COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA JOINT COMMITTEES ON PUBLIC SAFETY and TECHNOLOGY & INFORMATION SERVICES - - - Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Wednesday, December 10, 2008, 11:50 a.m. - - - Resolution 080694 - Authorizing a joint hearing for both Council Committee on Public Safety and Council Committee on Technology and Information Systems to hold public hearings to: Investigate and determine the cause of the failure of the City of Philadelphia $62 million 800 megahertz digital radio system (MDRS), which occurred at 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 22, 2008; to receive communication and instruction from the Solicitor of the City of Philadelphia on the status of the City's legal remedies against Motorola Corporation as a result of this latest failure; to hear the Managing Director's conclusions as to the cause of those failures and her recommendations and timeline, to correct these failures, and to identify whether or not additional funds need to be budgeted to finally solve this serious breach of public safety, and, in furtherance of such investigation, authorizing the issuance of subpoenas to compel the attendance of witnesses and the production of documents to the full extent authorized under Section 12401 of the Home Rule Charter. COUNCILMEMBERS PRESENT: Brian O'Neill, Chair Bill Green Curtis Jones, Jr. - - - V A R A L L O Incorporated Litigation Support Specialists 1835 Market Street, Suite 600 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103 215.561.2220 215.567.2670 2 12/10/08 JOINT SAFETY/TECHNOLOGY RES. 080694
We're now convening the Joint Committee of Information Technology & Public Safety regarding Resolution No. 080694, which calls for the two committees to investigate and determine the cause of failure of the 9-1-1 system on July 22, 2008. And I'm just submitting the report for the record. I'll read the overview, which is the first paragraph, and then let the report go into the record and be made public. (Copy of said report not provided to stenographer; therefore, not attached hereto.)
I believe it was released yesterday by the Administration as well. The overview reads: "On July 22nd of this year, the City experienced an outage of the police B system for approximately 40 minutes. The A side of this system, which is used 3 12/10/08 JOINT SAFETY/TECHNOLOGY RES. 080694 by Fire and municipal departments, was not affected. However, the consequences of this event could have had serious implications with respect to providing public safety response for those in our city. "Fortunately, there were no 9 immediate adverse consequences as a result of the incident. However, any future occurrence of an event of this nature is totally unacceptable. This report will briefly describe what caused the incident, what corrective actions have been taken to date, and the future plans of this administration to remedy this situation." That's the entire purpose of the joint committee meeting today. Councilwoman Donna Reed-Miller is delayed coming up; otherwise, she would have been here as chair of the Public Safety Committee, but it was just a brief recess to make sure that the report got into the public record. 4 12/10/08 JOINT SAFETY/TECHNOLOGY RES. 080694 Thank you. And the committee is now adjourned. (Proceedings end at 11:54 a.m.) * * * 5 C E R T I F I C A T E I HEREBY CERTIFY that the proceedings of the City of Philadelphia Joint Council Committees on Public Safety and Technology & Information are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me on Wednesday, December 10, 2008, and that this is a true and correct statement of same. __________________________________ JOSEPHINE CARDILLO Registered Professional Reporter (The foregoing certification of this transcript does not apply to any reproduction of the same by any means, unless under the direct control and/or supervision of the certifying reporter.)