New technology is helping the fire and police departments work more efficiently, said Fire Chief Eric Hicks.

On April 23, the DeKalb Fire Department rolled out a new mobile communications terminal (MCT) system called OSSI, along with a new data management system.

The new computer-aided dispatch(CAD) system is shared with the DeKalb Police Department. Police officers now have the capacity to write up reports in their squad cars to cut down on time.

“This is the newest technology available,” Hicks said. “With limited staffing, we have to use the staff that we have to their fullest, and technology is a way to do this.”

OSSI was developed by SunGard and its main feature is efficiency. The new system boasts real-time mapping of every address in DeKalb County.

“Part of the reason we chose this CAD system is because DeKalb County has already been on it, and Northern Illinois University, they have their own dispatch center for the police, and they have it,” said James Zarek, a battallion chief at the Fire Department. “We’re just getting in line with the rest of the county.”

Every vehicle in the department is fitted with a laptop that functions as a MCT. Each MCT has a GPS locator which allows dispatch to know where each vehicle is located at all times. When a call is placed, the CAD sends the nearest available vehicle to the call automatically. Before, the nearest available vehicle would have to be located over a radio and then dispatched.

“It’s still a learning process,” said Capt. Jeff Jossendal. “The biggest benefit is the mapping system.”

Zarek said he hasn’t seen much improvement since the system has been implemented, but he expects advancements once everyone in the department is fully trained with the new system. He anticipates everyone to be trained in the coming weeks.

“The Firehouse [training] was a little more extensive, but the CAD program was about an hour,” Zarek said.

The new data management system, Firehouse, gives the department the ability to pull up a building’s attributes, like its doors and its sprinkler systems, on the laptops inside their vehicles. Before, this information was accessed by looking through a binder that contained all of the information.

Zarek said this has been the first upgrade to the department’s CAD system since the mid-’90s.

“It’s nice to have the changes,” Zarek said.