$1.2M system upgrade for Carson City public safety

The Carson City Sheriff’s Office implemented its $1.2 million systems upgrade Tuesday.

The Public Safety infrastructure system, called Tiburon, got a Windows-based upgrade that replaced the 15-year-old Unix data technology the Carson City Dispatch Center was running on previously.

The 18-month project was funded by the Board of Supervisors last year. With the new system, city Information Technology experts have greater maintenance access and it insures continuous support from Tiburon, and enhanced critical information systems supporting officers and fire/paramedic personnel responding to the community needs. For Carson City residents, this means those data systems supporting our public safety entities, along with many other Carson government departments, have the most reliable and efficient systems available.

The new platform enhancements feed city, sheriff and fire officials with critical information that’s used to monitor key public safety performance indicators. This feature is critical, since the Sheriff’s Office alone draws more than 600 data indicators from the system every month. It also records fundamental real time data and performance measures such as emergency response times, crime rates, crime mapping features and community demand for services.

The single-stream, intelligence platform, which provides computer aided dispatch and 911 services, feeds information directly to emergency response personnel in the field and provides the connections to the reporting and detention management components. With Tiburon, the system helps keep efficiency in cost and operation, which Sheriff Ken Furlong said has always been the goal for his agency.

The upgrade started at 5 a.m. Tuesday morning as the old system was shut down and the new one turned on. The transfer was overseen by the Project and Communications Manager Karin Mracek, and the implementation phase went just as projected with no impact to any city or emergency services.

The upgrade to Tiburon also was overseen by city Information Technology employees, Sheriff and Fire representatives, nine Tiburon technicians and support personnel and trainers and operators for the Communications Center and Sheriff’s Office. As each component of the system was activated, technicians verified and adjusted to any challenges encountered, however the system was turned on with no interruption of services, and completed on time and under budget.

Furlong called the project an “absolute success.”

The new system is the same one used by many large metropolitan agencies and is assured to serve the Carson City community for many years to come with the best and most efficient public safety platform affordable, officials said.