The - State of 911 - Webinar - 3/14/2013

OPERATOR: Good morning and good afternoon, my name is Candace and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the National 911 Program: State of 911 Webinar. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks there will be a Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, press *1 on the telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Thank you. Mr. Brian Given, you may begin your conference. BRIAN GIVEN: Thanks, hello and welcome to the third installment of the state of 911 webinar series being presented by the National 911 Program. My name is Brian Given, contractor support for the program. This webinar series was designed to offer 911 stakeholders information about ongoing federal and state 911 and NG911 projects and provide real experiences and best practices from early adopters about 911 and NG911 transition processes currently underway across the country. Like I mentioned before, this is the third installment of the bi-monthly series. Each webinar consists of a presentation from a federal level and a state-level 911 stakeholder, With each presentation followed by a 10 minute Q&A session. At the end of the event if there is time left over we will open up the line for additional questions. Following this event, a recording of the presentation along with the slides will be posted on the National 911 Program website at WWW.911.gov. You can go there to find information about past and future events as well as learn more about the National 911 Program. Today's event will begin with a presentation from Ms. Laurie Flaherty, Ms. Flaherty is Coordinator for the National 911 Program. She will provide an overview of the 2011 911 Progress Report. Following the Q&A with Laurie, Ms. Marlys Davis, King County WA E911 project manager, will present on King County's NG911 plan. So without futher ado, I will now hand it off to Ms. Flaherty. LAURIE FLAHERTY: Thanks, Brian. Good day everyone and thank you for joining us today. As Brian mentioned, my segment will be on a report that was recently posted on our website on a project that is been going on for some time to collect data at the national level on the progress of 911 across the country. What I will be reporting on is the 2011 National 911 Progress Report. So I'm going to run through bascially, my 20 minutes will be the who, what, when, why, where, how and probably most important, the so what about that project and what it means to you and what it might mean and why we were so interested in pursuing data collection at the national level. First let's talk about what it is. The National 911 Profile Database is a uniform set of data elements and definitions to be collected from the state and aggregated at the national level. It includes two kinds of data. One is the baseline information -- demographics data on the states in terms of not only the current status and how many PSAPs they have and how many calls they get, but a little bit about financial information as well. On the other end of the database, we have progress benchmarks related to their progress and implementation of next generation 911. It is broken up into a process, if you will, rather than just technical data. You will see data on where the states are in terms of planning and procurement. In the procurement section, it is broken down into 23 different components. There is some level of detail in terms of where the states are in terms of implementing and deploying different components of the NG911 system. Also there is information on who is doing installing and testing and where they are in terms of transitioning to NG911 and operations. How does this compare with what currently exists? If you are familiar with the NENA National Profile, you know that the database contains information on the country -- it is laid out in terms of where they are and the service they provide with regard to 911 -- whether or not they have 911 at all. Whether or not it is basic and which jurisdictions have implemented Enhanced 911 phase 1 and phase 2 as defined by the FCC. We did not want to recreate the database. We did provide the seed money in the beginning. NENA has kept it up since then. 0:05:10.930,0:05:18:870 What We were interested in was collecting data on either end of that, basic demographic information as well as information on the implementation of NG11. I don't know about you, but I am asked very often basic questions about the National 911 system. How many PSAPs are there and what kind of calls do they get and how many do they get. And we can't answer those questions. I'm also asked a lot of questions about where the states are, where the country is in terms of implementing NG911. I can't answer this, either. Those two things are a large impetus for us. We did not want to be redundant. We are on both ends of the NENA NG911 deployment profile. Why collect data? Clearly in terms of 911, there is not a lot of data available at the national level. As I mentioned, there is a basic need for demographic data like how many PSAPs are there. There is also a real need for data on NG911 implementation. This database was designed to produce a national profile that can be used to measure and depict the current status of the states, their progress, and their planned activities with regard to 911 systems across the United States. It feels the need to objectively measure and characterize the status of 911 services both in terms of technology and operations. I think this is important. I think that we tend to focus on the technology, but just as important as the technology is 0:07:01.330,0:07.08.330 the operations piece. Where the states are with that. Hopefully, as we collect this data, we will be able to draw some attention to the gaps and roadblocks and come up with solutions for those problems and speaking for the National 911 Program, we get our cues from you. A lot of money that we use to fund projects come from ideas that come from you. This is another way we will be able to collect data to target the future activities of the National 911 Program. In the larger sense, data can help us to ask the right questions. They