‘It doesn't seem ready': Engineers on stalled CA 911 overhaul had doubts about tech, Telegram chats show

Messages between engineers working for one of the companies hired to help build California's “Next Generation” 911 system appear to show internal doubts the technology was ready just before it was delivered for testing in Oklahoma and 10 months before it went live in a California dispatch center.

The screenshots were sent to NBC Bay Area by a former employee of state contractor NGA 911, who said they are copies of online chats the engineers had on the messaging app Telegram. One of the engineers involved in the conversation, the messages show, said they wouldn’t trust the 911 call handling system they were building in an emergency involving their own family.

NGA’s work is part of a statewide effort to modernize California’s decades-old emergency calling network, which public safety officials across the state say is desperately needed. The half-billion-dollar project, however, has been beset with technical difficulties and years of delays.

Following a series of reports by NBC Bay Area's Investigative Unit, the rollout was put on pause last November, and currently continues to be on hold, as state officials probe the scope of the issues and plan how to get the project back on track. Just 23 out of more than 400 emergency dispatch centers across California are currently hooked up to the new network, despite early projections the entire project would be completed by 2021. That deadline, however, continued to be pushed, and state officials now say they have no estimated timeline for the project's completion. So far, the project has cost nearly a half-billion dollars and is projected by the state to cost significantly more moving forward.

The former NGA engineer who sent the Telegram messages to NBC Bay Area said he chose to speak out because he believes the company went live with a flawed product, despite internal concerns about its readiness among some of the very people building the new system.

“I made it known to several of the executive team that I think that it shouldn’t go live,” the source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “I think that lives can be put at stake.”

Some other engineers on the thread, none of whom responded to requests for comment, shared similar concerns in the chat.

Two additional former NGA employees not involved in those conversations, however, did speak to NBC Bay Area about their experiences at the company. 

One of them alleged that NGA and the California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) failed to thoroughly test the new system before deploying it to handle real-life 9-1-1 calls.

The other source, a former NGA employee who worked directly with 911 centers, said the company knew it couldn’t meet product delivery deadlines but kept customers in the dark about delays.

“We were often asked to provide delivery timelines that were aspirational at best, knowingly inaccurate at worst,” the source said.

NGA has not responded directly to questions about the contents of the Telegram messages, but told NBC Bay Area in a statement that the company “has met every requirement set by the State of California, completed all state-mandated testing, and achieved all necessary certifications,” adding that it does “not deploy technology without explicit authorization from the California Office of Emergency Services and the local public safety agencies that we serve.”

According to the former NGA engineer who sent the Telegram messages, the employees on the chat were in the process of building part of the Next Gen 911 system for California, Oklahoma and West Virginia. 

In a conversation from December 2021, one engineer lays out a list of problems the team encountered with the system during testing, including dropped calls, phones not ringing, and one party in the conversation not being able to hear the other. 

An engineer in the chat writes, “I can’t imagine being in a 911 environment yet. I think it needs more [development] time.”

That message got a response from NGA’s VP of Technology, Mike DeWeese, saying, “Yes sir you are correct.”

When reached by phone, DeWeese said he couldn’t confirm or deny that the chat occurred, and asked NBC Bay Area to reach out to NGA’s CEO Don Ferguson.

By April 2022, another Telegram chat among six NGA engineers appears to show there were still significant concerns the product they were building wasn’t ready to handle 9-1-1 calls. 

According to screenshots of the conversation, one of the engineers asks the others on the thread for their “unfiltered thoughts” on the Next Gen 911 call handling system they were working on, telling them “I don’t think it’s [production] ready.”

“From our perspective, it doesn’t seem ready,” one of them responds, adding that it could “benefit from some tweaks.”

“Would you trust it if it’s an emergency situation for a family member?” the first engineer asks. 

“Good question, no,” the second engineer responds,

“If I was expecting a call nope =D,” a third engineer responds.

Then, a fourth engineer says, “I would trust, it’s not bad, just not something I would pay for =D”

Another engineer then defends the system, saying “I think CHS (Call handling system) is okay. I don’t use it as much because most call come to my cell…but when I do use it I have no issues usually.”

In another part of the same conversation, one of the engineers says, “We’re supposed to go live with this hunk of junk in a week,” referencing the system getting delivered to Oklahoma for testing, according to the NGA source. 

Another engineer then seemingly jokes, “I can’t hear you very well, you must be using NGA solution.”

One engineer describes apparent call problems, saying “When someone tries to call us, it doesn’t work so well.”

Another engineer responds, saying, “I’ll assume that’s a politically correct way of saying it F***ing sucks.”

It’s unclear what improvements, if any, were made between the telegram chat in April 2022 and when, according to the NGA source, it went live in West Viriginia four months later, and then in Desert Hot Springs, CA in February 2023.

In Logan County, West Virginia, a county official told NBC Bay Area they were proud to be “among the first in the nation to fully embrace a cloud-based Next Generation 911 platform” and called NGA a “tremendous partner.”

“We had the typical learnings you’d expect with any major shift, but overall, the process was smooth and successful,” said Ted Sparks, Director of Logan County Emergency Operations 911.

But records obtained by NBC Bay Area suggest the implementation hasn’t gone as smoothly in California and at least three other states, which experienced either 911 call problems or project delays.

In Florida, for example, the state’s telecommunications director wrote a letter to NGA last year, saying in part their "project is on the brink of collapse due to [NGA’s] continued excuses.” NGA did not respond to questions about the apparent issues with their Florida project. 

In February 2023, California rolled out NGA’s 911 call handling system at the Desert Hot Springs Police Department, a small law enforcement agency in the Coachella Valley.

Within four months, the department began reporting frequent problems, such as “calls dropping” and being “unable to transfer” calls.

The source who provided the Telegram messages said he believes NGA knew their technology had issues but pushed for it to be deployed anyway. 

“A lot of the executive leadership said this is something that can be fixed later,” the source said. “We just need to go live. We need to start that revenue flowing.”

While NGA did not answer questions about the Telegram messages, CEO Don Ferguson did address the apparent rollout issues, saying in a statement last month that NBC Bay Area’s reporting has ignored “inherent, anticipated complexities of a large-scale transition of this nature.”

Cal OES said in an email that the agency “can’t speak to internal discussions at other organizations” and that “upgrading to Next Generation 911 is a vital investment in public safety for nearly 40 million Californians." 

The source acknowledged that Next Gen 911 is a complicated and ambitious project but said NGA”s decision to deploy the system before he believed it was ready to handle real-life emergency calls still weighs on him.

“It quite possibly could have caused loss of life, or at least service being denied to people,” they said.

Candice Nguyen and Michael Bott are the investigative journalists on this series of reports. If you have a question or a tip, email them at candice.nguyen@nbcuni.com and michael.bott@nbcuni.com.