from Ugent Communications

911 training legislation is a labor of love

Apr 29, 2010 2:29 PM, By Glenn Bischoff
Would require Florida call-takers and dispatchers to become certified

The state of Florida House of Representatives yesterday unanimously approved a Senate bill that would require newly hired 911 call-takers and dispatchers to compile 232 hours of training before they are allowed to handle an emergency call. The requirement takes effect in October 2012. Personnel hired before then would be required to take a competency exam. Those who fail that exam would be required to undergo the training regimen. The bill also authorizes the use of funds generated by the state’s 911 tax for the training.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Ken Roberson, said an investigation revealed that although the majority of 911 calls are handled properly by Florida’s telecommunicators, “hundreds of critical errors that endanger lives” occur every year. He was critical of Florida’s lack of uniform training standards and alleged that some telecommunicators in the state start processing 911 calls within a couple of days of being hired. “This situation is unacceptable and must be rectified,” he said.
The Denise Amber Lee Foundation was a driving force behind the passage of this legislation. The 21-year-old Lee, the mother of two young children, was abducted from her Florida home in January 2008 and murdered. Allegedly, 911 personnel made mistakes on the night of her abduction that hindered search efforts. She was found in a shallow grave two days after her abduction. Her assailant was convicted and received the death penalty.
Mark and Peggy Lee, the in-laws of Denise Amber Lee who are the driving force behind the foundation, said that they were pleased with the bill’s passage and that Gov. Charlie Crist has indicated that he will sign it into law. However, the Lee’s have some concerns. They wonder where the money will be found to conduct the training throughout the state. They say that the state’s 911 fees only cover about two-thirds of the costs associated with operating its public-safety answering points.
They also say that the state is going to have to find a way.
“The call-taker is the first link in the chain, and it’s a pretty important link. If they don’t get it right, you’re not going to get firefighters to fires, EMTs to medical emergencies, or police to an abducted woman who’s in the back of a moving car,” Peggy Lee said. “So, they might have to put off that new CAD system for a year. The best technology in the world is no good if the call-taker isn’t following protocol.”
Compliance is another area of concern. “How do we know that each PSAP is going to comply with the law? We don’t want to see 253 cowboys out there doing this on their own,” Mark Lee said. “We need a stronger state 911 office for oversight.”
The Lees hope that the Florida legislation is but a stepping stone to the foundation’s much bigger goal, which is federal legislation that would standardize training and require certification for 911 telecommunicators nationwide. They said that they have had productive discussions about such a bill with the leaders of the major public-safety communications associations. “There’s a lot more that needs to be done,” Mark Lee said.
Patrick Halley, government affairs director for the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), said that a joint effort with the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials should produce standards that address 911 telecommunicator training and quality assurance, which in turn could provide a framework for the federal legislation that the Lees seek. But he said that such a bill would be a tricky proposition.
“It’s a state-sovereignty issue,” Halley said. “It would be tough for the federal government to tell the states that they have to train, and in a specific way. If anything occurs on the national level, it’s going to have to be creatively done.”
But Halley agrees with the Lees that it needs to be done.“In Illinois, for example, you have to be certified to work in a tanning center or barber shop, but not in a 911 center,” he said. “That has to be resolved. A lot of states do a great job [regarding training], but only a handful of them are required by law to do so.”
The lobbying effort to achieve such legislation has taken a toll on the Lees. Not only have they devoted much time, they also have gone into their own pockets at times. They also have had to endure numerous arrows that have been tossed in their direction. “We’ve been called ‘media whores.’ We’ve been accused of using this as an excuse to take vacations,” Peggy Lee said.
“Believe me, telling this story over and over again hasn’t been fun. We’re spent.”
Despite this, both Mark and Peggy Lee were emphatic that the effort has been worthwhile and that they have plenty of fight still left in them to reach the ultimate goal. The motivation is as simple as it is pure.
“This keeps Denise from dying in vain,” Peggy Lee said. “We’ve often asked the question, ‘Why Denise.’ This is the only thing that we can think of. In doing this, we know that she’s saving lives.”

