A newly formed subcommittee of the Alarm Industry Communications Committee (AICC) is already hard at work to develop a nationally recognized monitoring license. The decision to create this group was made during the AICC’s March 3, 2011 meeting in Washington D.C. The committee unanimously voted to move forward with the extensively deliberated national licensing initiative and decided to create the subcommittee to focus its energy on central monitoring companies engaged in interstate commerce. The AICC deems these companies a particular portion of the industry that appears to have been an afterthought in otherwise well-developed state and local legislature. The subcommittee is co-chaired by Jim McMullen from COPS Monitoring and Bill Cooper from ADT.

National monitoring companies encounter strenuous compliance requirements such as obligating company qualifiers to travel to numerous states to take licensing tests. They also require that companies provide duplicate criminal background checks and fingerprinting for employees in states many miles away from their home states. While these rules, regulations, statues, and policies have been developed to help protect both consumers and businesses, the AICC believes they do little if anything to address alarm monitoring directly as many of the monitoring regulations are piggybacked or attached as part of other legislation that often governs other industries such as electricians and private security guards.

In response to these and other licensing impediments, the AICC subcommittee intends to introduce a bill in Congress that would create a “National Monitoring License” permitting companies to monitor across state lines.

AICC is calling upon the experience and expertise of national monitoring companies and other industry professionals to provide constructive input necessary to draft a comprehensive bill that details the criteria or requirements of a “Nationally Recognized Monitoring Company.” The AICC has established a website located at http://alarminfo.net/aicc/ that contains the first draft of the proposed bill along with an online form to collect the input from various sources. The AICC will be accepting input until the close of business on May 13, 2011.