Federal Highway Administration Focus States Initiative: Traffic Incident Management Performance Measures Final Report
Focus States Initiative - Lessons Learned
Institutional Issues and Challenges
The participating States identified the most common institutional issue
as gaining acceptance to measure performance from both executive decision
makers and other agencies involved with TIM responsibilities. The following
identify reasons for the difficulty in obtaining executive acceptance:
- The development of an integrated TIM program and program-level
TIM PM often requires "thinking outside of the box":
- Agencies have specific charges and responsibilities and may
not view the collection of data needed for TIM PM as a priority
when responding to an incident.
- Agencies view TIM PM as being the responsibility of another
agency. One State cited an example where emergency responders
indicated that collecting data and measuring performance was the
responsibility of the State's DOT.
- Decision makers may have limited resources available for program
activities and need to be convinced that investing resources in TIM
PM is worthwhile.
The participating States also identified other significant issues involved
obtaining executive acceptance for data exchange:
- Exchanging data with other agencies may be a new practice for an
agency and managers need to be convinced that this is beneficial to
their agency.
- What data is exchanged, who has access to the data, and how the
data is used also may be of concern. This is particularly true with
respect to data that may be needed for criminal investigations that
arise from an incident.
- Data exchange often involves legacy system modifications. Again,
the key issue is convincing managers to invest resources.
Fortunately, the participants identified a number of strategies that
they have used in their own States to address the above-cited issues.
Successful strategies, all of which emphasize developing cooperative
relationships with other agencies, include the following:
- Establishing working relationships with all agencies involved.
Several States have established working groups that meet on a regular
basis to discuss TIM operations and policies as a means to identify
areas for improvement and exchange information and lessons learned.
- Developing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between agencies
that defines roles, responsibilities, and establishes a defined working
relationship. An MOU can be an effective tool for addressing
data exchange issues by stating what data will be exchanged and how
the data will be used.
- Developing outreach materials that document the benefits
of TIM PM. These can incorporate results from other States
or within the State, but the key is to show how performance measurement
can be a benefit, i.e., improving response operations and responder
safety, obtaining additional budget funds, and so forth.
- Establishing a cost-sharing agreement was identified by
several States as critical to success. Placing responsibility
on a single agency to obtain the funding needed for legacy system
modifications was identified as problematic, whereas cost-sharing
served the benefit of reducing a particular agency's resource requirements.
States indicated that leveraging other funding sources and resources
also was a critical success factor, such as demonstrating how a particular
legacy system modification needed to support TIM PM also would support
other program activities helped obtain acceptance and support from
management.
Technical Integration and Data Exchange
- Establish agreements between law enforcement and DOTs to preclude
compromising sensitive data. Ensuring that law enforcement data provided
to DOTs did not include any sensitive data that if made public would
compromise a criminal investigation. A number of States indicated
that to address this issue they had established agreements to specifically
define data elements to be provided. These States also had established
system filters that allowed the exchange of these agreed to data elements.
- Establish technical committees to develop common data dictionaries.
Many agencies within a State do not have compatible data dictionaries
and collect the same information in different formats. States indicated
that to address this issue, States would establish technical committees
to help develop common data dictionaries or translators that would
enable different systems to identify and match information.
- Establish a common time stamp and common geographic coordinates
necessary for data exchange and reporting functions. A common time
stamp and common geographic coordinates necessary to identify an incident's
location also were identified as key issues for data exchange. For
example, an enforcement agency may time stamp the closing of an incident
as when the last enforcement vehicle departs the scene, while DOT
or other responders may still be onsite. States indicated that establishing
a common time stamp that establishes common incident start and close
time stamps and the sharing of this information between agencies as
critical to properly measuring incident duration. The same issue was
identified with the use of geographic coordinates: if agencies use
different geographic coordinates to identify an incident location,
some type of system modification that translates these into a common
set of coordinates is needed to enable agencies to properly identify
the location of the same incident.
- Identify and agree to a defined standard or group of standards for
data exchange. The States cited that identifying and agreeing to a
particular standard or group of standards was identified as critical
for ensuring interoperability. States indicated that multiple systems
using multiple standards (IEEE 1512, APCO 36, NLETS, and so forth)
created problems in enabling the exchange of data between systems.
As part of this discussion, participants stated that developing a
common ITS architecture was very helpful in identifying standards
to be used by different agencies.
- Identify and agree upon method of integrating text, video, and audio
formats for data exchange. Integrating multiple types of data exchange
via text, video, audio also was identified as important. This helps
with identifying the appropriate response strategy; providing information
on 511 or Web-based traveler information systems; notifying the media;
and improving overall incident management in addition to enabling
TIM PM. States indicated that this also helped convince managers to
support the allocation of funds and resources needed for legacy system
modifications.
- Identify and agree upon consistent data collection practices within
and between agencies. A significant issue facing States is that of
inconsistent data collection practices both within and between agencies.
Solutions identified included:
- Minimizing human interface through use of automated data entry
where possible, i.e., Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) systems,
time-stamped data entry, and so forth.
- Single-point data entry that is based on a user-friendly interface
(for example, pull-down menus, single sheet, and so forth).
- Pushing crash data from law enforcement to DOT and identify
an agency (for example, DOT) responsible for time-stamping closure
of incident.
- Prioritizing the need for a "lane-clear" time stamp
among law enforcement responders.
- Training at all levels (practitioner, mid-level and executive)
and among all partners organizations (DOT, law enforcement, etc.)
on data-collection techniques to ensure common practices.
- Identification and standardization by each State on which organization
collects time-stamp data.
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