https://urgentcomm.com/wp-content/themes/ucm_child/assets/images/logo/footer-new-logo.png
  • Home
  • News
  • Multimedia
    • Back
    • Multimedia
    • Video
    • Podcasts
    • Galleries
  • Commentary
    • Back
    • Commentary
    • Urgent Matters
    • View From The Top
    • All Things IWCE
    • Legal Matters
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Resources
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
    • Reprints & Reuse
  • IWCE
    • Back
    • IWCE
    • Conference
    • Special Events
    • Exhibitor Listings
    • Premier Partners
    • Floor Plan
    • Exhibiting Information
    • Register for IWCE
  • About Us
    • Back
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Terms of Service
    • Privacy Statement
    • Cookies Policy
  • Related Sites
    • Back
    • American City & County
    • IWCE
    • Light Reading
    • IOT World Today
    • Mission Critical Technologies
    • Microwave/RF
    • T&D World
    • TU-Auto
  • In the field
    • Back
    • In the field
    • Broadband Push-to-X
    • Internet of Things
    • Project 25
    • Public-Safety Broadband/FirstNet
    • Virtual/Augmented Reality
    • Land Mobile Radio
    • Long Term Evolution (LTE)
    • Applications
    • Drones/Robots
    • IoT/Smart X
    • Software
    • Subscriber Devices
    • Video
  • Call Center/Command
    • Back
    • Call Center/Command
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • NG911
    • Alerting Systems
    • Analytics
    • Dispatch/Call-taking
    • Incident Command/Situational Awareness
    • Tracking, Monitoring & Control
  • Network Tech
    • Back
    • Network Tech
    • Interoperability
    • LMR 100
    • LMR 200
    • Backhaul
    • Deployables
    • Power
    • Tower & Site
    • Wireless Networks
    • Coverage/Interference
    • Security
    • System Design
    • System Installation
    • System Operation
    • Test & Measurement
  • Operations
    • Back
    • Operations
    • Critical Infrastructure
    • Enterprise
    • Federal Government/Military
    • Public Safety
    • State & Local Government
    • Training
  • Regulations
    • Back
    • Regulations
    • Narrowbanding
    • T-Band
    • Rebanding
    • TV White Spaces
    • None
    • Funding
    • Policy
    • Regional Coordination
    • Standards
  • Organizations
    • Back
    • Organizations
    • AASHTO
    • APCO
    • DHS
    • DMR Association
    • ETA
    • EWA
    • FCC
    • IWCE
    • NASEMSO
    • NATE
    • NXDN Forum
    • NENA
    • NIST/PSCR
    • NPSTC
    • NTIA/FirstNet
    • P25 TIG
    • TETRA + CCA
    • UTC
Urgent Communications
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Home
  • News
  • Multimedia
    • Back
    • Video
    • Podcasts
    • Omdia Crit Comms Circle Podcast
    • Galleries
    • IWCE’s Video Showcase
  • Commentary
    • Back
    • All Things IWCE
    • Urgent Matters
    • View From The Top
    • Legal Matters
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
    • Reprints & Reuse
    • UC eZines
    • Sponsored content
  • IWCE
    • Back
    • Conference
    • Why Attend
    • Exhibitor Listing
    • Floor Plan
    • Exhibiting Information
    • Join the Event Mailing List
  • About Us
    • Back
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Terms of Service
    • Privacy Statement
    • Cookies Policy
  • Related Sites
    • Back
    • American City & County
    • IWCE
    • Light Reading
    • IOT World Today
    • TU-Auto
  • newsletter
  • In the field
    • Back
    • Internet of Things
    • Broadband Push-to-X
    • Project 25
    • Public-Safety Broadband/FirstNet
    • Virtual/Augmented Reality
    • Land Mobile Radio
    • Long Term Evolution (LTE)
    • Applications
    • Drones/Robots
    • IoT/Smart X
    • Software
    • Subscriber Devices
    • Video
  • Call Center/Command
    • Back
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • NG911
    • Alerting Systems
    • Analytics
    • Dispatch/Call-taking
    • Incident Command/Situational Awareness
    • Tracking, Monitoring & Control
  • Network Tech
    • Back
    • Cybersecurity
    • Interoperability
    • LMR 100
    • LMR 200
    • Backhaul
    • Deployables
    • Power
    • Tower & Site
    • Wireless Networks
    • Coverage/Interference
    • Security
    • System Design
    • System Installation
    • System Operation
    • Test & Measurement
  • Operations
    • Back
    • Critical Infrastructure
    • Enterprise
    • Federal Government/Military
    • Public Safety
    • State & Local Government
    • Training
  • Regulations
    • Back
    • Narrowbanding
    • T-Band
    • Rebanding
    • TV White Spaces
    • None
    • Funding
    • Policy
    • Regional Coordination
    • Standards
  • Organizations
    • Back
    • AASHTO
    • APCO
    • DHS
    • DMR Association
    • ETA
    • EWA
    • FCC
    • IWCE
    • NASEMSO
    • NATE
    • NXDN Forum
    • NENA
    • NIST/PSCR
    • NPSTC
    • NTIA/FirstNet
    • P25 TIG
    • TETRA + CCA
    • UTC
acc.com

