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The VFBV/CFA Joint Communications and Technology Committee is warning members not to rely solely on third party notification providers via their smart phones instead of using their CFA issued pagers.
This follows a report to the Committee that some members are handing in pagers in favour of smart phone apps. The Committee warns that the app providers are not officially supported by the agencies and can remove their service at any time, so they are not a safe way of receiving an alert, even if their coverage or feature set is superior to the current CFA pager.
VFBV has been highly critical of the existing pager that was selected by a multi-agency group several years ago, CFA’s pager contract is due to expire next year and VFBV continues to advocate for the need to urgently address possible designs and feature sets for the next generation pagers, including two way communications ability.
The Committee has called for CFA to include Emergency Management Victoria (EMV) in early discussions, to investigate future pager options and ensure mistakes of the past are not made on the selection of the next generation paging device.
This item is from the VFBV/CFA Joint Communications Committee 2 Minute Briefing - to see more items from the Joint Committees, go to the VFBV website's front page and scroll down to the Joint Committee area.
