Arlington County, Virginia Appoints WA3GIN As RACES Officer:

David Jordan, Arlington County’s chief information security officer (CISO), was appointed March 18, 2005 as Arlington County’s Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Services (RACES) officer. An employee of the County’s Department of Technology Services, Jordan is detailed to the Office of Emergency Management, responsible for emergency technology and Emergency Support Function #2, Communications.

Prior to joining Arlington County government, Jordan spent 18 years at MCI where he held several engineering positions, including advisory engineer to the Systems Integrity Division and director of technical security. Jordan has been with Arlington County since early 2001 when hired as the County’s first CISO. During his Arlington tenure, he helped pioneer and deploy Arlington Alert ( www.arlingtonalert.com) one of the nation’s first, comprehensive text-based emergency alert and notification systems, using duplicate, redundant computer servers to provide an enterprise wide platform with seamless failover. Arlington County was the first local government in the National Capital Region to deploy this text-based alerting system, now being fully implemented in surrounding Metro area jurisdictions. Thousands of users including first responders, employees, key businesses, volunteer groups and the public can be alerted simultaneously, in seconds via email, pagers, cell phones (via SMS) or other mobile devices. Arlington Alert was fully functional by October 2002 and has been used numerous times during all-hazards incidents, including the Blizzard of 2003, Hurricane Isabel, and to warn citizens to shelter-in-place during the recent tanker explosion near the Pentagon on I-95.

Jordan’s goals for emergency communications in Arlington include training non-amateurs, such as Community Emergency Response Teams, to provide effective 2-way radio communications for damage assessment, community preparedness, health, safety and welfare, whenever needed. He hopes to enlist some of the more than four hundred licensed amateur radio operators living in Arlington to assist in this effort. Jordan said, “the County has some very active amateurs who are providing good support currently and I want to better enable those already providing support while also growing the capability to better serve the County.” Bringing together a coordinated emergency communications team of amateur and non-amateur groups, which could evolve into a member of an inter-jurisdictional mutual aid support system throughout the Metro area is the ultimate goal for Arlington’s Emergency Management Office. Second on the list is to establish a formal RACES organization within the County -- one where RACES and Amateur Radio Emergency Service members can grow their skill sets, upgrade their FCC operating licenses and participate in emergency exercises, together providing Arlington a proactive and well-trained emergency radio communications infrastructure.

Jordan is an avid HF/VHF mobile radio operator who holds an FCC Amateur Extra license and was first licensed in the early 60s. He serves on the board of directors for the East Coast Amateur Radio Service and the Arlington Radio Public Service Club, where he is also first vice-president and chairman of the repeater committee. He is also founder and trustee of the Northern Neck Amateur Radio Club and well known as being one of the first amateur operators in the mid-Atlantic region to successfully construct and operate a totally Internet Remote Amateur Radio (IRAR) HF station. Jordan was born in Washington, D.C. and is a lifelong resident of the metro area.

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