Supervisor Kristin Kingery uses one of three mouses to control her computer screens at the 911 Dispatch Center in August 2019.
An initiative to upgrade Lewis County’s emergency dispatch system was officially endorsed at Monday’s regular meeting of the Lewis County Board of Commissioners.
Steve Wohld, director of the county’s IT services department, was on hand to seek authorization to execute the purchase, migration and implementation of a new dispatching and records server expected to cost the county more than $200,000.
“This will be a group of services to support our software implementation, as it’s critical to reduce downtime when any of our servers fail or experience overload,” explained Wohld at the Monday morning BOCC session held at the Lewis County Courthouse.
“In short, this is the technical component of the county’s ongoing effort to improve its dispatching services,” he said.
According to county records, the 911 center previously utilized Spillman Technologies as its provider of law enforcement and public safety software solutions prior to Motorola Solutions purchasing the company in 2016.
The approved resolution— a requirement for any acquisition of $40,000 or more— allows the county’s IT Services to upgrade an aging Spillman system with new hardware that is fully supported, unlike its outdated predecessor.
The revised cost is $218,613.00, which includes Washington State sales tax.
Following his testimony, Wohld told The Chronicle that the project is already in the county’s budget. The undertaking will soon enter its implementation phase, he said, with a first quarter 2020 completion date forthcoming.
The technical enhancements will mainly be noticed by the dispatchers and emergency services staff, according Wohld.