don't provide the answers necessarily, but they can be used to identify what the problems are and characterize them and begin to define the questions that will lead to answers. As we get into the presentation more, you may see how this is true. For those dealing with policymakers, there is a clear need for data for them as well. They are much more likely to make decisions that are effective if the decisions are supported by data. If you are trying to implement NG911, how much do you need? Why do you need that much money? All of these things are entered into your business case when moving forward and making a case for your own programs at the state and local level. Also in terms of your own programs, if you want to improve them, you need to collect the data. If you are trying to improve the efficiency of your program or its effectiveness, you need to measure performance. To do that you really have to have those metrics in place. I think the value of the data comes from the story it tells. As we turn data into information, it tells the story about where 911 is and where it came from and where we want it to go. There are a lot of different values in terms of collecting this data and what we hope to achieve. Just to give you another example of what is out there in terms of data, this is the cover of a report recently put out by the European Emergency Number Association. The slide is small in terms of print, but I can tell you that in the table of contents there are 32 countries represented in this report on public safety answering points in Europe. There are 47 countries in Europe and there are 43 countries that are reported to be a member of EENA. We got 32 on this report. If they can get 32, it would be nice if we could get a large number of our states involved in putting their data together to show a picture of what 911 looks like in this country. On the next slide you will see an example of the kind of data that they have available for each of the countries submitting data. I realize you can't read this, but to give you an overview, the kind of data available on this report is the number of PSAPs, the kind of technology utilized, specific information regarding caller location and how it supports emergency services, accessibility for people with disabilities, information on their public warning system, what kinds of projects and upgrades they are currently involved with, the size of the population they serve, the size of land area served, the name of the agency that handles 112, in their case. Also related laws and regulations and a graphic that shows the infrastructure models that they use with their system. So, there is an awful lot of information there for each one of their members. This characterizes the 112 system in Europe. So, how was the National 911 Profile Database formed? When we first had this idea, to collect data from the states, we decided to go to the states and we worked with the National Association of State 911 Administrators and ask them to come up with a list of data elements. We asked them what elements would be most useful to them and which elements would be feasible to collect. And they came up with a list of data elements. We then turned the list over to the 911 Resource Center and the Resource Center developed a data dictionary so that everyone would be operating off the same definitions for those data elements. They also developed a web-based tool that allowed the states to submit their data online. They did a lot of training with the states as well and frankly, a lot of pestering, cajoling and encouraging was done to get the data submitted. In the National 911 Program, we don't have the authority to compel anyone to submit data, but they did an awfully good job in the first round of encouraging people to participate. What you will see in this database -- as I mentioned -- basic baseline data with regard to the administrative structure of the 911 system. What the system is comprised of, the kinds of calls they receive from different forms of technology, as well as some fiscal information. On then on NG911 side, what you'll see as I mentioned before, is information in regard to where they are in the process. Whether or not they are planning, procuring, what they are procuring, if it has been installed and tested, if they have made the transition, and also aspects related to the operation of these systems. 0:13:13.470,0:13:20.470 And here are the results we got, keep in mind that these are 2011 data. These are already a little bit dated with regard to the information that is in the database. Again, on the basis of encouraging, pestering and cajoling, we got 28 states to participate. That translates to about 60% of the population in the US and about 45% of the total land area. Just so you know what this represents as we talk about the data collected. In terms of operations, who the 911 authorities are -- the number of primary and secondary PSAPs is also included. The call volume, and that's broken down in regard to the types of calls they received -- Wireline, cellular, VoIP, and other types of data and information. A percent of the population served by levels and the percent of land area served by levels of service as well. There is also information with regard to annual revenue of these systems as compared with their annual costs. Moving on, what is depicted in this slide in green are that states that reported they are making significant progress toward implementing next generation 911. I would like to remind you -- these are data collected during 2011. So, if you know from your colleagues what is going on nationwide, you know there is probably a significant amount of progress that is made since then. In 2011, at that point there were 11 states that had defined the architecture they were going to use. There were 9 states that completed a concept of operations, 10 that it issued a RFP and 7 states that had awarded a contract at that point torward the implementation of their NG911 network. There were seven states in the process of either installing or testing, one state said that 100% of the population was served with an infrastructure that supported NG911, and another state had 45% of their population served with a NG911 infrastructure. Clearly there are limitations in this first report. As I mentioned, we got 28 of 50 states and six territories to report their data. So it is not complete. 