Chromebox to the Rescue

Chromebox to the Rescue: As one of the world’s largest urban fire and rescue services, Fire & Rescue NSW responds to everything — from fires, to hazardous materials incidents, to building collapses. Together with other government agencies we also work to minimise the impact of bushfires, storms, floods, motor vehicle accidents and other emergencies.

Founded in 1885, there are few organisations where systemic improvements to technology yields such important results — a fact we recognise with our mantra “better systems, safer communities”. As CIO I work at the helm of a team of over 100 IT staff supported by dozens of contractors. We provide IT systems to firefighters across 340 fire stations and 60 additional locations — as well as links to the Attorney General and the Justice Department.

Highly effective IT systems are paramount and are critical to ensuring effective disaster response. Fire & Rescue NSW runs an enterprise resource planning system that manages logistics, computer-aided dispatch, staff rostering, geospatial software and more. Most of the applications are browser-based and available through a private cloud.

Record-keeping is also a vital task and for more than 125 years, each station maintained “occurrence books”—paper-based, legal documents — which capture everything from phone calls to visitors to each station. The books were stored in firehouse basements and information was sometimes duplicated and illegible. One of the obvious pitfalls of such a system is that it’s hard to search hard-copy books so it must be done on-site.

When we switched to browser-based “e-occurrence books” in July this year this came with its own problems. The PCs at most fire stations were too slow and hard to maintain and it became difficult to keep anti-virus software up-to-date, maintain patches, ensure proper user authentication, and keep pace with other mundane processes.

To overcome these problems, our IT team opted to switch to Google’s Chromebox. A fast, compact, networked computer with no failure-prone moving parts, Chromeboxes are simple to operate and use. Complete with screen, keyboard and mouse, as well as built-in Wi-Fi for anytime, the Chromeboxes allows for anywhere access and is a perfect fit for a  cost-conscious government agency.

Since adopting the Chromebox, the load on the IT maintenance team has been reduced. We no longer have to do updates, as everything is updated through a centralised portal. And because the Chromebox is virtually impervious to the dust and dirt common to fire stations, maintenance of the machines has dramatically reduced too.

Highly secure, the Chromebox can be locked down by IT so that users cannot plug in unsanctioned devices or install their own personal software. Chromeboxes also avoid inadvertent data entry errors and make information searchable from anywhere.

Best of all, our key users, the firefighters, are pleased with the performance and ease of entering occurrence information digitally using the Chromebox. Unlike other devices such as tablets, the Chromebox looks and feels like a PC, so our users are comfortable and productive right away.The Chromebox also boots quickly and offers lightning-fast performance and many firefighters have commented on the fast and welcome speed.

We’ve found the Chromebox a powerful, fast, minimalistic appliance that suits us perfectly as we move even further into the cloud. The way we’ve deployed the Chromebox is a great example of how better government services can be delivered more efficiently and cost-effectively.

Guest blog post by Richard Host, Chief Information Officer, Fire & Rescue, NSW

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