IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

409 people who called 911 within an hour got a busy signal.

Over the course of an hour on the evening of Sunday, June 28, 409 people called 911 to report an emergency to Las Vegas Metro Police. When they did, each of the callers encountered a troubling obstacle — a busy signal.

The Clark County Commission is expected to look into the outage — and how to prevent a future recurrence.

If Minh Tran was asked about the impetus behind his recent 911 emergency app, 2013 could be reason enough. The year brought his family a run in with two near-fatal heart attacks, one suffered by an uncle and the other by an aunt.

New Jersey officials unveiled new text messaging capabilities to their 911 system in hopes of boosting response times, safety and the on-scene intelligence available to first responders.

Citizens in the state of New Jersey have a new tool at their disposal should they need help in an emergency situation. On Sept. 7, officials unveiled a new text-to-911 capability that will allow residents living anywhere in the state to interact with emergency dispatchers via text message.

The New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications says that in addition to promoting transparency, the map has the potential to be an important tool for intelligence gathering.

“Up until yesterday we looked at 311 as a method that disgruntled citizens would use to call us; we didn’t look at it as an opportunity for solutions,” New York City’s Deputy Mayor of Operations Stephen Goldsmith said Wednesday, Feb. 16.

The city’s emergency communications system is being flooded with nearly 4 million calls a year from people who inadvertently dial 911 on cell phones.

An astounding 38% of some 10.4 million calls to 911 during 2010 involved such accidental or false alarm “short calls” of 19 seconds or less — that’s an average of 10,700 false calls a day.

Most of the calls — commonly referred to as butt calls — came from cell phone users who mistakenly dial 911 when making contact with phones in their back pockets, purses or elsewhere. Each time one occurred, NYPD operators lost valuable time trying to determine if someone was even on the line.

The old systems had their jobs for decades, but in a world of wireless calling and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), the country needed more accommodating technology. Enter the concept of next-generation 911 (NG911), a system that would run on a secure Internet protocol-based network and allow texting, data transfer and more.

Hundreds of millions of Americans have moved rapidly from traditional land lines to relying on various forms of wireless phone services, making the 911 emergency system ever more complex, experts say.

A hiker lost in the mountains of New Mexico called 911 repeatedly, but was routed seven times to non-emergency lines.

A 911 call made by an elderly woman from her home in Texas was picked up by an emergency dispatcher in Tennessee, some 700 miles away.

The key to successful 911 call location for local agencies is the incorporation of several new technologies including phones with better GPS locating capabilities and the 911 center's adoption of CAD systems synced with Google Maps.

Across the country, 911 centers in some states still have trouble locating the people calling into 911.

According to USA Today, more than 70 percent of calls to 911 centers in 2014 came from cellphones and that number is only growing. The problem is cellphones can be trickier to locate than landlines, which give dispatchers an immediate and accountable location.

The new center will consolidate a current county 911 center with the dispatch desks of a county sheriff’s office and two police departments.

A consolidated 911 center in Richmond County is one step closer to becoming a reality.

County Manager Rick Sago announced Tuesday night that the county was awarded a $6.3 million grant to build the center.

The city has issued an RFP for its Next Generation 911 project, while installing interim text-to-911 capabilities slated to go live in early 2018.

New York City is working to make its 911 system fully digital, which in practical terms means that residents will be able to interact with emergency responders through text messages, photos, videos, social media and other state-of-the-art methods of communication.

Logan, Shelby join forces in $436,000 project

Bellefontaine has landed approval for a $321,420 state loan to help pay for a multi-agency 911 system.

“That’s outstanding,” Police Chief Brandon Standley said. “That’s exciting news.”

RideAlong is all about giving information to emergency responders who are interacting with people who have mental health problems. The company is working with its first few customers, and it's already seeing results.

Say the Poulsbo, Wash., Police Department gets a 911 call about somebody with a mental health problem disturbing the peace in a public area. The cops show up and arrest they person. Poulsbo is a small town, so the person winds up in Kitsap County Jail, a half-hour’s drive south in Port Orchard.

But when cities are faced with slashed budgets and staff reductions, pushing technologies that embrace performance analytics may move down the priority list. In 2007, the city of Pittsburgh implemented a management and performance system called PittMAPS to collect data from 15 departments.

But although data was being gathered through the system, the city still faced challenges with analyzing the data and using it to improve city operations. And to add to the challenges, the city underwent a major financial restructuring in the late 2000s. According to Chuck Half, the city’s innovation and performance manager, roughly 25 percent of Pittsburgh's workforce was eliminated at that time in an effort to avoid bankruptcy.

Pennsylvania's decades-old system for funding emergency call centers hasn't been generating enough money to keep up with operating costs. It's one of the few things that just about everyone seems to agree government should be doing. But there's less consensus when it comes to figuring out how to pay the bill for making sure a call to 911 results in emergency responders rushing to help.

Plano, Texas, is among a growing number of governments now using 311 service apps that are trying to stamp out redundant 311 requests.

Like many products on the market, once a user inputs the reporting information into Plano’s app, the person’s request gets a tracking number that follows any updates on the reported incident and tells the user when the incident has been closed out by the city. Because there’s a mapping function embedded in the app, Stephens said, users can see if an incident already has been reported by a different user — and check on the status of the already-reported incident.

The secrecy around problems with 911 systems highlights their strange role as a critical lifeline to police and fire departments, but one that is almost entirely run by private companies.

When a glitch in phone company systems left Baltimore without 911 service for over an hour last week, The Baltimore Sun wanted to know how often such outages occur.

Public records made it clear that the outage wasn't unique, but much of the information about problems with 911 is confidential, making it difficult to figure out just how often the emergency phone system is out of action. The secrecy highlights the 911 system's strange role as a critical lifeline to police and fire departments, but one that is almost entirely run by private companies.

Offering more options for citizens to connect with 311 means that fewer calls will come through the call center, but converting calls into online interactions isn’t as easy as it sounds.

One reason to have different channels for citizens to interact with their city is to give everyone a choice. Long gone are the days when a local government would decide what was going to be the point of contact — a front desk or a phone — and then expect the community to adhere to those limited options. Having more online options also means that fewer calls will come through the call center, which can be limited in staff size.

Customer service is the leading trend in local government, as residents expect levels in their city or town to match what they get in the private sector. As such, 311 is typically a 24/7 proposition.

Call it the “Amazon” effect. Citizens now expect the same kind of customer service from their government that they get from their favorite retailer: quick courteous service, with multiple contact channel options. Not so long ago, only the largest jurisdictions could afford the software necessary to offer such advanced and versatile customer service capabilities.

The desire to measure and manage performance based on data captured by CRM software holds the same level of importance no matter a city's size.

2015 marked the 12th anniversary of the nation’s largest 311 call center. New York City celebrated the date by releasing data showing 2014 to be its busiest year ever, with more than 28 million customer contacts. Having used 311 for so long and having so much information, New York City has developed a sophisticated performance-management operation that delivers reports and analytics on the calls and requests it receives.

The company empowers citizens in various ways. Employees provide a forum for people to report issues like downed trees, blackouts and clogged storm drains, and they partner with local websites like the Huffington Post to embed reporting widgets in web pages, such as the one below.