CRITICAL COMMUNICATIONS CASE STUDY

CRITICAL
COMMUNICATIONS
CASE STUDY
FINLAND, SUCCESS IN
MULTI-AGENCY COOPERATION
This case study on Finland’s success in multi-agency
cooperation coincides with its marked position as Critical
Communications World’s first user driven country pavilion in its
history. Organised in conjunction with the TCCA, the aim of the
Finnish Pavilion at CCW2016 and this complimentary case
study paper is to foster information exchange and cooperation
across users and solution suppliers from different countries
and backgrounds. Learn from countries that have worked
together towards more efficient, integrated critical
communications systems.
Emma Banymandhub, event director, Critical Communications World
INTRODUCTION: Tero Pesonen on
Finnish critical communications
and the first user driven country
pavilion at CCW
CASE STUDY: Next generation
multi-agency mobile command
solution (KEJO)
CASE STUDY: VIRVE TETRA as
key enabler to transformation
from separate agencies to joint
operations

INTRODUCTION
FOCUS ON FINLAND AND THE FIRST USER
DRIVEN COUNTRY PAVILION AT CCW
Tero Pesonen, Critical Communications
Broadband Group chairman, TETRA and
Critical Communications Association
“
The world we live in is
quite different - internet,
mobility and globalisation
are pushing operational
needs.
In the 90s, Finland was one of the first
countries to introduce a nationwide shared
TETRA network for all governmental
authorities. Back then a number of user
representatives such as Janne Koivukoski,
Heikki Riippa and Matti Sivula to name just a
few contributed strongly to the formation of
TETRA standard and its capabilities to
address the needs of cooperative public
safety operations. Since then, field operation
has continuously been developing,
embracing further user groups, addressing
new needs and shaking previous structures.
COOPERATION IS KEY
The resourcing in terms of financing as well
as in manpower are limited and Finland
cannot alone set course of development,
which has led to the Finnish critical
communications community seeking for
cooperation possibilities, as well as finding
ways to enhance and support mutual trust
between stakeholders.
Three great examples of this cooperation are:
1. The Common Emergency Response Centre
(ERC) provides a service to all agencies
nationwide. From an administration and
technical point of view, it is one entity with
six physical locations.
2. Police, customs and the border guard share
same rights and obligations. So, they can be
assigned interchangeably to missions
providing great flexibility. This is particularly
effective in the countryside, where units
might be far apart.
3. Utilities and public transport are invited
to the same shared critical communications
network. Ensuring energy supply is critical
in modern society and the needs of railway
communication can be fulfilled together
with public safety as long as sufficient
attention is given into details.
MANAGING EXPECTATIONS
Now, there is strong recognition that the world
we live in is quite different – internet, mobility
and globalisation are pushing operational
needs. The post Google-born generation is also
graduating to public safety professions with
new expectations as we speak. This new era
calls for re-inventing critical communication
This new era calls for re-inventing critical
communication. Now is the time to put joint
effort in it. This is why Critical
Communications Finland is now advocating
seizing the moment for common good.
SPOTLIGHT ON FINLAND
At the Finnish Pavilion, Finnish authorities
and the national public safety operator VIRVE
will be sharing how Finnish safety and
security agencies, social stakeholders and
solution providers have made progress
through co-operation and collaboration. A
visitor will have a chance to learn first-hand
how far Finnish critical communication
users have come, as they open their way of
working, sharing cooperation methods and
how they addressed common challenges. An
emergency services joint field commanding
unit will be part of the Finnish Pavilion,
demonstrating the technical solution in use.
Cyber security has also been considered - from
the state security smart phone usage down to
the last fire fighter. The ability to build
independent back-up transmission for base
stations will also be addressed. But it is not only
about the technology. It is also about finding
solutions of how to plan and test field operations
and train end users to harness the benefits.

