#ng9-1-1

[raveblog]

Could Citizen Self Service be Extended to 9-1-1?

The typical measures of 9-1-1 center operational performance are call answer time, call processing time, time to dispatch and compliance with call processing protocols. However, given the high frequency of low priority calls received, should a 9-1-1 center strive to achieve rapid answer time for every single call? Most Police, Fire, and EMS agencies have different response time standards based on the apparent severity of the call. Why is this not the case for PSAPs?

The easy answer is that unlike their field agency counterparts, PSAPs are unable to determine the severity of a 9-1-1 call until they actually answer and begin to process it. In fact, call processing is the very activity that permits the field agencies to alter their response. Therefore, current practice dictates that every call needs to be answered as though it’s a life-threatening emergency until proven otherwise. But what if a PSAP could reserve its limited resources (call takers) for higher priority calls by directing callers with lower acuity complaints to either a low priority queue or, better yet, instructing the individual requesting assistance to take an action other than dialing 9-1-1?

Citizen Self Service Background

About 15 years ago, larger cities began experimenting with 3-1-1 centers. There were two primary objectives: 1) provide the public with a single point of access to non-emergency city services; and, 2) reduce the call volume into 9-1-1 for non-emergency requests (or possibly in the reverse order). Although the initial investment in a 3-1-1 center is substantial, most of these cities did realize the benefits they had hoped to, particularly a decompression of the 9-1-1 center’s call volume. In conjunction with receiving its 100 millionth call in the first seven and a half years of service, the New York City 3-1-1 center revealed a glimpse into the treasure trove of data that these calls provided. It is impossible to know with any certainty how many of the complaints or inquiries received by 3-1-1 would have generated 9-1-1 calls in the absence of NYC311, but it is safe to say that a healthy number would have – particularly noise complaints, graffiti, the infamous “maple syrup” incidents, and many others.

Just as with the evolution and growing public awareness of 9-1-1, 3-1-1 centers became victims of their own convenience and success, driving their call volumes higher. However, rather than simply adding call receiving positions and customer service representatives, many 3-1-1 operations moved into the digital era by offering sophisticated options for citizen self service. Citizen self service is offered through a combination of interactive voice response (IVR), web-based services, requests through social media outlets like Twitter, and, increasingly, through sophisticated Smartphone apps such as Boston’s Citizens Connect that allow an individual to report a problem with a geotag, a photo or video, and then track the progress of its or even other citizen-reported problems’ resolution through the city’s work order system.

Today, governments large and small have begun to offer an increasing number of eGovernment services to the public with considerable success. Take, for example, the return on investment realized by the State of Utah over the past five years across 9 different citizen self services. For these services, the cost per transaction has been reduced from $17 to $4, netting a savings of $46 million. The success of citizen self service across all areas of government, including 3-1-1, begs the question of whether there are ways in which 9-1-1 centers can leverage similar tools to divert non-emergency calls. Let’s explore just a few of the possibilities. 

Text-to-911

Todd has done a great job of describing the current and future landscape of text messaging to 9-1-1 in several previous blogs, so it isn’t necessary to rehash all of that detail here. Suffice it to say, however, that once Text-to-911 is ubiquitously available across all wireless carriers and implemented properly within the PSAP, it will very likely give the “call” taker the ability to manage multiple requests for service from different callers/texters simultaneously. This has the potential to offer PSAPs huge gains in operational efficiency.

Web-based Reporting Tools & Smartphone Applications

I firmly believe that, despite the number of ridiculous calls a 9-1-1 center receives, the majority of the public would prefer to not call 9-1-1 if there were another way to resolve their issue. A city or county needn’t have a 3-1-1 center to provide citizen self service options through a Smartphone application or web-based incident reporting / eGovernment solution. Numerous law enforcement agencies, such as Seattle PD allow an individual to report some low-level crimes online. A few examples are property theft (under a certain dollar amount), narcotics activity, and property destruction.

Several years ago, my car was broken into and some items were taken. I spent no less than 25 minutes scouring the city’s website for an online reporting form, or at least a non-emergency number to the police department. I was finally able to find the latter and when I called the number, I was told that I needed to hang up and dial 9-1-1. That doesn’t seem like the best use of limited 9-1-1 resources, since my call would enter the queue, late on a Saturday night, and likely get answered before someone calling with a true emergency. Had I been living in Seattle, Houston, Natick (MA), or any number of cities across the country, I could have reported the theft online and not burdened the 9-1-1 center and the responding officer. Although certainly not the only commercially-available solution on the market, a glimpse at online police reporting provider Coplogic’s client list shows just how many cities are already offering these services.

