Information Technology
Information regarding DESC's Technical Support section
The Division of Emergency Services and Communications Technical Support section is charged with securing and advancing all technologies necessary to execute the mission of the Division: "To locate, communicate and connect people in an emergency with the help they need."
Our Technical Support team is responsible for building and maintaining the 911 Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) call processing platforms and infrastructure. In order to leverage and maintain these technologies, DESC employs its own information technology staff of Technology Support Specialists, which are led by the Bureau Chief of Technology Services. The Division is responsible for meeting strict uptime requirements of its critical systems by maintaining a highly available, redundant, fault tolerant, and secure infrastructure at two locations located 26 miles apart.
Secondary to supporting the 911 PSAP, the Technical Support section maintains infrastructure for GIS data development and maintenance, enterprise-level databases, and highly secure publicly available web services. In addition to these core services for the Division, the Technical Support section also supports and maintains a wide-area-network to every local dispatch center in New Hampshire which is used to share vital call data and deliver GIS services. This network extends to 64 local dispatch centers and supports over 150 devices for delivering call data, GIS data, and voice traffic.
Central to the Technical Support section's mission is establishing and safeguarding the core foundation of DESC's network and server environments, providing end users with devices that are functional and secure, and designing and maintaining data management platforms that meet the needs of the Division. DESC maintains many mission critical systems, as well as integrates with vendor equipment and networks to provide other services. As such, it is imperative that our networking environment is robust, fault-tolerant, and scalable. Additionally, network and data security are top priorities and continual efforts are needed to bolster and adapt our cybersecurity defenses, as well as maintain and upgrade networking components to ensure we are meeting security standards.
The Division's IT team strives to effectively identify the needs, priorities, goals and vision for DESC's technology infrastructure and plays a critical role in ensuring New Hampshire's 911 system remains one of the finest in the nation.