COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A think tank forum at Ohio State University, sponsored by Leader Technologies, a business communications company, and involving General Dynamics, will offer a new format to promote management between industry and government to provide the critical tools of Homeland Security.
The anti-terrorism technology conference will be held at the OSU's Schottenstein Center beginning at 9 a.m. Monday, Dec. 13, to showcase currently available, affordable "command and control" systems that could be implemented at the state and local level.
State and local agencies are on the front lines of the terrorist battle, said Leader founder and chairman Mike McKibben, yet they still haven't been able to resolve all the problems that plagued New York City emergency officials on 9/11. "They need to be able to communicate in real-time, across agencies, and to know the position of every asset they have on the ground," he said. "This meeting will show what technologies are available today that local and state officials could implement to help win the war on terror."
"To solve the homeland security problems, first responders need to be aware of what is out there and have the ability to purchase and integrate it," says Warren Parish, a strategist for Homeland Security systems.
Leader and other companies will demonstrate real-time command and control of personnel and equipment, radio interoperability and tie-in of cellular phones, integration of data across law enforcement agencies, and scalable voice alerting. The participants will also hear real-world experiences from other major cities where command and control prototypes are already in operation. These will be affordable solutions, not "pie-in-the-sky" theoretical proposals that will take additional years of testing and unlimited budgets, McKibben said.
Homeland Security officials from Washington D.C., along with representatives from General Dynamics and Wells Fargo Bank, state and city officials from Ohio, Florida, Louisiana, Arizona and California are slated to attend.
Leader Technologies will handle logistics and will participate as one of the technology providers. Leader's core technology, Leader2Leader and LeaderAlert, can provide key requirements to anti-terrorism efforts, including alerting, database and indexing, and information rights management.
