A BIG part of the problem here is that APCO, Project 25, the FCC, IRAC, ( the big players) are all dominated by Committee members from BIG Bureaucracies that have large staffs dedicated to communications.
They do not have any idea of the problems faced by small Public Safety agencies.
These big players can afford to allow one one their staff members to spend time on these projects and committees.
Little Public Safety agencies ( the majority of them outside of metropolitan areas) and their concerns, (cost, infrastructure, operating procedures) are not represented and consequently are ignored.
There are NO representatives from very small departments, a small department is one where the Chief's secretary is the departmental representative to the local NLETS/NCIC advisory board, and a shift sergeant is responsible for running the departmental PSAP.
"Fly over country" Fire and EMS have it even worse. They are usually volunteer agencies, and they don't have the money to send a volunteer to repeated meetings 1000 miles away, nor does a volunteer have the time to attend.
Further compounding is the FCC and IRAC, which have "BIG" bureaucracy outlooks
NONE of the commissioners has any technical Knowledge or experience in actually running radio or communications systems, and consequently don't have any knowledge of little agencies problems
And since the 1996 AL Gore inspired "re-invention" mass firings at the FCC, that got rid of the long time technical employees, the FCC has been hiring Lawyers and NOT technical folks Which further compounds the problem.
Some examples:
---the head of the FCC division that is responsible for radio law enforcement has never held an FCC license of any type.
--- two of the current commissioners are ex congressional staffers,
--- the FCC chairman's previous experience was as a law clerk to a judge and lawyer to a cell phone company.
Again;
the problem here is that the FCC, "BIG bureaucracy", lobbyists, and big agency representatives, unaware of smaller agency problems are driving the process.