County officials set plans for new recording service
By AMY A. COLLINS REPORTER

HCN/Mark M. Hancock Hardin County dispatcher Dee Ann Durbin answers calls at the Hardin County Dispatch Office in Kountze. County commissioners approved a new phone system to allow management additional access to 911 phone recordings at their desks.

KOUNTZE- Problems with the back-up recordings for the 911 and other non-emergency lines have prompted Hardin County officials are seeking bids to replace their inhouse phone recording system.

Hardin County Commissioners agreed last week to spend an estimated $30,000-$40,000 on a new inhouse recording system at the April 28 commissioners' court meeting.

The Dictaphone communications recording system is used by supervisors and management employees from agencies to supervise and periodically review 911 and non-emergency phone calls to ensure proper service on a routine basis.

Hardin County Purchasing Agent Rachel Lewis and Sheriff Ed Cain attended Commissioners' Court to brief commissioners on the situation.

"We've had some problems with recordings," Cain told commissioners at the meeting.

Mark Davis with the Sheriff's Department's Narcotics Division said the in-house system has experienced some software issues in the past, but since phone systems have received an upgrade, the recording problems have increased.

"Basically we need a new in-house recording system to bring all of our communication systems up-to- date," Davis said.

Davis said a new system would help supervisors perform a more thorough review of employee's work, provide the best service to residents, and improve training for new employees.

Supervisors normally use the in-house system to make discs of 911 phone conversations to help train their new employees so the individual has a real-life example of what their job will encompass, Davis said. In addition, some recordings are put on disc and used in court cases and can make all the difference, he added.

Now, the two systems are having problems communicating with each other, said Davis, so obtaining information from the new 911 dispatch system becomes an increasingly hard task.

"Once we had a problem with the recorder and it needed a part," Davis said. "The company no longer makes the part, so the technicians had to make a piece by hand so that we could operate our system. It's pretty much been a piecemeal sort of thing."

There are no CD burners in the dispatch area, so if the inhouse system is unable to provide the phone conversations to put on disc, that creates new problems for officials because there won't be an outlet to transport the recorded 911 calls for use.

The recording system's technical support has already warned Hardin County officials that within a year they will no longer be able to service their systems because they are nearly obsolete.

According to news reports, the recording system's company, Dictaphone, sold its communicating recorder systems to NICE Systems for $38.5 million in 2005, planning to focus their company on healthcare information technology.