Broken Arrow City Council
Meeting of: 10-03-2017
To: Mayor and City Council
From: Fire Department
Title:
title
Approval of and authorization to execute a Software License Agreement with FirstWatch Solutions, Inc. to provide data monitoring and bio-surveillance software for the Broken Arrow Fire Department
End
Background:
The Fire Department budgeted $100,000.00 in Public Safety Sales Tax funds in fiscal year 2018 for the purchase of data mining software. The volume of emergency calls within Broken Arrow has increased substantially over the last several years and continues to increase. In order to appropriately and efficiently deploy Fire Department resources, the Fire Department needs the ability to monitor and decipher large amounts of data in order to identify what the immediate needs are.
FirstWatch is a proprietary software that actively monitors all data that is inputted into the Fire Department’s reporting software and computer aided dispatch software to provide real-time analysis of the City’s emergency response needs and capabilities. The software provides custom configured triggers that notify supervisors and administrators when certain criteria are met, such as when there are no available ambulances to respond to emergencies.
In addition, the FirstPass module is a quality assurance tool for incident reports. This system screens every report enter to ensure that all applicable protocols and procedures are followed and flags reports for review when they are outside of department parameters, thus saving the City many man hours of manual reviews.
Due to the specialized nature of the service and technology that FirstWatch provides, they are considered sole source; and thus, exempt from the requirements of the Competitive Bidding Act.
Staff recommends the purchase of the FirstWatch software to provide the Fire Department administrators and managers the information and tools necessary to make timely decisions on resource deployment and crisis mitigation.
Cost: $99,369.00
Prepared By: J. Mark Steward, Assistant Fire Chief
Reviewed By: Fire Department
Information Technology
Human Resources
Finance Department
Legal Department
Assistant City Manager
Approved By: Michael L. Spurgeon, City Manager
Attachments: FirstWatch Software Licensing Agreement
Recommendation:
Approve the Software License Agreement and authorize its execution.