NG-911


News

Key public-safety groups seek consensus for next-gen 911 direction, federal funding

Key public-safety groups seek consensus for next-gen 911 direction, federal funding

  • Written by Donny Jackson
  • 19th March 2020

Representatives from 12 key public-safety organizations met last week in an effort to develop a consensus position about next-generation 911 (NG911) that would encourage Congress to provide federal funds supporting a transition from legacy systems to an IP-based 911 platform capable of supporting multimedia communications.

Conducted last Friday in Washington, D.C., the meeting was co-hosted by the Major County Sheriffs of America (MCSA) and the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA). During the meeting, the group—the Public Safety Leadership Group—discussed key elements that should be part of the NG 911 infrastructure platform, according to a press release about the meeting that was issued yesterday.

“All of the organizations acknowledged the need to move quickly so that Congress can act to fund this nationwide priority,” the press release states.

Historically, public-safety legislation has a much greater chance of being passed by Congress when the first-responder community is able to reach consensus on its direction. A notable example was the public-safety advocacy efforts that resulted in the establishment of FirstNet in 2012.

Mel Maier, commander of the emergency-communications and operations division of the Oakland County (Mich.) Sheriff’s Office, said he will chair the working group that plans to meet weekly in an effort to reach consensus on critical aspects of potential NG911 legislation. In the coming months, the working group will present its recommendations to the Public Safety Leadership Group for approval.

“I think that this is going to be moving pretty rapidly,” Maier said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. We’re trying to get a lot of information together as quickly as possible and then remain in consensus mode. When we left [last Friday’s meeting], everybody was in lock step …  We were all on the same page about the core first principles of this.

“Our goal is to retain the consensus with legislation that is actually meaningful and has the funding available to make it happen.”

In addition to the MCSA and the MCCA, the other 10 organizations participating in the meeting were officials from: International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), National Sheriffs Association (NSA), Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association (MFCA), Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), International Association of Firefighters (IAFF), National Association of State EMS Officials (NASEMSO), Association of Public Safety Communications Officials, International (APCO), National Emergency Number Association (NENA), and the National Association of State 911 Administrators (NASNA).

“Convening stakeholders last week was a necessary step as we collectively look to upgrade our nation’s 911 infrastructure,” MCCA President Art Acevedo said in a prepared statement. “Input from public-safety practitioners every step of the way will ensure NG 911 is effective, efficient and meets the needs of the communities we serve.”

MCSA President Peter J. Koutoujian echoed this sentiment.

“We look forward to working with our public-safety partners to ensure an upgraded 911 infrastructure meets the needs of our agencies and communities and the demands of a modern society,” Koutoujian said in a prepared statement.

Public-safety sources have long identified the need to upgrade the 911 system, which is rooted in technology that was designed to serve emergency callers using voice-centric landline telephony technology, not the modern IP-based broadband services that can deliver voice, text, data, photo and video communications—often wirelessly. With citizens and first responders in the field having access to broadband multimedia, the inability for most 911 centers to support similar technology has been perceived as a limiting factor in some response efforts.

There is broad consensus within the public-safety community that federal funding is needed to implement NG911 in public-safety answering points (PSAPs) throughout the U.S. In fact, a federal cost study estimated that it would take $12 billion to deploy NG911 technology nationwide, although some have noted that the study was conducted before cloud-based 911 technologies began being adopted by PSAPs.

