PROJECTS

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

The Office of Unified Communications, established in October 2004, consolidates all the disparate communications functions of the District of Columbia into a common facility with common technology infrastructure and business practices. The development included various organizational and business process assessment tasks that culminated in a comprehensive document defining best practices, recommendations, and various project planning and legislative drafts for the new agency. The OUC has effectively and efficiently absorbed the communications personnel of the Metropolitan Police Department, Fire/Emergency Medical Services Department, Executive Office of the Mayor, and other agency communication functions. The project included a staffing and human resource assessment, multi-jurisdictional best practice assessments and recommendations, process definitions, and identification of multiagency dependencies dealing with issues such as personnel unions and legislative disparities.
 
TDC project management professionals developed project plans, work breakdown schedules, project scheduling, and tracking. In addition, we consolidated public safety stakeholder input and provided vendor management and oversight, project reporting, and tracking.

The UCC, a $116 million District of Columbia capital project, consolidates all public safety and non-public safety communications functions into a common location and onto common systems and infrastructure. TDC provided program management for all technical systems housed in the UCC, including 911 and 311 telephony, computer aided dispatch, public safety radio, logger recorder system, timing system, LAN/WAN system, and internal network monitoring systems to provide maximum efficiency of response. The successful integration of complex technologies across multiple critical agencies and function significantly decreased “end-to-end” response time for public safety first responders.
 
Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of Homeland Security, recognized the UCC as a nationwide example of excellence in public safety communications, and awarded the UCC with Outstanding Achievement in the areas of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery by the National Association of State CIO’s (NASCIO).

Upon completion of the UCC, TDC consolidated several major District of Columbia call centers into a single nonemergency 3-1-1 capability for the Office of Unified Communications. TDC worked with OUC personnel and provided project management and subject matter expertise in the areas of call center telephony and information technology to effectively migrate several major call centers into a common 3-1-1 system, while migrating the existing police non-emergency call taking and dispatch off of the then 3-1-1 system. Agency call centers that were migrated include: Department of Motor Vehicles, Department of Health, Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs and custom Cost-Over-The-Shelf (COTs) applications which support these call centers. TDC’s responsibilities included project management and planning, telephony system configuration, migration of custom applications, and system transition tasks.

In 2004, TDC project managers developed an initial requirement analysis and business case associated with the implementation of the 3-1-1 call center in the District of Columbia. At that time 3-1-1 was used as a part of the 9-1-1 system for Police non-emergency call taking and response. TDC developed a comprehensive requirements document which assessed the hundreds of call taking functions spread across multiple DC agencies, documented scope and customer service requirements associated with each of these call taking entities and categorized each as specialized or non-specialized call taking functions.
 
TDC project managers developed a business case, including scope, risk, and cost analysis, associated with a 3-1-1 call center for presentation to the Executive Office of the Mayor for budgeting and planning. District of Columbia 3-1-1 CIRM System Implementation TDC recently completed the implementation of the Motorola Citizen Interaction and Relationship Management (CIRM) system for the District of Columbia. The CIRM system supports the District of Columbia Office of Unified Communications by managing and tracking all 3-1-1 service requests, and integrating with nearly every constituent-facing, service-providing agency of the District of Columbia. TDC provides the project management responsible for the implementation and the development of all custom interfaces to legacy systems within the Department of Public Works, Department of Transportation, Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, and various other agencies.

Finalized in June 2001, the PSCC emerged as the first integrated Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) for the District of Columbia. The PSCC currently serves as the fully redundant PSAP responsible for all public safety emergency and non-emergency communications in the District of Columbia. This includes all systems, applications, and infrastructure which support redundant 9-1-1 and 3-1-1 communications for the District of Columbia. TDC project managers successfully migrated disparate Police and Fire, 9-1-1 and 3-1-1 communications functions into a common location, systems, and infrastructure in the initial implementation of the PSCC in 2001. PSCC systems included Nortel/Plant Equipment Telephony System, Intergraph Computer Aided Dispatch Systems, Motorola Gold Elite Radio System, Dictaphone Logger Recorder System, Spectracom Timing System, and related LAN/WAN infrastructure. TDC’s responsibilities included program and project management of all activities related to requirements definition, sub-system vendor procurement and management, systems integration, training, cutover, and acceptance.

In December 2001, in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks, the Government of the District of Columbia, Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) contracted TDC to develop a strategy and program plan for integrating the District’s Public Safety radio programs into an OCTO Wireless Programs Area division. The Mayor and City Council tasked OCTO with integrating District radio engineering and operations into a consolidated communications agency, the Office Unified Communications (OUC), and providing engineering and project management for major radio initiatives within the District.
 
In the early stages of this strategy, the District served as the beneficiary of a Federal grant to enhance and optimize radio communication capabilities in the District. The OCTO Wireless Program Area initial responsibilities included program definition, management, network and system engineering, vendor contracting, construction management, training, operational procedures and all attributes required to successfully accomplish a program of this scale and complexity. As an added challenge, the OCTO Wireless Program Area team agreed to complete this program within an Eighteen (18) month time frame, less than half the time normally required for programs of this size and scope. The TDC wireless team delivered an urgent response in light of the unusually sensitive times affecting security and communications in the nation’s capital.

