by AllThingsECC.com | May 16, 2019 | Comm Center News
Congressman Proposes Tying T-Band Delay to Ending 9-1-1 Fee Diversion
The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act, which created the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet), mandates that by 2021, Congress begin a process to auction the T-band spectrum. Within two years of the auction’s completion, public-safety licensees in the band must vacate the spectrum.
During a May 15 FCC oversight hearing by the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, Rep. Greg Walden, Republican leader for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, proposed delaying the start of that process to 2024.
“To be eligible for this delay, states and localities would simply need to comply with a very common-sense policy that bipartisan bills have already called for, which is to put an end to 9-1-1 fee diversion,” Walden said.
Walden said he would soon release a draft of the proposal and encouraged committee feedback.
The FCC’s most recent report on 9-1-1 fee diversion, released in December, found that nearly 10 percent of funds collected in 2017 were diverted to uses other than 9-1-1. According to that report, Montana, New Jersey, Nevada, Rhode Island, West Virginia and the U.S. Virgin Islands all diverted 9-1-1 fees during 2017.
“This ought to be mail fraud, frankly, because some communities and states are telling their consumers on their phone bill, ‘You’re paying for 9-1-1,’ when in fact they take the money and spend it elsewhere,” Walden said. “We need to take care of our 9-1-1 system, and consumers have the right to know that they’re being defrauded by their own governments in some cases.”
In his opening testimony to the subcommittee, FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, who has repeatedly reprimanded states for diverting fees and pushed them to end the practice, said more legislation for the issue is necessary. Some states are working to end the practice, but a few are not, he said.
“The ‘name and shame’ process generated by our annual report has only been so helpful,” O’Rielly said. “The state leaders of certain recalcitrant states — New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island — don’t seem to care about the shaming part.”
O’Rielly said he found Walden’s proposal intriguing and was interested in learning more.
According to an FCC fact sheet on the T-band, there are 925 public-safety entities that hold licenses in the T-band. Those licenses cover 11 metropolitan areas across the country including Boston, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco/Oakland and Washington, D.C.
The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act does not specifically address business/industrial (B/I) incumbents in the T-band. In April, the Enterprise Wireless Alliance (EWA) asked the FCC to designate the Part 90 800 MHz guard band spectrum as “green space” for relocating incumbents from the T-band.
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by AllThingsECC.com | May 15, 2019 | Articles, Comm Center News
By Dave Buchanan, FirstNet Authority Executive Director of Public Safety Advocacy
Recently, the Public Safety Advisory Committee’s (PSAC) Tribal Working Group (TWG) met in Nashville, Tennessee for its semi-annual in-person meeting. The two-day engagement was an opportunity for the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet Authority) to update TWG delegates about FirstNet’s latest developments, hear from tribal leaders about their network needs, and highlight real-world FirstNet use cases in tribal communities.
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by AllThingsECC.com | May 15, 2019 | Articles, Comm Center News
By Brigadier General Welton Chase, Jr. (US Army, Ret.), FirstNet Board Member
When your job is to protect our communities, nothing is more important than being connected, protected and situationally aware. As a U.S. Army veteran with three tours in combat, I had the privilege to serve while establishing communications systems in some of the most difficult circumstances to help our soldiers move, shoot and communicate. What I learned from these experiences is that communications is a vital lifeline essential to success.
Today, adversaries are working to disrupt our nation’s communications and critical infrastructure through cyberspace. With America’s first responder network – FirstNet – now over 50% deployed across the nation, we must continue to protect and secure our growing capability and capacity for public safety.
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by AllThingsECC.com | May 13, 2019 | Comm Center News
Florida Agency Implements PowerPhone 9-1-1 Protocol
The system combines protocol technology, certification training and assessment that improves the level of service provided to callers, responders and communities. The protocol software, Computer Aided Call Handling (CACH) Standard in Total Response, uses scenario based protocols operating with a centralized database. The protocols help dispatchers more effectively manage every call.
“PowerPhone’s Total Response solution is more user friendly than other vendors’ and is significantly more adaptable, which gives our dispatchers the freedom to really focus on helping a caller in distress,” said Mario Bryant, communications center manager. “This software is also simplistic with navigation and design. The questions being asked by our dispatchers come off very natural.”
Certification training uses a proven, adaptable framework allowing the dispatcher to adjust the line of questioning as scene conditions change. For Boynton Beach, this transition allowed the agency to flourish and confidently provide the best standard of care to the community.
