SOS Alarm - what are they doing?

SOS Alarm, the Swedish organisation responsible for 112/911 calls in Sweden, has a lot of things to do regarding their relationship to Internet. They have been working for some years to be able to accept VoIP calls directly over Internet. But they have worked hard claiming IP is unreliable and insecure. Even press in Sydney have quotes from SOS Alarm stating VoIP does not work – when in reality any calls can be located wrongly when using a virtual telephony system. The problem has nothing to do with IP.

Updated: SOS Alarm is not responsible for VMA, Räddningsverket is, together with Swedish Radio.

Anyway, SOS Alarm is also responsible for participating in the work called VMA (Important Message to People). VMA is announced by use of sirens all over Sweden, and the instructions tell people to go indoors, close doors and windows and listen to the radio.

They have also had the ability to get VMA via email. One have subscribed, and get email messages now and then with information. That message is an issue by itself. It tells me as the receiver to go to a webpage to see whether the message is still valid…

Now they are doing yet another interesting thing. They are replacing their Website. Note, The Webside. Just because I am a subscriber of the VMA messaging service, I got a message that included this:

Vi vill informera Er om att SOS Alarm på måndag den 6:e oktober
startar en helt ny hemsida. Därmed behöver Ni omregistrera Er VMA
prenumeration för att Ni fortsättningsvis skall kunna ta emot information
om VMA.

På måndag kommer Ni att få ett mail med länk till den nya sidan för att
registrera ny VMA prenumeration.

Vi ber Er då att registrera Er på nytt!

I am amazed. They change the VMA service just because they change the website. And they force me to re-register. And of course I can not re-register until after the new webpage is up and running.

I ask myself whether I will get any VMA messages between the point in time when they turn off the old system, and me registering on the new.

These people are supposed to be the best organisation in Sweden in crisis management and support for people and organisations that need help. My verdict, they are not doing good enough.