While the $12 billion funding figure has been included in proposed federal legislation, those bills have not gained much traction in Congress. In addition to funding, Maier outlined some core principles that the Public Safety Leadership Group would like to see included in future NG911 legislation:

  • Cybersecurity;
  • Open technology standards to support innovation and competition;
  • Funding for transitional training, so 911 personnel can develop the skills sets needed for NG911; and
  • Local control, with funding distributed “through public-safety advisory boards or other fair mechanisms,” Maier said.

“The group agreed on a number of principles for legislation to modernize our nation’s 911 infrastructure and the needed funding mechanisms to achieve this goal,” IAFC Past President Chief Jeff Johnson said in a prepared statement.

Sheriff Mike Bouchard, MSCA’s vice president of government affairs, agreed.

“It was important to bring the broader voices of public safety leadership together into the NG 911 discussion,” Bouchard said in a prepared statement. “The dialogue was very productive, and I am pleased we agreed to move forward together on critical issues. There is more work to be done, but we have the right people at the table to complete the task at hand.”

Maier noted that representatives of the Public Safety Leadership Group do not believe that federal legislation should include language mandating the physical consolidation of PSAPs, but they would support measures that would incent PSAPs to voluntarily consolidate—physically or virtually—or share resources.

Maier said that all participants in last week’s Public Safety Leadership Group meeting agreed that cybersecurity should be a priority in any NG911 legislation.

“The number-one thing that brought us together was cybersecurity,” Maier said. “The security aspect of the ESInet design itself—an IP network of networks, connected together—is a paramount concern of folks in the 911 sphere … When people are hooking these systems together, are they updating firmware? Are they updating software? Are they managing with active scanning of the system and monitoring the health of the system for cyberattacks?

“I could go into ransomware and denial-of-service attacks, but the fact is that next-gen 911 technologies are a target for terrorists … They try it now. They send these bursts of signals across these analog trunks, trying to shut stuff down. But with IP, it’s at the speed of light.”

If secure, the NG911 platform promises to provide the 911 system with unprecedented flexibility that should be especially beneficial when an area is hit by a natural or man-made disaster, Maier said.

“It’s also about sharing resources when you need it in a disaster,” Maier said. “These next-gen networks lend themselves to successful redistribution of phone calls and movement of personnel from areas that are affected by natural disasters or other [incidents]. They’re built that way; they cascade that way automatically.

“That’s the thing that keeps that 911 caller on the phone safe, when they don’t even know that they just transferred to another call-taker, never losing connectivity. That’s my goal and that’s our goal as a team getting together on this—to find a way to do that for the public. Because we’re all public-safety professionals, and our goal has always been getting the best help possible to the person as quickly as possible.”

While the Public Safety Leadership Group members found many points of agreement, Beltway sources indicate that nationwide NG911 funding legislation faces several notable challenges, beginning with the fact that 911 historically has been funded at the state and local levels of government—not the federal level.

If Congress is convinced to provide federal funding for NG911, there are questions about how the money should be distributed, particularly in jurisdictions that already have allocated significant state and local money to deploy ESInets and other key components of NG911.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for the Public Safety Leadership Group will be reaching a consensus on the technical implementation of NG911. NENA and APCO both released documents earlier this year that were designed to help public safety procure NG911 systems, but the two organizations suggest very different approaches to the task. For instance, numerous references to the NENA i3 standard were featured throughout the NENA procurement document, while the i3 standard was barely mentioned in objectives-based APCO guidelines.

 

 

Tags: homepage-featured-4 APCO Applications Cybersecurity Dispatch/Call-taking Federal Government/Military Funding Incident Command/Situational Awareness Long Term Evolution (LTE) NASEMSO NENA News NG-911 NTIA/FirstNet Policy Public Safety Public-Safety Broadband/FirstNet Regional Coordination Security Standards State & Local Government System Design System Installation System Operation Test & Measurement Tracking, Monitoring & Control Video News