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by AllThingsECC.com | May 8, 2019 | Articles, Comm Center News
Download Original Poster
Abstract
Introduction:
The most critical and difficult part of the Emergency Police Dispatcher’s (EPD) job may be the gathering of the initial problem description, which uses a scripted Protocol Case Entry Question (CEQ) but also requires interpretation on the part of the EPD.
Specifically, at the beginning of the call, the EPD asks the caller the CEQ “Ok, tell me exactly what happened” (TMEWH). Based on the caller’s response, the EPD selects a Chief Complaint (CC) Protocol—a specific protocol that provides the prompts to drill down into the caller’s situation—the primary reason for calling 911. Selecting the wrong CC can lead to gathering incomplete information (including missing safety information that is valuable for officers), not providing needed instructions, or sending the wrong type of response.
Objective:
The primary objectives of this study were to: 1. Determine whether asking, TMEWH CEQ provides information that is useful later in the call (in terms of CC selection, KQ answers, and final coding). 2. Identify the effect of asking TMEWH CEQ on total call prioritization time [CPT] (elapsed time from launching the call triaging system [ProQA®] and attaining finagling code).
Materials and Methods:
This was a retrospective study involving review of audio recordings of calls handled on the Police Priority Dispatch System (PPDS®). Calls were collected during normal quality assurance (QA) call review at the participating agencies: Morris County Department of Law and Public Safety, New Jersey, and Williamson County Emergency Communications, Texas. Data included whether the TMEWH CEQ was asked, how many of the KQs were considered obvious, the total number of KQs, whether the correct CC was chosen, and the total CPT.
A total of 425 audio files were reviewed (224 from Morris County, New Jersey and 201 from Williamson County, Texas). Of the total KQs for the CC selected, the median proportion of the number of KQs that were obvious (or should have been obvious) was 33% (IQR: 36%) for all cases.
Asking the TMEWH CEQ did have a statistically significant impact on the appropriateness of the initial CC that was selected (p<0.001). However, asking the TMEWH CEQ did not significantly vary (statistically) by the presence of a spontaneous caller statement (p=0.803). The elapsed time to final coding did not differ significantly by whether the TMEWH CEQ was asked (p=0.582); nor did total elapsed case processing time differ significantly by whether the TMEWH was asked (p=0.447). While the median values of the total number of KQs asked varied (Table 1), no statistically significant relationship was observed (p=0.112). No statistically significant relationship was seen between use of TMEWH CEQ and total number of Obvious (or should have been) KQs (p=0.535).
Discussion:
Compliance to the protocol was particularly high in this convenience sample, resulting in only 5.9% of cases being non-compliant (i.e. not using the TMEWH CEQ). The following trends were seen:
• TMEWH was significantly associated with more appropriate initial CC selection.
• Use of TMEWH did not have an impact on either total KQs or number of obvious (or should have been) KQs.
• Use of the TMEWH CEQ did not have a statistically significant impact on the elapsed time to final dispatch (CPT) or total case time.
Future studies may want to focus on more non-compliant calls in order to determine what relationships may be present.
Conclusion:
EPDs appear to be effective at identifying when a spontaneous caller statement, provided at the opening of a call, is sufficient to determine the appropriate CC selection. Asking the TMEWH CEQ does not significantly increase call time and provides important information when the caller does not present a sufficient problem description spontaneously. EPDs should err on the side of asking the TMEWH CEQ when unclear whether the spontaneous caller statement is sufficient to enable EPDs to select an appropriately CC.
Acknowledgements:
Daniel Ashwood, PhD; Isabel Gardett, PhD; and Chris Olola, PhD, for their support in study design, data analysis and review.
Contact Information:
Steve Zenes: szenes@co.morris.nj.us
Nancy Roller: nroller@wilco.org
Topics:Case Entry|Chief Complaint Selection|Emergency Police Dispatch (EPD)|police
by AllThingsECC.com | May 7, 2019 | Comm Center News
Lafayette Parish Deploys Carbyne’s 9-1-1 Technology
The plug-in enables Lafayette Parish telecommunicators to receive device-based location for 9-1-1 and nonemergency calls, receive call-taker enabled video streams from callers, and instant message with citizens in situations where verbal communications may be untenable.
“Lafayette Parish 911 is leveraging advanced 9-1-1 technologies such as Mark43 and Carbyne, to make citizens and first responders safer,” said Craig Stansbury, 9-1-1 director of Lafayette Parish. “Both solutions are built for the digital age, providing benefit to our 9-1-1 center today and in the future. Implementing Carbyne’s technology provides our citizens with easily accessible, next-generation emergency services — ultimately decreasing time to dispatch and saving more lives.”
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