April 03, 2015
| 1. | How did you get started working with NIIX, or how did you hear about NIIX? |
| We heard about NIIX through information provided by NPSTC and OEC, either through printed literature or through email outreach/updates. | |
| 2. | How did you become the NIIX Georgia Community Coordinator, and how many years have you been doing this? |
| Georgia began using NIIX in early 2010 as our central portal for information sharing on our interoperability efforts. Jim Mollohan, Georgia Region 10 RPC chairman, had an existing community for Georgia on NIIX so I was added as a second community coordinator and began using it for all communication related activities. | |
| 3. | How do you feel that the NIIX Georgia Community helps you and its members be able to better support and manage interoperability and public safety communications for your state? Do you have any specific examples of how NIIX has helped you or a community member with project collaboration? |
| It allows us to share important information with stakeholders and they can access the calendar to find out about upcoming events or find shared documents in the document section. By having this as a "one stop shop" for all interoperability efforts, it has allowed us to deliver better products and services to stakeholders. | |
| 4. | What NIIX tools most effectively help you to manage your community and keep your community active and involved with your community work? What functions of NIIX do you use the most, and what do you like about these functions? For example, do you use the NIIX calendar to manage community events? |
| I like the community notification and events calendars the best. The notification eliminates the need to maintain a separate email distribution list. We didn't have another easily accessible calendar for agencies to access so the calendar on NIIX is very helpful. | |
| 5. | How do you market the NIIX Georgia Community within your state in order to get more members to participate in your community work? |
| We stress the important of NIIX in all of our outreach efforts (training, exercises, meetings and workshops). | |
| 6. | How do you find your community is able to succeed in staying so active and relevant? Do you think that the NIIX community notification function helps you to accomplish this and effectively communicate with your members? For example, do you use the notification function often to let community members know if there is a document that your community is collaborating on or if a new document is uploaded to the community that requires review? |
| Personnel know they can rely on timely and important information coming from the community without being overwhelming or occurring so often that the information is too much to handle on a daily or weekly basis. We typically only send out a message or two each month. | |
| 7. | Do you have any suggestions for current or new community coordinators on best ways to engage your community, and do you have any examples of the type of work you collaborate on with members within your community? |
| I think just understanding the type of information is viewed as the most important for stakeholders will ensure the appropriate level of information and engagement is accomplished. | |
| 8. | Do you use NIIX to organize or publicize state training classes or other seminars or webinars relating to your community work? |
| Yes, our COML and COMT classes are posted on the events calendar and a notification is send to members for registration information. | |
| 9. | How can other states benefit from creating a NIIX Community? How has the state of Georgia benefited most by creating the Georgia Community? |
| Georgia has benefited by allowing members and stakeholders to "opt in" to be part of the community to ensure they are included on all interoperable communication activity notifications from the State of Georgia. If at any time their position changes and they're no longer involved in communications their account can be cancelled to basically "opt out" and they'll no longer receive the notifications. Using separate email distribution lists may make the "opt out" option more difficult if their position ever changes. | |
| 10. | Do you have any success stories to share that have come from community members' collaboration in the Georgia Community? |
| There has been positive feedback from users who have access the documents section to retrieve exercise information from previous events so they can review and practice their processes/procedures for future exercises. | |
| 11. | Do you have any tips for current or new community coordinators on how to most effectively manage your community? |
| Solicit input from users to find out the type of information they’d like to receive. Keep in mind that frequency, length and type of information may affect how much users pay attention to the information provided by the site. | |
| 12. | Do you have any additional comments that you would like to add about your success in managing the Georgia Community? |
| We've thoroughly enjoyed having the resource for Georgia to leverage for our efforts. | |
| 13. | Do you know if many of your Georgia Community members are also active in NPSTC participation? |
| Yes some do. | |
| 14. | How do you think that NIIX enhances the mission of NPSTC? |
| It has allowed for easier collaboration from interoperable communication stakeholders and partners. | |