North Dakota Chief Information Officer Shawn Riley today announced a fifth metro area in North Dakota is part of the Statewide Interoperability Radio Network (SIRN). The network now includes Williston, Grand Forks, Minot, Bismarck, and Mandan areas. Riley said the public safety community will greatly benefit from this expansion as it provides an integrated mission-critical communication network for the public safety community.
The SIRN project is large and consists of sophisticated and complex technologies with the purpose of ensuring highly reliable and redundant communication capabilities for the statewide public safety community. The project started in 2019 as an effort to modernize and provide a feature-rich and highly available network to meet the mission-critical communication needs of the public safety community. Some of the goals of SIRN are to resolve interoperability challenges, increase radio coverage, decrease the number of disparate radio systems, and modernize the features and functionality of the radio network.
This is an ongoing project that will ultimately serve all public safety entities in North Dakota and is the result of a highly collaborative statewide effort.
Craig Felchle, infrastructure director at North Dakota Information Technology (NDIT) department, said, “This project is a great example of all public safety entities across North Dakota coming together to serve the needs of the public safety community and our citizens. Through continued partnership across all our communities and state government, we’re realizing the benefits of the work as one mindset in this facet of technology.”
Grand Forks Fire Chief, Gary Lorenz, said, “The SIRN project has shown substantial improvements in reliability and dependability, particularly with in-building coverage.”
Becky Ault, director of the Grand Forks Public Safety Answering Point (911), said, “Dispatchers have found a big improvement in audio clarity and responders report the clarity back from them is much improved. The difference is amazing!”
The project is scheduled for completion in 2025.
C O N T A C T :
Alisa Cook | 701-328-7408
Jecca Geffre | 701-955-0304