Social Media

Much in the same way that Text-to-911 will provide citizens with an alternate way of requesting service, so too could social media outlets, such as Twitter and Facebook. Many cities already allow citizens to report non-emergency complaints through social media. There are still issues to be addressed, but if the public could be educated in how to properly communicate with emergency services via social media (and for which circumstances it would be appropriate to do so), the efficiency of 9-1-1 operations would be further enhanced.

As technology continues to advance, budgets become more stressed, and the public’s expectations increase, citizen self service needs to be more fully explored for public safety. The explosion of Smartphone apps and even government-sponsored competitions of app development have allowed for much more affordable and rapidly-deployable solutions. Any amount of non-emergency call volume that can be shed from a 9-1-1 center adds to the efficiency of the operation, and, ultimately, allows for better response for those in greatest need of assistance.

[raveblog]

Do we Need to Police NG9-1-1?

For my first blog post, I’d like to talk about something that caught my attention at last week’s NENA Development Conference (NENA NDC).  A substantial portion of this year’s agenda was dedicated to ”Devices and Sensors” (personal alarms, vehicle telemetry, and environmental monitors to name a few).  These discussions centered on how “calls” from such devices will reach the PSAP, and attempted to inventory the impact this will have on PSAP operations.

As the discussions progressed, a number of questions were raised:

How do we keep track of the emerging technologies and services?

How will we handle “calls” initiated by these devices?

Should devices be able to initiate calls directly, or should there be a human intermediary (similar to alarm central station monitoring)?

Can any garage-tinkerer create a device which initiates a 9-1-1 call?  How do we prevent abuse? 

There was a natural gravitation to the idea of “certification”, whereby only devices which meet a set of criteria should be able to initiate an emergency call.  The presumption being a certifying entity would be our “NG9-1-1 Cop”, ensuring:

Public safety would only see calls from “certified” devices and services.

Procedures for handling calls initiated by a particular device or service could be established in advance.

Service providers, in addition to their devices, could be subject to certification, auditing compliance to a defined standard.

Traceability back to a service provider and/or end user would greatly limit the likelihood of abuse.

Taken at face value, the concerns and proposed approach seem entirely reasonable.  Now that I’ve had a few days to mull it over, I’ve started to question this path:

I expect many (most?) of these devices to be mobile.  A consistent standard must be applied across the country to prevent public confusion and create a regulatory landscape that encourages investment.

I don’t know if any one entity has the authority to certify, and more importantly regulate and enforce the initiation of a 9-1-1 call by a particular device or service.

Should a regulatory body be established, how would it be funded?  Could such a body be “right-sized” to provide the necessary level of scrutiny, while still being able to certify devices in a timely fashion?

Will the certification standards always lag technology, such that the certification process is outdated with the introduction of a new technology?  Who decides to let a new technology in? 

I think the only scalable approach is to address this problem via technical standards and functional validations built into the ESINet itself (a NG9-1-1 “Robo-Cop”?), rather than through a manual certification process.  This approach would look something like this:

The i3 specification (and referenced RFC’s), describe what a valid “call” looks like.

Emerging standards for the passing of “Additional Data” (information about the Call, the Caller, and the Location of the Caller) define the kinds of information which can be made available to public safety. 

Therefore, if a “call” has the minimum acceptable information to support the proper routing and handling of the request, AND the associated data passed with the call is in a format agreed upon by public safety, that the PSAP and first responders should be in a position to interpret and handle the call.  Calls which do not meet these criteria should be “arrested” at the gate by our Robo-Cop.

For this to work, I believe we need one additional ingredient: traceability.  The identity of the device’s Service Provider MUST be certified through a credentialing agency.  Better yet, the identity of the device owner / user should be certified, even if only by the credentialed Service Provider.  This ensures anyone using or deploying a device can be identified by public safety.  A knee-jerk reaction would be to call this “big brother”, but it is in everyone’s best interest.  Public safety works best where there is a baseline level of trust that running in both directions: you trust me because you know who I am, I trust you to come help me!

Testing this against our initial concerns, our Robo-Cop could create an environment where:

Emerging technologies conform to pre-defined standards.  When a new technology requires an extension to a dataset, one works with the standards organizations to affect the required change.

Public safety can create the required operational procedures in advance, since all “calls” would confirm to pre-existing standards.

Competition and innovation flourish as the only barrier to entry is standards conformance and registration of the service (the trusted identity).

The incident of abuse is no worse than what is seen with landline and initialized post-paid mobile devices, as the identity of service providers and end users is known.

I’ve already been asked to bring this to the attention of NENA’s Additional Data Work Group, so  I’d appreciate your thoughts.