0:16:01:470,0:16:08.500 We also found that this being 911's first foray into collecting data at the national level, there was still kind of inconsistency of how people understood the data elements We identified a need to go back and make clear some of the definitions we use so that people are reporting the same information. There is a clear limited ability of the states to collect these data. Perhaps they don't have the authority to do it at this point. Perhaps they don't have the funding or the staff or the collection mechanism to collect these data on a state level in order to submit them -- share them. There are also limitations with regard to the ability to share this data in some cases. What we agreed on this first go around with the states was that in the final report we would only report the aggregate. So, what you'll see in this report is a listing in the aggregate of the information collected from the states with regard to these data elements, and clearly that has limitations as well. There is no way to compare one state against the other and no way for the states necessarily to use this information to begin to see how they measure up against their neighbors, or anyone else, in moving their own systems forward. That was a clear limitation of this project, at least at that point in time. Going back to what I said in the previous slide, there are a lot of real reasons to collect these data, not only to answer the question where is the United States in terms of implementing NG911, but also being able to compare or understand why it costs more per call in one state to another and why one state might have issues in implementing compared with another. There are a lot of valuable lessons that can be learned from the states in deploying these NG911 systems moving forward that really could provide useful information to the rest of the stakeholders. In fact, if you have seen the FCC report to Congress that was submitted a couple of weeks ago, it was borne out of the report. There were a couple of recommendations they made and they are wordy, but I will paraphrase. One of the recommendations was that Congress should support enhancements to the PSAP registry with the FCC, as well as this profile database to enable the collection of data. They thought it was an important way to track how the nation is doing with regard to not only basic information, but with regard to the implementation of NG911. They also suggested that Congress authorize the information collecting with regard to NG911 implementation data in general. We found this very encouraging. They thought it was an important piece of information moving forward and in terms of next steps, that report that I am taking the information from is on 911.gov. If you go to the lower right-hand corner where the announcements are, click on 2011 progress reports. It is been there for several months. We will continue to work with NASNA on this project. The contract for the National Resource Center was recompeted so we did not collect data during 2012, but it has been reawarded -- so we will be collecting data again in 2013. It will be interesting to see how much progress had been made in that two year time period. I suspect that it is significant. It will be interesting to see how things may have changed. That's it for my presentation. I'd be delighted to take any comments or questions that you folks might have at this point. OPERATOR: If you would like to ask a question, please press *1 on your keypad. We will take a moment to compile the Q and a roster. And again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone keypad. We have no questions at this time. COLBY RACHFAL: I have a question, Laurie. In 2011, you mentioned 28 out of 50 states reported. What measures could be taken for a more complete set of data for 2013? LAURIE FLAHERTY: In order to get more data into the report? I think one of the things we would like to do is go back to NASNA and talk with them about that -- the National Association of State 911 Administrators. There are some clear limitations on the part of the state and their basic abilities to collect this data whether it is their authority or resources. Maybe there is something we can make available to them in terms of resources that would make it easier to submit this data. Maybe there is more training we can provide. The people that developed this did a great job of constructing an online system that makes it fairly easy to submit data, but maybe there is something else we can do to help them. I think the other thing we might be able to do is show examples of how these data could be used. If we can demonstrate the utility of the data, people may be more willing or able to submit their data to the database. OPERATOR: We now have some questions on the line. Your first question comes from Pete Kirby -- your line is open. PETE KIRBY: Thank you. Are there any surprising data points you were able to obtain from the first go-round in 2011? LAURIE FLAHERTY: I don't think there were any big surprises going into this. We were pleased, frankly, that we got 28 states to submit data. I am not sure that I anticipated having that many in the first go-round without anyone compelling them to do so. I would like to commend NASNA and its members. They did a great job working with us to get their folks involved in this project. If there were any surprises, it was a pleasant one. It was that we got 28 states to submit their data on the first try. PETE KIRBY: Thank you. OPERATOR: And your next question comes from Jeff Vannais -- your line is open. JEFF VANNAIS: Laurie, we have talked about this a number of times, but on the other side of the coin but I think at some point in time to make sure that all of the states, all 50 of them cooperate to implement next generation 911 in a standard way so that we can provide the interconnectivity and redundancy that I think we