Firefighters Efficiently Manage Mobile Devices While Saving Lives
Tennessee’s Memphis Fire Department has 57 fire stations, each with its own printers, computers and other IT gear. The department also owns and operates 250 Panasonic Toughbooks and 350 Apple iPads, recently adopting new mobile technology to augment its traditional radios.
But the MFD has only four IT support professionals. A service call can mean an hour in the car, assuming the troublesome equipment is in a fire station and not, in the case of mobile devices, in a truck or ambulance somewhere.
“Of course, we encourage our people to report issues,” says acting Lt. Carey Berryman of the MFD technology team. “One of our mandates is to keep them available to the community and make sure technology doesn’t take a truck or ambulance out of service.”
“When you have as many stations as we do and as many employees, it’s impossible to meet everyone’s needs by running around the city,” Berryman says. “We need to be able to get in there remotely and fix the problem.”