Dear Editor,
Your recent story "Tufts Emergency Alert System updates software" published in the Tufts Daily on Tuesday, September 3, 2013, stated that our former emergency alert software, Send Word Now, was replaced due in part to improved reliability provided by the new software. That is not the case.
On the contrary, Tufts found Send Word Now to be highly reliable. Our six-year relationship with Send Word Now is a testament to our continued confidence in the reliability of their system. That confidence was based on the actual use of the system on multiple occasions to notify our community of situations of concern as well as many tests of the alert system. In fact, the Daily wrote positively about the actual use and tests of the system in a number of articles over the years.
While a competitive selection process - the kind we regularly conduct with all service providers - did lead us to recently change providers, that decision was not due to any lack of reliability in the Send Word Now system.
Sincerely,
Geoffrey C. Bartlett, AEM
Director of Emergency Management, Advisor to Tufts EMS
Tufts University, Department of Public and Environmental Safety