Most Recent


  • Key public-safety groups seek consensus for next-gen 911 direction, federal funding
    Newscan: ‘Predator’ spyware let government hackers break into Chrome and Android, Google says
    Web Roundup Items from other news organizations ‘Predator’ spyware let government hackers break into Chrome and Android, Google says A private firm exposes Chrome vulnerabilities to government hackers, says Google EPA seeks funding to improve water-system cybersecurity Philadelphia launches real-time smart-city project NIST’s supply-chain security guidance tells agencies: Look to FedRAMP first Senate report highlights […]
  • Malicious Python Repository Package drops Cobalt Strike on Windows, macOS & Linux systems
    Public repositories of open source code are a critical part of the software supply chain that many organizations use to build applications. They are therefore an attractive target for adversaries seeking to distribute malware to a mass audience. The latest case in point is a malicious package for distributing Cobalt Strike on Windows, macOS, and Linux systems, […]
  • T-Mobile's CEO explains the company's new private 5G strategy
    T-Mobile on Monday took the wraps off its new private wireless networking offerings, and the company’s CEO spoke about it at length during an investor event. “CIOs everywhere are interested in this topic right now,” T-Mobile’s Mike Sievert said Monday at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference. “And they’re interested in it for a reason. […]
  • Hytera, Motorola Solutions refile appeal, cross-appeal in civil case
    As expected, Hytera Communications again has appealed a $543.7 million judgment against it to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, while Motorola Solutions this week filed for second time a cross appeal in the case that was initiated more than four years ago. There was little surprise in the filings, because both Hytera and Motorola […]

Leave a comment Cancel reply

To leave a comment login with your Urgent Comms account:

Log in with your Urgent Comms account

Or alternatively provide your name, email address below:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Content

  • New Orleans-area 911 center inks multiyear APEX deal with Carbyne to replace call-handling system
  • APCO, NENA, NASNA speakers cite ‘discussions’ to address NG911 funding issues
  • Key public-safety groups seek consensus for next-gen 911 direction, federal funding
    Newscan: Dorchester County (S.C.) learning lessons following 911 outage
  • Semiconductor industry growth spikes, but supply remains constrained

Commentary


LTE and liability: Why the fire service must move forward with digital incident command

  • 2
6th May 2022

Partnership and collaboration must be the foundation for emergency communications

18th April 2022

FirstNet success means no hypothetical ‘shots’ need to be fired, Swenson says

22nd February 2022
view all

Events


UC Ezines


IWCE 2019 Wrap Up

13th May 2019
view all

Twitter


UrgentComm

Newscan: ‘Predator’ spyware let government hackers break into Chrome and Android, Google says dlvr.it/SR2lBG

25th May 2022
UrgentComm

Malicious Python Repository Package drops Cobalt Strike on Windows, macOS & Linux systems dlvr.it/SR0Qb2

24th May 2022
UrgentComm

T-Mobile’s CEO explains the company’s new private 5G strategy dlvr.it/SQyzhc

24th May 2022
UrgentComm

Hytera, Motorola Solutions refile appeal, cross-appeal in civil case dlvr.it/SQxNX1

24th May 2022
UrgentComm

Amid shifting workplace expectations, local government employers must adapt dlvr.it/SQwVVs

23rd May 2022
UrgentComm

The private-wireless networking opportunity shouldn’t stay too private dlvr.it/SQw7MT

23rd May 2022
UrgentComm

Europe’s first driverless-car test completed dlvr.it/SQvqyY

23rd May 2022
UrgentComm

FCC approves order to modernize priority-service rules dlvr.it/SQmSN0

20th May 2022

Newsletter

Sign up for UrgentComm’s newsletters to receive regular news and information updates about Communications and Technology.

Expert Commentary

Learn from experts about the latest technology in automation, machine-learning, big data and cybersecurity.

Business Media

Find the latest videos and media from the market leaders.

Media Kit and Advertising

Want to reach our digital and print audiences? Learn more here.

DISCOVER MORE FROM INFORMA TECH

  • American City & County
  • IWCE
  • Light Reading
  • IOT World Today
  • Mission Critical Technologies
  • Microwave/RF
  • T&D World
  • TU-Auto

WORKING WITH US

  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Events
  • Careers

FOLLOW Urgent Comms ON SOCIAL

  • Privacy
  • CCPA: “Do Not Sell My Data”
  • Cookies Policy
  • Terms
Copyright © 2022 Informa PLC. Informa PLC is registered in England and Wales with company number 8860726 whose registered and Head office is 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG.
This website uses cookies, including third party ones, to allow for analysis of how people use our website in order to improve your experience and our services. By continuing to use our website, you agree to the use of such cookies. Click here for more information on our Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy.
X