MAIT to be made available to all police, fire and ambulance bodies on the Public Services Network
A Welsh initiative for emergency services to share information electronically and improve response times is set to expand to include any police, fire or ambulance organisation connected to the Public Services Network (PSN) nationwide.
Leaders of the Multi Agency Information Transfer (MAIT) programme – the implementation of which began in summer 2015 – are currently testing the connection between emergency services and the PSN, and have begun discussions about expanding the service into Scotland next month.
From September, Welsh emergency services will move over to the new system and MAIT will be offered to any emergency service that has a PSN connection.
The MAIT schema speeds up response by preventing the need for emergency service organisations to call one other when joint assistance is required. It also improves the accuracy of the location data by allocating a unique property reference number (UPRN) to each incident.
It was developed by Joint Emergency Services Group (JESG) Wales with British Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (British Apco), the Cabinet Office and the Welsh Government.
“We always wanted to create a national service” said Tony Bracey, MAIT project manager at JESG Wales.
Originally developed for the Highways Agency, the MAIT schema makes it possible to send critical incident data securely to one or many emergency service organisations in a standard format. Information appears identical to fire, ambulance or police operators regardless of the command and control system or supplier used.
During the pilot phase, use of the schema reduced 999 call times from four minutes to 16 seconds.
The PSN is the ‘network of networks’ for public sector organisations. It became part of Government Digital Service in April 2014, part of GDS’s Common Technology Services within the Office of the Chief Technology Officer,
