A long-standing presence and recent infrastructure upgrades make Tablet Command Canada easily accessible for fire chiefs. 

In May 2017, Richmond Hill Fire & Emergency Services became the first Canadian agency to partner with Tablet Command. Since then, 14 additional Ontario agencies have joined Richmond Hill, and in the coming year, potentially departments in Manitoba and Alberta will start using Tablet Command’s incident response and management software. 

Although the core features of the software—increased situational awareness, improved firefighter accountability, and faster response—can benefit any agency, we know our Canadian customers have unique needs. Here are some of the ways Tablet Command is working to meet those:

• Control over your data on Canadian soil. It’s critical that Canadian fire departments retain sovereignty over their data and that it always resides on Canadian land—what’s called data residency. Utilizing Amazon Web Services (AWS) in its Canada, Central Region (ca-central-1), we can guarantee data residency for Canadian agencies that work with us.

• Compliance with Canadian regulation. We ensure your department’s data meets the Canadian Government Data Residency Requirements.

• Reliability and redundancy. Tablet Command’s AWS Canadian deployment is designed for maximum uptime and continuity. In the unlikely event of a failure in one AWS availability zone, two additional zones automatically maintain service continuity, ensuring that your mission-critical information remains accessible.  Our infrastructure is built for reliability, with better than 99.9% uptime under normal operating conditions. And even if network connectivity is lost, you can continue managing your incident locally on your device without interruption.

• A Canada-specific customer experience. Tablet Command is now incorporated in Canada, as well as the US, enabling us to establish contracts directly with our Canadian customers. What’s more, we are proud to employ Canadian citizens and have established relationships with Canadian service providers such as Esri, with whom we’re a silver partner. Canadian fire-service leaders and firefighters also have the ability to log into the Tablet Command applications by region (Canada or U.S.). 

• Offline incident response and management. The ability to serve your communities across remote and frontier areas is essential. Tablet Command offers offline maps so you can configure your maps to use them in places where connectivity is an issue. Because our software was created as a standalone app—which means it doesn’t rely on an internet connection to work—you retain the ability to manage an incident when your connection is spotty or nonexistent. Once connectivity returns, incident data that has been stored locally on the device is instantly backed-up to the cloud.

“It’s a really great tool, and it’s evolved with us over the last couple of years,” said Chief Bryan Burbidge, Richmond Hill Fire & Emergency Services. “It’s something our crews are dependent on from the incident command side, and from my side it gives me an idea of what calls are currently happening.“

He also notes the improved response capabilities, the ability to pre-plan and the elevation in the department’s communication, limiting the use of non-encrypted radios.

• Easy integration with your CAD, no matter which one you use. Since our very first customer in 2013 we’ve worked to ensure ease of integration with our software, regardless of which computer-aided dispatch system your communication center uses. This not only gets customers up and running more quickly but saves departments money.
  
  
• Built-in customization. Not all Canadian departments are alike, of course. Which is why you can easily customize checklists, resources, and assignments in the best ways for your organization and instantly share updates across devices. Coming soon: international localization features supporting customizing time zone, currency, and language.

If there’s one challenge that transcends borders, it’s the criticality of keeping firefighters safe. No matter where a chief lives, this is the concern that may keep them up at night. Safety and fireground accountability are also the most important benefits of Tablet Command and the reason we do what we do. Our long-standing and growing commitment to Canadian agencies, along with more recent infrastructure commitments, have one goal: to make your experience using Tablet Command - and working with us - as simple, efficient, and intuitive as possible. 

If you lead a Canadian fire department, we’d love to connect. You can learn more about Tablet Command in Canada or request or schedule a demo by visiting www.tabletcommand.com. 

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