By Liz McMahan
About a half million dollars will be spent on software that dispatchers will use at the Muskogee City-County E911 dispatch center to be opened next year.
Director Darryl Maggard said the Trust Authority is making giant strides toward getting the center established: They’ve purchased the former OG&E; building on Court Street and are in the process of getting the roof repaired and looking at how the center will be remodeled.
The center will bring together all the emergency dispatchers from throughout the county to combine resources for a state-of-the-art operation, Maggard said.
They looked at a system offered by Public Safety Systems Inc., of Lanham, Md. on Wednesday. Three projection screens were set up in the Muskogee Fire Department’s training facility. Dispatchers, emergency workers and Trust Authority members watched as Linda Koosa, PSSI marketing director, demonstrated the system.
She answered questions about how the system will work if the caller doesn’t know where the dispatcher needs to send help and what kind of information will be recorded.
Maggard said that at the end of the week, officials will select the programs they like best based on what the programs include and how much they cost.
Officials will then visit centers now using those software packages.
Requests for proposals will go out in April, and a bid should be awarded by mid-year, he said.
By getting the software in place, emergency agencies can begin inputting data for use when the system is fully operational, he said.
The maps to be used in the system are already being prepared, he said.
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