Before leaving a week early to hit the campaign trail, Congress included a significant provision in the fiscal 2007 DHS Appropriations Act. House and Senate conferees included the language from the 21st century Emergency Communications Act of 2006, originally introduced by Rep. David Reichert (R-Wash.).

The provision makes a number of important advances towards achieving communications interoperability. For example, the legislation centralizes and coordinates emergency communications work at DHS by establishing an Office of Emergency Communications to address first responder communications issues. (Sure, it's another layer of bureaucracy, but if it consolidates important work being done in disparate departments then I think that's acceptable.)

The legislation then directs the newly-created Office of Emergency Communications to develop a national emergency communications plan, which would outline ways to ensure that first responders and government officials can communicate during disasters. To do that, it would include recommendations for voluntary standards to ensure interoperability among emergency communications systems. Significantly, the plan would also provide a time frame for deploying nationwide emergency communications systems.

These are all wonderful developments towards solving the communications crisis. Even so, the folks at Incident.com blog remind us of an important point - all the technology in the world won't fix the problem. People, processes and procedures are critical to achieving interoperability.

Be sure to check out FCW.com's overview of the legislation and what it means for first responders. Homeland Security Watch will be providing detailed analysis of the Appropriations Act in the near future.