The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments ("COG") is a regional organization of Washington area local governments. COG is composed of 17 local governments surrounding the nation's capital, plus area members of the Maryland and Virginia legislatures, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives. COG provides a focus for action and develops regional responses to issues such as the environment, economic development, public safety, transportation and regional coordination for major disasters. Founded in 1957, COG is an independent, nonprofit association. It is supported by financial contributions from its participating local governments, federal and state grants and contracts, and donations from foundations and the private sector.

COG members had an immediate need to notify in real-time groups county executives, emergency management coordinators, fire and police chiefs, and public health officials from each of the 17+ local counties and jurisdictions, the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland state organizations and the federal government. These groups, known as clusters, must be rapidly pulled together to share information during a crisis situation. Clusters are comprised of users from different governmental bodies, each with their own IT infrastructure, but without an interoperable and common network linking them. This distributed environment posed a real challenge to locating and contacting users, especially in a crisis when the most common means of communication, a voice call, can be saturated, unreliable and very untimely.

Roam Secure, an expert in emergency communication systems, deployed the Roam Secure Alert Network for COG in May 2002 to provide a primary emergency communication platform. The system integrated easily into COG's existing infrastructure and enabled COG leaders to instantly contact and inform ad hoc and pre-defined groups of users at their wireless text message devices (cell phones, pagers, PDA's, Blackberries) and e-mail addresses. With the Roam Secure Alert Network (RSAN) COG has a comprehensive solution for notification, coordination, and continuous updating during an emergency or routine incident.