LEARNING FROM EACH OTHER
The target of the Finnish Pavilion is to trigger
a dialogue with visitors for mutual learning in
order to foster practical and tangible
discussion. To enable this, fourteen leading
providers will showcase their critical
communications solutions that together are
enabling the end-to-end field operations.
There are great things happening all
around the world in our industry at the
moment, including the remarkable crossborder
work between Norway and Sweden.
The exceptional thing in Finland is the
critical communications ecosystem that
everyday tries to address challenges too
large for any single participant, but
achieves this due to a vast collection of
experience and competence. It has its
founding in the academia, it is humble
enough to listen, sufficiently patient to look
beyond the horizon, while being practical to
deliver needed solutions today.
But, the journey to deeper co-operation, better
performance and greater innovation continues
“
The target of the Finnish
Pavilion is to trigger a
dialogue with visitors for
mutual learning in order
to foster practical and
tangible discussion.

CASE STUDY
NEXT GENERATION MULTI-AGENCY
MOBILE COMMAND SOLUTION (KEJO)
Markus Asikainen, project director,
Finnish Police Board
“
By enabling more work
processes to be executed
in the field, authorities
are able to focus on their
core functions instead of
travelling to the back
office for daily routines.
KEJO is an ongoing unique joint project for
the police, rescue services, social- and health
services, border guard, defence forces and
customs. The new KEJO-system will replace
current systems and give the next generation
a platform for presenting, capturing and
sharing mission critical information.
ATTACKING THE PROBLEM
With this project we are trying to tackle the fact
that structural changes in public safety
organisations and decreasing resources put
pressure to be more cost-effective. At present
there are different ICT-solutions used on the
field environment - causing parallel costs and
technical boundaries for information sharing
and for integrated workflows among the actors.
We know that there is and will be more work to
do in the future and there is an uprising trend
of demand for public safety services.
PROJECTED OUTCOMES
The top-level scope is to execute the
development project cost-effectively and
produce added value for the agencies
involved. The outcome will be
implementation of new common field
operations information systems and new
harmonized operational models that help
authorities to work more efficiently, safely
and collaborate on the field. Project outcomes
set the situational awareness to the next
level, especially when talking about the
mission critical data and field leading.
The Finnish 112-renewal (which started in
2007) was one of the main drivers for the
KEJO-project. In Finland there is one
nationwide governmental and centralised
112-organisation for multi-agency ERCs (6
networked emergency response centres).
Project targets are effective co-operation and
collaboration between the agencies and
better shared situation awareness.
Also implementation of new work processes
in the field conditions ("mobilisation") and
("getting out from the office") are recognised
targets. By enabling more work processes to
be executed in the field, authorities are able
to focus on their core functions instead of
travelling to the back office for daily routines.
We hope that this improvement and
rationalisation will result in shorter
turnaround times.
The main benefits are going to be costefficiency,
a larger portfolio of better quality
public safety services, better work safety,
enhanced situational awareness and
collaboration, better capability to manage
joint operations, better preparedness for
crisis, in addition to improved and more
focused resource planning.
BUMPS ALONG THE WAY
This project covers multiple stakeholders and
we have to balance between different kinds
of interests; despite of the idea of operational
harmonization, there are still varying
organisational and operational cultures - this
leads to different kinds of operational needs
that has to be taken into account.
Because of this, we have to maintain
common trust and shared vision from the
very beginning to the far end of the project.
To ensure commitment we need continuous
negotiation and open discussion about the
roadmap. When building one common
system for all agencies, it is not always so
easy to achieve needed compromises when
defining requirements for the system and
their priorities.

It is also fair to say, that this kind of multiagency
project is forced to carry a weight of
being the pioneer with its wide meaning; many
developmental acts are done for the very first
time. This means in practice that we have to
continuously be able to create innovative new
ways for solving different kinds of problems
and be agile enough for making rapid
decisions. Because of this project stakeholders
are coming from the different sectors
(governmental, municipal and private service
providers), the governance model and
common planning are faced challenges.
execute joint operations, where the citizen is
at the centre of the service; a first responder
in the future will be any nearest appropriate
resource, despite of the agency or "colour of
the vehicle".
The use of mobile-services grows and with
this trend also comes the need for new ICT
platforms and solutions that support daily
routines and are easy to use on the field. The
increasing need for mobilisation demands
better network capacities and dedicated
bandwidths.
“
We have to maintain
common trust and shared
vision from the very
beginning to the far end
of the project.
MOVING FORWARD
The key word will still be "doing things
together" - also integrated work processes
among the agencies will become more
general. In Finland at least, agencies will
Integration will mean in the future both
technical and operational integration.
Regulative norms such as legislation will be
improved to a direction where mission
critical information sharing and use of open
data becomes more dynamic.