all expect, should there be any grassroots movement from the PSAP to give your office more authority to make sure that those standards are applied across the board? Do you think we Will be be able to achieve this voluntarily? LAURIE FLAHERTY: Well, I can't tell you to do that because that would be wrong. I can certainly say that we have taken steps in terms of technical standards. In a separate project, some years ago, we compiled a list of technical standards that 6 or 8 different organizations, or SDOs had been working on. We vetted that list with them and they were pleased. Frankly, no one had put together a list. We subsequently hand-delivered it to the FCC for one of their advisory groups - Fo CSRIC 2, no CSRIC 3. And Working Group 1 of their CSRIC 3 did a gap analysis of existing technical standards. Then they prioritized the gaps. They have since handed the list back to us and we are in the process of updating it and we agreed to to be the keeper of the list, if you will. Once we are finished updating that, we will post that list and let everyone know. We are moving from a model of 6,000 independent operations to one interconnected model of 6000 operations and Once you do this, levels of uniformity and consistency become an issue in a way they never were before. We can't compel anyone, but we will certainly do our best to encourage everyone to utilize the same set of standards. I think there was information with regard to that in the FCC report to Congress as well. JEFF VANNAIS: There was, but at this point as a follow-up I would like to ask whether or not you think we will be able to achieve what we hoped. With the things we have in place -- whether we should think about moving to a different or another level in regard to that. LAURIE FLAHERTY: There are a lot of moving parts to this. I think it's a good news and bad news thing. The good news is that you can coordinate with a lot more people with this kind of system. The bad news is that you coordinate with a lot more people with a system like this. I realize the challenges. I would hesitate to say that doing it differently than we are now would be better. I don't know that that would be the case. But, we can certainly do what we can. 0:27.35.430,0:27:42.400 Our job here is to get 911 to the table every chance we get and connect the dots every chance we get. We will continue to do that. JEFF VANNAIS: Okay. Thank you. OPERATOR: There are no further questions at this time. BRIAN GIVEN: Thank you all for your questions and thank you Laurie for your presentation. I would like to hand this over to Laurie to introduce Ms. Marlys Davis. LAURIE FLAHERTY: Thanks Brian. We are really lucky to have Marlys Davis presenting today. Marlys Davis who is the program manager for the King County 911 Center out there. If you know Washington state and you know King county, they have been working on this a long time. There are a lot of lessons learned that we can benefit from. I am so happy that Marlys was able to participate on the webinar today. So, without further ado, the floor is yours, Marlys. MARLYS DAVIS: Thank you, Laurie. It is a pleasure to be here to share some things we have learned about preparing for NG911. I will start with a background on King County. We have a population of over 1.9 million people which makes us the 14th most populous county in the nation. We include 2134 sqaure miles which is twice as large as the average county in the US. We include the large urban city of Seattle as well as suburban, rural, and mountainous areas. We implemented enhanced 911 countywide in 1985 and started with 27 PSAPs. Over the years we have consolidated down to 12 PSAPs. All of these consolidations were due to the inability of the agency to continue to support 24/7 operational costs. Our PSAPs range in size from a large 46 position PSAP to a PSAP with only one telecommuter on at a time. We implemented phase 2 wireless service with all of the major wireless carriers by 2003. Countywide we answer about 1.8 million 911 calls per year. From our 911 calls, you can see the growth of wireless and VoIP in the purple color and the green. The blue on top is wireline and you can see how it has decreased over the years. We now have 70% wireless calls, 6% VoIP and only 24% are wireline calls. You can see from the top line the dramatic growth of 911 calls we saw in the early years. When we first implemented, we started with a message to call 911 for assistance. You can see that the growth in calls was going very quickly. In 1996 we did a public education 0:31.06.470,0:31:13.500 campaign and changed the message to call 911 if you need a emergency response from police, fire, or medics. Since that time it has maintained fairly flat as far as the growth in overall calls. We have always been involved at with national NENA and APCO and have participated on technical committees that have worked on the standards. We we hearing about NG911 many years ago. It was obvious that it was coming. It was going to require that every component of the system be upgraded and this was going to take time and money. So, we decided to start tackling one project at a time so as to not overload the project in any given year or our staff. We started the process nine years ago in 2005. We had a goal of having the system ready by the time NG911 got here. At that time, NENA had completed version 4.0 XML data standards but none of the ALI database providers were doing any development because they said we needed an official request and order before we could do this. So, we knew that the ALI database had to be upgraded to provide next generation so we sent an order to Century Link and Intrado who are our service providers. Century Link sub-contracted the ALI database with Intrado at that time. So the result was Intrado developed the intelligent emergency network, known as IEN and we implementeded that in King County and now it has been implemented statewide in Washington. Because wireless calls were going so quickly and to prepare for next generation, we felt we needed to know the latitude and longitude of every address in King County. With 700,000 addresses to deal with