control room operators name for example.The use of IP telephony has expanded the scope and use of voice recording.
Systems such as Activa's Veritel VoIP platform enable centralised recording of multiple sites from a single location, simply by analysing the network traffic, and recording those required voice callssent over IP. This provides enormous flexibility, as one recording system can be configured ona day to day basis to monitor any number of different extensions, or control room positions,enabling fast deployment when major incidentrooms or back up control positions need to be utilised. This has had a big impact on how voice-recording systems are now used, with access being a day-to-day event, rather than the old trend of only looking for a recording if it wasabsolutely essential to have it.
Recording systems are now used for up to the minute staff training, incident reproduction, and even just as a memory jog. Adam Smith, public safety marketing manager, NICE SystemsProbably one of the largest technology advances over recent years has been the deployment of Airwave. This has offered policeforces improved clear communications and interoperability, with promises of future mobiledata applications etc. Airwave has the ability to recall incidents by Talk Group and individualRadio ID or alias. This is probably one of thesingle most powerful features that can bepresented to the disclosure offices, however itis not currently available.
Most recording systems are currently justrecording from the de-trunked bulk recordinginterface or from the ICCS at a monitored talkgroup. This offers basic recording by talk group and offers no advantages over traditional radio systems, and actually creates challenges for forces to economically record all of the talk groups available to the force. NICE helps overcome some of theselimitations within airwave utilising some of the functionality developed for full TETRA implementations.
NICE integrates with theICCS vendor to decode the relevant radiomessages and provide the user with information on Talk Groups, Radio ID’s andeven status information like emergency calls.This can offer huge benefits in disclosure enabling the officer to select the relevantradios involved in an incident, for instance apursuit, where only the relevant information isdisclosed, faster and more conveniently thancurrent capabilities allow.
The other major technology that is being deployed now is VoIP. Due to the critical natureof Emergency Services communications, VoIP has been slow to be adopted by forces,however we are seeing more and moreimplementations now. The challenge for mostrecording vendors is proof of capability in recording the diverse array of IP derivatives and proving that the system will not impact onthe IP infrastructure and servers.
Networking is another technology thatbenefits forces, delivering more applications toallow officers to stay mobile and in the field.Networks provide higher bandwidth thusenabling video to be used more throughout theforce, offering the eyes (CCTV) to theircurrent ears (audio comms) in more areas. Wireless applications and mobile data alsocome under this networking banner. With many trials being run with mobile data and applications it will only be a matter of timebefore we see a need to record all of these mobile applications, cameras, personal recorders etc to help maintain a full audit trail and simplify full disclosure of cases.
Of course the ongoing advances in commercial IT equipment (peripherals, storage,etc) is making solutions more secure, easier touse and faster, not to mention more affordable.It is a common sight to see basic biometric login systems for officers today using their ID cards and or finger prints to identify the users.
Technologies such as basic Hard Disk drivesare now bigger, more reliable and cheaper thanever, which has meant forces can now storerecords online at a lower cost than their oldtape based systems. This not only can savemoney but also frees up man years worth of administration and maintenance allowing forcesto become more efficient and effective. What are the future trends?Paul Manyweathers, managing director, ActivaSolutionsToday's systems are easy and quick to use,word spotting and speech analysis systems havealready been deployed within the industry,where any key word or phrase can be typed into the system, and if the recorder thinks that word is spoken, can send an alert to a supervisor, or simply mark that recording with a keyword tag.
This technology will continue to be developed to alert management to volatileincidents, and will enable the processing of therecordings to search and analyse the calls looking for key words after the fact.In addition, software that wraps around the voice recorder such as the Veritel XQ thatprovides statistics, and reports on quality and agent/control room operators developments,will continue to be enhanced, to provide more automatic scoring of calls, and even to book development and training coursesautomatically for those operators in need ofassistance in key areas. Adam Smith, public safety marketing manager, NICE Systems: "The future will be around new highbandwidth network applications (VoIP and IPbased) including the proliferation of CCTV andGIS applications. It will also evolve around mobility and mobile applications, including wireless networks and mobile data."
Yorkshire on record Tees East and North Yorkshire Ambulance Service (TENYAS), previously one of the largest geographical ambulance service in England and Wales is now under the umbrella of the Yorkshire Ambulance Service alongside WYMAS (West York's Ambulance Service) & SYAS (South York's Ambulance Service). The TENYAS Virtual Call Centre has 60 operators residing at five physical locations and handles over810,000 calls per year, of which 210,000 are emergency calls.
The challenge: TENYAS needed a solution for recording and storing all radio, VoIP and telephone conversations locally at each site of their 5 sites with central archiving for total resilience. The solution: Four networked Veritel Pro recorders at every site providing 56,000 hours of local on-linestorage each. Recorded calls can be scheduled for central archiving to TENYAS’ existing Network AttachedStorage device located in York.
The results: David Johnson, Assistant Director of Information Management and Technology at TENYAS states, "we are very innovative in the use of new technology to support our services to the community andwe are also very thorough with its adoption. We invested in the Veritel platform since we feel it can growand develop according to our current and future service demands."
With this in mind it is planned that the recently merged Yorkshire Ambulance Service will amalgamate itsoperations so that the service as a whole be able to implement and upgrade to the same Veritel platformwhilst also working in a multi supplier system.Activa has also successfully installed the Veritel Pro communications recording system into Gloucestershire Constabulary as previously publicised in the December 2005 Issue of the BAPCO (Journal Vol 11 Issue 12).
