Baird Seeks Funding for Electronic Capitol Map

Though he withdrew his amendment to the legislative branch appropriations bill earlier this month, Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) is holding out hope that House and Senate conferees will take another look at his proposal to electronically map the Capitol complex for first responders.

After talking to a number of Capitol Police officers about their experiences during the false reports of gunfire in the Rayburn House Office Building just before the Memorial Day recess, Baird said Thursday that the need to create an electronic mapping system for the major public buildings on Capitol Hill has become even more obvious to him.

"I've talked to a couple of police officers who were not normally stationed in Rayburn but got called to Rayburn during the possible shooting incident and they said to me, 'To be honest, sir, we didn't know where we were going in that building.'"

"That's in no way a criticism" of the Capitol Police officers who were on duty that day, Baird said. The four-term Congressman pointed out that he still occasionally gets lost navigating the maze of tunnels and passageways that stretech throughout the Capitol complex.

The fact is, he said, that it's simply "unrealistic and maybe bordering on irresponsible to expect any individual to know the entire Capitol campus. And yet on any given day any member of the Capitol Police may well be called upon to respond to a crisis anywhere on the campus."

Though it may sound like something out of the TV show "24," Baird wants his colleagues to realize that the technology exists to create a digital map of the entire complex that could be downloaded to laptops and personal data devices and then used to show first responders dozens of specific data points in a building during rapidly evolving emergency situations, such as a fire or terrorist attack. As they move through a building, this electronic mapping allows users to call up floor plans, locations of egress routes, gas lines and shut-off switches for perhaps unfamiliar surroundings.

Baird first learned about the technology through a company in his own district, Prepared Response Inc., which has already mapped some 6,500 buildings across the country and has been used by several school districts in the state. Since then, Baird has put Prepared Response in contact with both the Capitol Police and the Architect of the Capitol's office to discuss the technology involved and possible uses on Capitol Hill.

Of course, Baird emphasized, the $2.4 million in funding that he had sought for the mapping project would have to be awarded to a vendor through a competitive bid process.

And though Baird wasn't able to obtain enough support and ended up withdrawing his proposal from the fiscal 2007 spending bill two weeks ago, both House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) and ranking member David Obey (D-Wis.) acknowledged the value such a tool could provide.

"We're sympathetic to what he's trying to do," said Appropriations Committee spokesman John Scofield. "But we've always tried to avoid setting specific directions for specific security projects for the Capitol Police. We let the security experts make the decisions on where the resources should go."

Scofield indicated that the committee wanted to work with Baird on his proposal but not distract the Capitol Police from other priorities. He added that there's no reason why an electronic mapping plan has to wait until next year if it's not included in the final version of the fiscal 2007 spending bill.

"If the cops think this is necessary, there's no reason why they couldn't do it now" through reprogramming current funds, he said. "But we want the cops to think this is a good idea and not something that's foisted upon them."

When asked Friday about incorporating electronic mapping into the Hill's security plan, Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Bill Pickle, who sits on the Capitol Police Board overseeing the agency, said that "in lieu of that specific technology there's a number of protocols and procedures in place to accomplish that same goal."

But, he said, "we welcome any new technology that would help us keep the Capitol and the campus safe. We literally have hundreds and hundreds of vendors that come to us with different technologies, some are outstanding some are so-so. But we look at everything and we make sure we evaluate each one to see if it is something that can boost the security procedures we already have in place.

"This is the most highly visible potential terrorist target in the world," Pickle said, "so we need every advantage we can get."

For his part, Baird said that "what I'm trying to do is raise awareness that we have a problem they may not have thought about and more importantly we have a solution to that problem that is affordable."

He pointed out that in a more than $3 billion fiscal 2007 legislative branch spending bill and with the billions more that is put into Homeland Security, "$2.4 million is not a lot of money."

"My hope in raising this is that Members of Congress, or if not us then our spouses, will start saying 'this matters to us.' It's in our best interests to invest this money and it's in the best interest of our families and our constituents and of the first responders."