ms. swenson that you made somewhat staggering. it takes nine or 10 months to hire someone, did i hear correctly? >> unfortunately yes he did. >> so you have the funding meet in the spectrum it's necessary to set up and commonly identified that you are in fact including procedures that are ossified and completely inadequate to the task that you face. what can be changed and those procurement policies that have handicapped the government and urgent task. >> as i said senator we are working with the department of commerce and the secretary's staff to see what we can do. in addition to the federal process we have some things internal to firstnet and commerce we are looking at the cycle time of that. why is it taking two months to hire a firm to hire people? it shouldn't take that long so we are looking to see what we can do to compress that which would significantly enhance our ability to get the job done. i'm telling you we are working very hard and i would love to report back to you on the progress we are making on that. >> in each

ms. swenson, we must ensure that firstnet is reliable across the entire country. however, each part of the country faces its own set of difficulties that will challenge the network's resiliency whether its blizzards, hurricanes tornadoes earthquakes. the list is endless. we have to make sure that the network has the capacity as an actual response to each one of these different challenges. so my first question is it's supposed to establish the advanced network for the 20% of public safety needs. given that the states and municipalities already have existing public safety networks how will firstnet work with and utilize these resources in building out into point the national public safety broadband network? >> senator, thank you for the questions. we are interested, as you work him in making this a reliable network and we were just talking to senator gardner about a similar question but i will be happy to repeat it. the issue with the current assets within the state when we started firstnet we thought that that would be the way to go is to do an inventory of those a

ms. swenson that you made somewhat staggering. it takes nine or 10 months to hire someone, did i hear correctly? >> unfortunately yes he did. >> so you have the funding meet in the spectrum it's necessary to set up and commonly identified that you are in fact including procedures that are ossified and completely inadequate to the task that you face. what can be changed and those procurement policies that have handicapped the government and urgent task. >> as i said senator we are working with the department of commerce and the secretary's staff to see what we can do. in addition to the federal process we have some things internal to firstnet and commerce we are looking at the cycle time of that. why is it taking two months to hire a firm to hire people? it shouldn't take that long so we are looking to see what we can do to compress that which would significantly enhance our ability to get the job done. i'm telling you we are working very hard and i would love to report back to you on the progress we are making on that. >> in each

ms. swenson was invited over a year ago to come to mississippi. for whatever reason that meeting has not taken place yet. but i can tell you that we in mississippi and our entire delegation, democrat and republican, are very concerned about this very disappointed at the wasting of federal money from the economic stimulus program. and we are particularly disappointed that medcome is not able to go forward, a project that has received essential equipment and would allow first responders to transmit life-saving data to provide hospitals with support and medical services to proceed on. my time has expired, but i hope this hearing will result in some purposeful action on the part of the department and firstnet to make things work in mississippi. >> thank you, senator of environments. very rural environments across much of the state. it's removed geography as a constraint. we're able to build world-class companies because we can attain talent. we have fly fishing, streams and mountains and so forth. it also helps us improve our first responder services,

ms. susan swenson that you are going to get the feedback from the state and particularly as i think about the chairman's question two thirds of my state would technically be really rural areas where we have challenges on how we build a network that people can talk to each other. and in that process where you take new hampshire's feedback and every other states feedback and then you put together the rfp for the end of the year, will year will the states have a feedback loop? you sit down june 9 they tell you what they think you put together an rfp. is there another effort to see what you are working on to make sure their views are reflected? >> thank you for the question because i want to emphasize that consultation is a broad and ongoing process, not a one-time event. we talk a lot about state consultation, and it is important people understand. our relationship with the states is ongoing. we have conference calls, are, are available by staff, e-mails face-to-face meetings. also i would tell you that as we go through the process of consultation rfp and delivering a plan teach governor for

ms. swenson, are you committed to making sure that as firstnet launches partnerships that opportunities will be available to entities of all size? i know that new core wireless based in st. cloud is participating in a pilot project with firstnet in elk river and it's a good trial project, but i want to make sure you'll continue to work with entities of all sizes. >> yes, in fact, i think it's important to understand that the process is designed to do that. we have a responsibility to make sure that we deploy a nationwide network at the most effective cost structure. so as we go out and talk to people who have different assets who want to participate in the request for proposal, everyone will have an opportunity to do that. we will weigh those options and also look at the complexity of the design and also the speed to market. those are the things that we have to consider. but certainly, we're welcoming one and all because this is going to take a really integrated and joint effort to make this work. >> okay. the spectrum act also included an amendment i worked to include that created a funding