we knew it would take several years for our staff to accomplish this. We had implemented micro data mapping system in the PSAP for locating wireless calls and also for managing the GIS data in the office. In 2005 we contracted with them to do our project and there are many other companies that will do projects such as this as well. They established an office with a project manager and three field technicians and our office at the time had one GIS person who maintained the PSAP mapping system. We added one full-time GIS specialist to coordinate with micro data and to maintain the data after the project was complete. It would have been best to do a site visit at every address, but that was too costly. It would cost about $5 million. If you are a smaller jurisdiction and visiting every site is an option, I would recommend that. It is the most accurate method of obtaining the data. For us, it wasn't a reality. So, we used recent orthophotography to determine the latitude and longitude whenever possible. We only did site visits when necessary. We used devices that obtained the latitude and longitude and also took a picture of the front of the building. That could then be downloaded directly from the devices into the GIS database at the end of each day. It took three years to complete this project. Since then our GIS specialist has continued to maintain the data. 0:35:10,400,0:35:17.400 As a side note, on mapping systems, the majority of CAD system maps that we've looked at cannot accept the files. The data must be converted. This reduces the accuracy. As a result, we have put the micro data mapping system in place at the PSAP for locating the 911 calls. Most PSAPs also have a CAD map. With 70% of the calls being wireless and depending on latitude and longitude, we don't feel that the CAD maps are currently accurate enough for locating the 911 calls. We keep visiting with the CAD vendors and looking at what they are doing. We hope that at some point they will upgrade their maps so we can combine the maps into one. But, at this point we have not been able to do that. {Pause} In 2007, wireless calls continued to steadily increase. The accuracy of the phase 2 locations was not accurate enough to be sufficient to locate the callers most of the time. Our PSAPs in attending the national APCO and NENA conferences saw the spectrometry imagery came back very excited about it. I believe they are the only companies today still doing the oblique angle imagery. Again, it was too expensive to obtain the highest level of imagery for the whole county. So, we split the area between urban and rural areas. There were other County departments that also wanted this imagery. We have split the cost with them. We are doing a flyover every 2 years to obtain new imagery. The pictometry integrates into the micro data PSAP map on the call taker work station, so they can access these maps right through their regular maps. With the oblique images the call takers can see the area better and they can count the floors in buildings and measure distances. The PSAP has reported many cases where they will be able to locate wireless callers based on the imagery because they could better see the area and ask better questions to locate the caller. This year we are upgrading from 6 inch and 12 inch imagery to 3 and 6 inch imagery. It will be that much clearer to see these areas. We saw this as a necessity not only for locating wireless callers, but also for moving into the next gen environment. {Pause} We knew to be ready for next generation that we needed to upgrade the PSAP E911 equipment to be capable of interfacing with a 911 IP network. Since we could keep the workstations hardware and software the same and not have to replace the entire system, we decided to replace the Intrado lifelines with the IP capable VIPERS in 2008 and 2009. At that time, the capability to serve multiple PSAPs from a single VIPER which we call centralizing equipment in our state was just being developed. Looking at the cost, it was about the same cost whether we centralized or put a VIPER in every PSAP. We decided it would be more reliable to put one in every PSAP. Today, next gen technology gives a lot of different options. You can serve multiple PSAPs from a single VIPER or pairs of VIPERs. You can host that backroom equipment in the cloud. Virtual PSAPs are possible. We are using INTRADO as our vendor, but this is vendor neutral. I think all of the vendors have these different options available for looking at reducing costs and improving service. I would encourage you to get quotes for different options and then select what is best for your area. Doing these new configurations may not necessarily save you money. In 2008 we were one of five PSAPs selected to participate in the US Department of Transportation NG911 System Initiative Concept of Operations. We have always felt it was important to stay involved at the national level. Next Gen definitely needs involvement from the federal government. There are roles and components of this that must be done at the federal level. Many of those were identified and recommended in the recent FCC report to Congress. So working again on the ALI database, we used to have ALI database maintenance as a portion of a full-time position so that the position did many other functions as well. In 2009 we expanded the ALI database work to be full-time. The ALI database person coordinates with the GIS specialist and now we have 2 full-time people dedicated to maintaining the ALI database and the GIS data and keeping them synchronized. The 911 mapping software is capable of doing a comparison between the ALI and GIS data. On the initial comparison there were several discrepancies identified and it took us several years to work through those. We now have very accurate data and our synchronization rate is about 99%. The results were obvious. We have seen a great reduction in the ALI errors reports coming in from the PSAPs. We only receive about one request a week instead of about 10 per day because we are adding new addresses before someone moves in and signs up for phone service. The selective routing has