Maloney questions low-risk designation and testing protocol failures

Councilmember Maloney, followed by Riley.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Commissioner, for your testimony.

Firmware upgrades in other municipalities or in New York City have caused issues in the past.

So why did Motorola...

ROLA deemed this a low risk when we're dealing with emergency services, and why didn't OTI push back on that designation?

I will answer at a top level and then I can let DC Barbera speak to additional levels of detail.

As we mentioned earlier, there are hundreds of firmware upgrades in the course of a year.

Typically they are deemed low risk.

I think that

In this case, the thing that we have learned is we need to do a better job of understanding what the risk evaluation is.

But I will hand off to DC Barbera.

Thank you.

One of the key factors that's used in that risk evaluation is during the actual activity related to the change,

Will calls for service be impacted?

And because during this change, all call traffic was rerouted prior to the work happening, and there was no live traffic happening during that time period, it was deemed low risk because the traffic was routed to an alternate.

location.

At the completion of the change, the traffic was rerouted back and went under systematic testing over a period of time.

But that's one of the factors that play into that low risk factor.

I urge you after this to reevaluate the criteria that we're using to determine risk.