http://urgentcomm.com/policy_and_law/news/911-training-legislation-20100429/

Prepaid Wireless and 9-1-1 (Urgent Communications article)

My opinion, article to follow: While, yes, absolutely "the time for talking about this is over"! But, I'd like to add, we need to use those funds collected to be able to find these phones when someone calls for 9-1-1 assistance. Denise Amber Lee had the comm center on the phone for 7 (seven minutes). She most likely, fully expecting to be found. If we're not going to do any of this any time soon, we need to educate the public on what their cell phones and 9-1-1 centers can and cannot do. Too many people are watching CSI and Law and Order and have expectations about 9-1-1 that are quite simply unrealistic. So if you're just going to keep talking, at least, educate people. The woman who died in Oklahoma, Kimberly Rae Kendrick, the young boy in Australia, David Iredale, Jennifer Johnson in Tampa, Olida Kerr Day in Miami etc........ They all expected to be found through wireless technology and were tragically disappointed. Denise's call was made from the alleged murderer's own PRE-PAID cell phone. IMO NENA, and other 9-1-1 industry experts need to start educating people on how to use 9-1-1 from any wireless phone. They can't expect a sales clerk at a sales counter, making minimum wage plus commission, selling cell phones to do that job. JMHO. I've seen some literature but definitely not enough because regular folks, outside the industry, just have no clue.


Solution may be near for prepaid wireless 911 funding dilemma

Jul 9, 2009 5:51 PM, By Glenn Bischoff

The advent of prepaid wireless phones created a nasty problem for the 911 emergency-communications sector. Where wireless operators collect 911 fees from their monthly subscribers, they cannot collect from prepaid customers because those customers don’t have billing plans; they simply purchase minutes through various retail outlets.

It’s a problem that’s getting bigger, according to Patrick Halley, government affairs director for the National Emergency Number Association, who led a panel discussion on the topic last month at the organization’s annual conference in Fort Worth, Texas. Citing various sources, Halley said that 20% of wireless phone users are prepaid and that 80% of new users in May were such customers.

Moreover, Halley cited a report from the New Millennium Research Council that predicted that 60 million people nationwide would shift to less-expensive wireless plans as a result of the flagging economy. Many are expected to migrate to pay-as-you-go options.

“This is a rapidly growing market, without a doubt,” Halley said.
Several approaches have been floated to ensure that prepaid customers contribute their fair share to state 911 funds. The one that is gaining the most momentum calls for legislation that would require retailers to tack a 911 fee onto the purchase price of the prepaid wireless phone cards they sell, in part because it appears to be the easiest to implement.

But is this approach fair to the retail community? Mark Barfield, a vice president with Radio Shack, who also participated in the panel discussion at NENA, doesn’t think so. “There are tens of thousands of mom-and-pop stores that sell these things and many won’t comply,” Barfield said. “Small businesses will think that no one will catch them if they don’t charge the fee.”

That would put any retailer that does comply with such a mandate at a distinct competitive disadvantage, according to Barfield.

“People will come into our store and ask, ‘Why are you collecting this fee when the store down the street isn’t’ — and then they will shop down the street,” Barfield said. Not only would that cost the retailer a sale, but it also could create an unfair perception in the mind of the customer, he added. “People will think we’re cheating them, when we’re just complying with the law.”

But the fact that no mechanism currently is in place to collect 911 fees from pre-paid wireless users is costing the public-safety sector nationwide roughly $200 million a year, money that is sorely needed, especially in a down economy, said Jeff Robertson, executive director of the 911 Industry Alliance, who also participated in the panel discussion.

“The time for talking about this is over,” Robertson said. “A point-of-sale model is the best way to go, so let’s get it done. We could debate this for another year, but anything that we come up with, someone will be able to poke holes in it.”

For those retailers that believe this approach to be unfair, Robertson had some simple advice: “If you don’t want to subscribe to this model, don’t sell the [cards].”

http://urgentcomm.com/policy_and_law/news/prepaid-wireless-fees-20090709/