been steadily increasing in accuracy. Our office now has the best address data of any agency in the county. So, they have asked our GIS staff to maintain the address GIS layer for the entire county. I will talk a little bit later about our NENA i3 pilot project. The GIS data has been approved as accurate enough for implementing NG911. You cannot do next generation without having accurate GIS data. I think that this is a very critical area that is going to hold the PSAPs up from moving on to Next Gen. It is something that takes quite a bit of time to get to this point. The PSAPs should make it a priority to get started so it doesn't end up holding you up later. In getting ready for NG911, we felt that we needed someone at the PSAPs that we could coordinate GIS and IT with. Both of these areas will significantly increase in the Next Gen environment. Our PSAPs were unable to get positions approved in their budgets. So, our office initiated funding for a CAD GIS FTE and IT systems specialist in the PSAP. So, the six largest PSAPs with more than 10 answering positions have one FTE for GIS and one for IT for a total of two FTEs. The six smaller PSAPs have half of each position for a total of one FTE. We are paying the salary benefits, hardware and software and up to $2000 per year for training. We require that the work location of these people must be in the PSAP and they must work 100% of their time on E911 and PSAP support. So the GIS FTE coordinates with our office for address verification and annexation address changes, coordinating the PSAP mapping system, assisting in boundary issues and working with CAD GIS data. The IT specialist coordinates with our office on IT related work and support for the systems that interface with the E911 equipment such as the CAD and logging recorder and troubleshoot problems that affect the handling of the 911 calls and we are working with them to coordinate Next Gen 911 security and upgrading the PSAPs. We have an active state 911 program with state office and advisory committees which has a NG911 subcommittee. So, the state office issued an RFP for an ESInet and database and Century Link and Intrado were selected as the service providers. We have had all PSAPs in the state connected to the statewide ESInet since 2011 and we were the first state to have a statewide ESInet. The state is currently working to transition all of the end offices to the IP gateways so that legacy selective routers can be removed. This shows a diagram of ESInet and database. We are using the Century Link MPLS network and Intrado's IP selective routers and IEN database. I have Markus Volke from Century Link here in case anyone has specific technical questions about the ESINet. We also have a data network that connects our office with all of the PSAPs. We have upgraded the network so that we can do GIS data uploads over the network to the PSAPs. So, the GIS staff no longer has to drive around to each PSAP with a hard drive to download the data. It takes about 24 hours to do 0:47:04.370,0:47.11.530 a data download. So, previously it was taking at least three weeks to get around to all of the PSAPs to do the downloads. As a result, we only did two or three per year. Now if we have changes we can do daily downloads to the GIS data and make sure that the PSAPs have the most current data in place for using NG911. We have routinely been upgrading the software and the 911 equipment each year to keep it current. The upgrade that we completed in 2011 and 2012 included adding the capability of receiving and responding to text in a module that displays in the same area as the TTY. We are not sure, with the different options for texting that have recently been outlined, which of these we will implement and which is best for us. We do already have the capability in the PSAPs. We currently have IP capable equipment in the PSAP back rooms as I said earlier. And SIP is being delivered by the VIPERS and then converted back to CAMA by a gateway to be sent on to the workstations and other equipment in the PSAPs. We outlined in the next generation 911 plan that we would remove the CAMA gateways last year and go to full SIP. However, We ran into a problem that has halted our plan. Our five largest PSAPs have PBX with automatic call distributions and these PBX's are not NENA i3 SIP capable. We have learned that there are many different flavors of SIP -- it is not just one protocol. PSAP equipment must be capable of receiving NENA i3 SIP. When the PBX vendor told us our system was SIP capable, we thought we were good to go. That is not the case. Because they are not capable of doing the NENA i3 SIP. We are unable to move forward until this issue is resolved. We have been working with vendors for about two years and still do not have a solution. But, we are getting closer. At this point we have not identified another ACD solution that can duplicate the current solution that meets the needs of the busiest PSAPs. {Pause} Smart 911 is a hosted supplemental database service. We are viewing this as the first of many next generation databases we will add to our system. We are implementing smart 911 for two reasons. 70% of the calls are now wireless and come in with no address. People can register their phone numbers and Smart 911 and enter their home, work, and school addresses. This includes apartment numbers, floors, and room numbers. This is where they are spending 90% of their time is at these various addresses. So, if we get a phase 2 latitude and longitude near one of the addresses and the caller cannot provide their location, the PSAPs would then have an address in Smart 911 that they could dispatch to. The other reason we are doing Smart 911 is to improve the level of service to the deaf, hard of hearing, and speech impaired communities. Today they do not have direct access to 911 because the majority no longer use TTY. They instead use modern communication devices. Relay services take a long time. Smart 911 allows the PSAP call taker to initiate SMS chat with the callers. We are only initiating SMS chat if the person has registered as deaf, hard of hearing or speech impaired and