TDC has been providing project management for the National Capital Region's Regional Wireless Broadband Network (RWBN) since the project’s inception in May 2005 and maintains the “institutional” knowledge of this project and the entire National Capital Region Interoperability Program (NCRIP). In performing this work, TDC successfully completed an evaluation of various wireless broadband technologies and spectrum options, produced the preliminary site design that used for budgeting purposes, and developed the contract that enabled the NCR to procure the equipment and services needed to deploy a regional wireless broadband network of networks for Public Safety. TDC managed the equipment infrastructure vendor responsible for deployment of the various phases of the network and developed solid professional relationships with NCR’s MetroCIOs, radio managers, first responders and regional jurisdiction personnel that surround the NCR, the national public safety agencies, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
 
TDC is the first vendor in the country to conceive, develop and deploy wireless public safety broadband systems operating in the 700 MHz radio band, using waivers and experimental licenses granted by the FCC. TDC has years of project and program management experience, thorough knowledge of wireless technologies, public safety spectrum options, broadband and communication applications, and expertise of the participating NCR public safety personnel.

WARN is a Washington, DC interoperable broadband wireless network initiative. This innovative program serves as a joint partnership program operated by the Office of the Chief Technology Officer of the District of Columbia in conjunction with the program vendors, Motorola Inc., and Flarion, Inc. Operational since January 2005, the network provides service to federal and local agencies for events ranging from Presidential Inaugurations to HAZMAT spills. TDC provided overall deployment and operational management of this broadband network. The network provides peak speeds in excess of 2.5 Mbps throughout Washington, DC using twelve (12) transceiver sites.
 
This dedicated private high-speed data radio networks is an essential technology to the District and federal agencies for supporting various mobile video and broadband data applications and data transfer. Conjointly, the network supports various voice and data applications including CapWIN, PROTECT (an application dedicated to accelerating first responder support to a chemical attack in the Metro tunnels system), and other video and wide area broadband wireless data applications.
 
TDC technologists secured radio spectrum (via a FCC Experimental License) and collaborated with equipment vendors to design this high speed, Internet Protocol (IP) based radio network. TDC achieved a significant milestone by obtaining an experimental license to operate in the 700MHz band. The license required extensive testing of TV broadcasters, negotiations, and months of technical reviews of FCC rules followed by the actual writing of the application. Subsequently, TDC needed to file a modification to the license when the vendor could not meet all of the frequency constraints.

TDC received the entire program management function for the NCR Homeland Security Grant Program to manage all of the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) funds for the NCR’s Senior Policy Group and the Sergeant at Arms for DHS. TDC’s responsibilities included project management of all programs included in the grant program, developing a program management office, policies, procedures, financial management, and related functions. The grant programs include all public safety, municipal homeland security, and wireless initiatives funded by the program in all counties included in the region (District of Columbia, Howard, Montgomery and Prince Georges County, MD; Montgomery, Prince William, Fairfax, and Arlington County, VA).

TDC currently supports both the existing District of Columbia, Office of the Chief Technology Officer Wide Area Network group, as well as Desktop Management initiatives in the District. This support includes agency assessments for the ITServUs Desktop Management Program, LAN/WAN support, helpdesk, and related tasking. The program functions consist of the following:
 
Project Management
TDC provides project management support to the various implementations of the DC WAN group for over five (5) years. TDC activities include ISP management, VPN implementation, support, and architecture.
 
Tier I / Tier II Support
TDC provided tier I and tier II network support to the various agencies supported by the OCTO LAN/WAN group for over five (5) years.
 
IT ServUs
TDC has provided project management and implementation services to the ITServUs project for over five (5) years. TDC project managers work with numerous agencies to ensure the efficient roll-out and management of the ITServUs program.
 
OCTO Security
TDC provided project management support to the OCTO Information Security Group for a 12 month assignment. TDC managed the implementation of secure networks for the Metropolitan Police Department, Department of Motor Vehicles, and other public safety agencies. TDC also provided help desk support to the OCTO Information Security Group in support of its initial roll out of policies and procedures for certification and accreditation. TDC prepared fiscal and Federal Emergency Funding proposals, monthly forecasting, and actual labor/materials procurement costs for the Information Security program office.
 
Remedy
TDC managed the Asset Management infrastructure project for OCTO for an eight (8) month assignment. TDC was responsible for overseeing the activities associated with developing and executing an Information Technology asset management strategy for data center operations and city-wide agencies utilizing Remedy Asset Management technology and other hardware storage database infrastructure. TDC worked hands-on with requirements gathering, vendor evaluation, deployment, and auditing activities.
 
DCNet
TDC has provided information technology and project management services in the implementation the District’s municipal area network which will provide voice and data services to over 300 District and non- District entities on a common fiber network owned by the District of Columbia. TDC responsibilities include site surveys, requirements, network migration, and testing.

Some Of Our Project Highlights

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