Following a review of California's years-long overhaul of its aging 911 system, Cal OES announced plans to improve implementation but offered no timeline for the project's completion.
The rollout of California’s new digital 911 network remains on hold after the state paused its implementation late last year, but officials announced a major shakeup Wednesday in how they plan to move the project forward.
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WATCH HEREThe announcement follows years of delays and failures with the technology documented by some of the first dispatch centers to use the new system.
Since February, Cal OES has been meeting with dispatch centers using the new network, along with vendors building the system, to gain insight into what problems they are facing and chart a path forward to get Next Gen 911 back on track in California.
At a state 911 Advisory Board meeting Wednesday, officials with Cal OES announced some of those initial plans, including stronger state oversight, better communication with dispatch centers, and potentially hiring new companies to finish the project.
“We’re going to see a philosophical change and a paradigm change in our office,” said California 911 Branch Manager Paul Troxel.
The new plan comes under the leadership of Cal OES Chief Deputy Director Lisa Mangat, who took over the helm on the project in February after its former architect left the agency last year. One of Mangat’s first steps was to hire consultant Russ Nichols, who comes with decades of experience on large state-level IT projects, to help with the review.
“Across the board, across every [dispatch center], every vendor partner, every organization that we spoke with, there is strong support for the Next Gen 911 effort,” Nichols said.
While Nichols said there’s still broad support for upgrading the state’s aging legacy 911 system, he identified areas where the state and its vendors could be doing better, including simplifying the implementation process, improving communication with dispatch centers, and centering emergency dispatchers and the public relying on their help in any decision they make.
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SIGN UP “Dispatchers do not have the opportunity in the middle of an emergency dispatch to be fighting with technology or process,” Nichols said.
State officials followed Nichols by announcing several significant changes in how they plan on moving forward with Next Gen implementation, including a larger role for Cal OES.
“We’re going to be actively involved in the project more,” Troxel said. “We’re not going to rely just on our vendors. We need our vendor partners to deploy this service, but it’s a partnership with Cal OES and the whole project is sponsored by Cal OES and the team I represent.”
That wasn’t the only major announcement, through California, according to Troxel and Mangat, could be looking to different companies to finish the implementation of Next Gen, which has already been in progress for years, with the state opening the project for new bids by the end of 2025.
“The new contracts allow Cal OES to improve requirements, focusing on technology and the process improvements that we’ve learned over the last couple of months,” Troxel said.
Only about 5% of more than 400 emergency dispatch centers across the state are currently connected to the Next Gen network, and officials aren’t yet committing to a timeline on when the project might be completed, or even when the rollout will resume again.
Cal OES said they hope to have a better understanding of that once the new contracts are in place. In the meantime, they assured the 23 dispatch centers using the new network that they’ll still be receiving support from their vendors, and that the state plans to implement new technology they expect will improve their call handling ability.