they have checked a box that says they prefer to communicate via SMS chat.We are not currently announcing this capability to the general public to reduce confusion about text to 911. This solution is not perfect. It is not text to 911. The deaf person will need to call 911 and we found that many of them do not even know how to make a phone call on their phones so they need to be trained how to do that. When the PSAPs receives a silent or abandoned call and they have a Smart 911 profile, they check the profile to see if the person is registered as deaf, hard of hearing or speech impaired. That They prefer to communicate via the SMS chat. Then they would initiate the chat with a person. Some cannot do voice and text at the same time. We are having to train the call takers to disconnect the call to initiate the SMS chat. Again, this is not a perfect solution, but we are trying to make an attempt to do something to improve 911 service to these members of our community. We have a large deaf community, especially in the city of Seattle. So, we are trying to improve services to them. Some of the other advantages of Smart 911 -- we have received a very positive response from the community for the ability to answer medical information. Smart 911 has an agreement with AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon wireless that allows the PSAPs to track the location of a wireless call after the 911 call has been disconnected. They are currently working to expand this capability to T-Mobile as well. People can answer their profile in multiple languages. They can identify their primary language so that the PSAPs can immediately know what language they are speaking in and bring interpreters on to the 911 call more quickly. The PSAPs can choose where they want the smart 911 pop-up to display. Some are doing it on the CAD screen and the CADs already had Internet connectivity so there was no increased security risk. Some of the PSAPs wanted to display the pop-up on the E911 screens. Previously the E911 equipment LAN has been a closed network. Adding Internet connectivty into the network increases the security risk for all of the equipment on the network. We have worked with Century Link and our PSAPnetwork experts to identify a security solution. This involves several sets of firewalls and a DMZ which is a subnetwork. This should prevent protect our PSAPs for Smart 911 and any other next generation services that may require Internet connectivity. we are hoping to have this solution installed and Smart 911 implemented in the rest of the PSAPs by next month. We have also initiated an i3 pilot project with Century Link and Intrado as service providers of the ESInet and database. We will be testing all components of full i3 functionality in the ESInet components into our test PSAPs. This includes testing the list of acronyms that we hear at the NENA conferences. We will also include testing of text to 911, hopefully with all of the carriers who provide service here. We will also be testing pictures, video and graphic and coordinate-based routing and spatial routing based on the GIS data. As I mentioned, earlier, our GIS data has been approved as accurate enough to use for the routing of 911 calls. If the testing is successful to the test PSAPs, we will prepare to move forward with implementing these functions in our live PSAPs. Obviously, this will take time because we will need to establish the policies and the training to prepare for these changes 0:56:18.270,0:56:25.430 before we would implement them in the PSAPs. We are involved in an advanced automatic collision notification, or ACN pilot project. This is with the main trauma Center at Harborview Medical Center and emergency medical services. This is being sponsored by NHTSA's Office of Emergency Medical Services and we are one of 6 siren sites around the country and those are crashed injury research sites. Phase 1 of this project will deliver the ACN data from the telematics providers to the ESI to the 911 equipment at the three largest EMS PSAPs. The second phase will integrate this data with the CAD systems and the EMS system. Since ACN has always been a seen as a part of NG911, this project fit in perfectly with the next generation plan and current i3 pilot project. We have been trying to anticipate the impact of next-generation 911 on the PSAPs. All of the additional data and the need to distribute the data will increase staffing needs at the PSAPs. Text and data have different requirements than voice calls. We have heard experience from PSAPs that implemented texting that an emergency text conversation can take 11 to 14 min. We anticipate it will be challenging for the small PSAPs with only one call taker and dispatcher to handle NG911 with all of this additional data. We are determining that NG911 will be more expensive than E911. There are technology costs of all of the upgrades that I talked about. Cost of additional services. Each time we add a new next generation service, that will add costs. The operational cost of the additional staffing at the PSAPs. With all of these projected increased costs, we have shown that the financial plan is not sustainable into the future. We show that we will run out of funds in 2015. We also provide operational support to our PSAPs and in order to fund a system cost, we see that we cannot continue to sustain the same level of support to the PSAPs. We have initiated a PSAP consolidation assessment. We formed a steering committee with the directors of the 12 PSAPs. Also police, fire, and EMS representatives. We issued an RFP for an experienced qualified firm to provide a high-quality professional PSAP consolidation assessment of the system. Geocomm was selected as the vendor for that. There are many vendors that do these types of assessments. We have asked them to identify different options for PSAPs configurations. And have also asked them to assess whether we are providing the most efficient and effective 911 service to the public. With 12 PSAPs, we have to transfer a lot of calls and we want to see if there's a better way to do that. We asked them to recommend the optimum