CASE STUDY
VIRVE TETRA AS KEY ENABLER TO
TRANSFORMATION FROM SEPARATE
AGENCIES TO JOINT OPERATIONS
Janne Koivukoski, deputy director
general, Ministry of the Interior Rescue
Services for Finland
“
Our ambition was to
achieve better radio
communication systems
using the same budget we
already had.
Without going back in the history to tell the
whole story of our Finnish TETRA-project, we
had big troubles trying to solve all our
communication problems at the beginning of
90s. At the same time there was also a need
to get better integration between different
emergency call authorities. There were
parallel projects to solve both problems.
Now we have been running the TETRA radio
network over 18 years and it has been
countrywide since 2002. With that TETRA
radio network and our emergency response
centers we have saved a lot of money and
lives. I cannot see any other project which
has been so beneficial to our safety and
security in Finland.
A NEED FOR INTERGRATION
To get better co-operation and faster
response time between units which were
working on the field there needed to be better
integration between different emergency call
centres too.
The first problem was to find a solution to
getting new radio communication systems to
replace earlier analogue radio systems in
Finland. Our ambition was to achieve better
radio communication systems using the
same budget we already had. The second
problem was a need to build a totally
integrated emergency response system to
cater for all authorities.
During the planning phase, we already had a
pilot centre where we recognised that we
could achieve the best quality and fastest
operation by using the same operator for
different authorities. We also developed a
unique training programme for the
emergency centre operators.
OVERCOMING CHALLENGES
The biggest challenge at the beginning was
to get common understanding of the target.
Every authority thought that they had their
own needs and specifications which were
impossible to fit together. It took several years
to reach the consensus and some people
needed to retire during the process to achieve
it. Of course, limited financial resources were
also a big challenge for us. But there we could
convince political leaders at that time so well
that we got the money. The third challenge
for us was that there was no standard
solution for us and we were the first in the
world to do this.
A SUITE OF BENEFITS
The benefits for us were that we could, as
forerunners, lead the path to success and
organise the systems suit our needs.
Additional benefits were those we had set for
ourselves: a new digital shared radio network
for all authorities which has enabled our
integrated emergency response system and
enhanced our communications ability.
If we had built several radio networks the
costs would have been much higher than our
solution to use the same network for all. Also
to get the same benefits which we can
achieve via integrated network (common
talking groups), we would have needed to
have more investment.
If we take the police as an example user
group, the new system was cheaper to use as
their earlier networks were there. For some
local users the user fees were more
expensive than the old ones, but they got new
co-operation possibilities with other
authorities.

Maybe the best examples of how the
integrated network has helped to save
lives are the complex multi hazard
accidents. One example of that kind
accident was a sudden, severe weather
traffic accident near Helsinki where there
were several hundred vehicles involved
and only three deaths.
Through one call, our system offers a
complete evaluation of the accident, direct
alerting to appropriate units and also
information support to various authorities on
the field, in addition to informing the caller.
EUROPEAN CONSENSUS
I can see that there is a need to find a
standard solution to critical broadband data
communication in the near future. The
critical voice will stay for several years in
TETRA systems because big financial
investments have been made to support it in
its mature phase and it will continue to serve
users for many years to come.
The biggest work is to see a common target
for all European actors and find consensus
in that.
“
It took several years to
reach the consensus and
some people needed to
retire during the process
to achieve it.

The Critical Communications Finland Pavilion is free to attend and is
located at stand C.23 at the main entrance to the exhibition hall.
Critical Communications Finland will host Finnish authorities and the
national public safety operator VIRVE, who will share their practical
experience on how national, regional, local operations and incidents are
successfully taken care of. Finnish technology providers will also be
showcasing their solutions and will share their experience of how these
solutions have been implemented and used.
The Finnish Pavilion opening will take place at 16:30 on May 31,
inaugurated by Mr. Esko Koskinen, director general for Rescue Services at
the Ministry of the Interior Department.
Register today to ensure you do not miss out on the opportunity to visit
one of the leading global projects: http://bit.ly/1R8oy0y
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