PSAP configuration for King County for moving into the future. They have completed their assessment and we are working with them to finalize the report. The next steps of our assessment were to form a PSAP future configuration recommendation committee. This will be a committee of policymakers to make recommendations on the final configuration of PSAPs in King County. Again, we include the 12 PSAP directors and police, fire, and EMS. Also we are including a policymaker from each PSAP agency. This committee will meet between April and December. We are starting with the options identified by GeoComm and identifying any additional options we want to consider. Then, we will evaluate all of these options. We will also develop a transition plan for moving from the current PSAP configuration to the future. We are hoping to reach a consensus on recommendations and actions and timelines by December of this year. This has been a difficult process for everyone involved. Again, we have determined that with increased next generation costs we can't afford to support 12 PSAPs in the next generation environment. I know that PSAP consolidations are being looked out across the nation. I think that other agencies are facing the same reality of increased next generation costs. To conclude, we have attempted to separate all of the upgrades needed for NG911 and spread them out over the years to be ready by the time it gets here. We have been working on this for the past nine years. I would encourage other areas to start looking at these various upgrades. If you have not done so, because these do take a lot of time. There are costs involved. You will not be able to accomplish all of this in a short time once NG911 gets here. You need to prepare for it now. This is my contact information. If you think of questions after today. Markus Volke is here to assist in answering questions. Thank you. OPERATOR: At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone keypad. The first question is from Jeff Vannais -- your line is open. JEFF VANNAIS: Marlys, one of the things I noticed is that you are pretty well linked up with Smart 911. This is a fabulous addendum to the 911 system itself. I am curious how you made that relationship happen? Did you do a bid RFP or purchase them because they were the only ones who did what you were looking for to do? MARLYS DAVIS: At this time, we did an assessment and we could not find any other providers who provided a similar service that met all of our requirements. So, we did the initial purchase on a sole source waiver. I anticipate that as we progress to NG911, there will be other services like that about that develop. At this point, they were the only ones we could identify. JEFF VANNAIS: Thanks. OPERATOR: And again, if you would like to ask a question or if you have a comment, please press *1 on your telephone keypad. The next question is from Jerry Eisner, your line is now open. JERRY EISNER: Thank you for the presentation. I have two questions. The first one was, early in the process, you determined that it was important to geocode every static address. I was wondering based on what was going on back then and what led you to that determination? MARLYS DAVIS: This was based on steady increase of wireless calls where they come in without an address and only XY. Our mapping system has the capability, if an XY is accurate and falls in the same vicinity as the address or mapping system, it will show as those addresses. We can question the caller to see if they might be at that address. JERRY EISNER: The second question, following up to the first question -- do you have any ability to utilize the data gathered by Smart 911 in the future? With the CIBD, you might just store it yourself. MARLYS DAVIS: One of the things that we saw as an advantage with Smart 911 is that we do not have the data. We don't houseit here we are not responsible for its security or disclosure. So, we found it attractive in that it is kept off-site in a national database and therefore we don't have all of the responsibility that goes along with having that data. We also, the public - we have been able to tell the public that it is secure and private. We don't see it until they call 911. If we were to use the data in that manner, that would change the scenario. We were concerned that people would be hesitant to share their personal information. JERRY EISNER? So, other than location data in the next generation ESInet, what are you expecting to capture and manage? MARLYS DAVIS: As far as the Smart 911? JERRY EISNER: No, just in your own ESInet -the data that you will house. MARLYS DAVIS: We don't know at this point what that might look like. We've been told with next generation that there will be multiple databases with different types of data. There might be a medical database devloped for other types of data that the next generation system can dip into this and pull out the data. These databases have not been defined as far as what they might be other than the medical information or telematics data. JERRY ESINER: Thank you. MARLYS DAVIS: We anticipate that more data will be available in the future. OPERATOR: We have no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to the presenters. BRIAN GIVEN: Thank you. I would like to thank Marlys and Laurie for the presentation. Thank you all for attending. We look forward to your participation in future State of 911 webinars. The next installment will be Wednesday, May 8 at 12 o'clock Eastern with a presentation from David Tucker from the state of Vermont. We are still firming up the federal participant. It is TBD. We will let you know. Registration for this event opens up in a little bit under one month. Information for this event will be posted to www.911.gov, as well as the slides from today and the recording from today. Please check out www.911.gov for information on past and future events, as well as general information about the National 911 Program. If you have questions regarding future webinars, please contact NG911WG@baH.com. We would love to hear from you. Thank you for attending. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.