Prior to the late 1960s, emergency medical service (EMS) in the United States didn’t exist—at least not in the manner that it is provided today. Ambulances were used to transport patients to hospitals or other healthcare facilities—and not much else. In 1960, only six states had standard education programs for rescue personnel—paramedics and emergency medical technicians didn’t come into being until the early 1970s—and only four states regulated ambulance-design specifications. By 1965, the vast majority of emergency medical services from coast to coast largely were unregulated.[1]

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It has been a few weeks since Congress reduced the amount of federal funding for Next Generation 911 (NG911) implementations in the Build Back Better Act — also known as the Budget Reconciliation Act —from $10 billion to $470 million. Also included is $20 million for administrative costs associated with the grant program that will disperse the money, $9 million to establish an NG911 cybersecurity center and $1 million for establishing an NG911 advisory board. The House passed this legislation on November 19 and it now goes to the Senate.

There seems to be a considerable amount of handwringing about what slashing NG911 funding by roughly 95 percent means for the future of this vital technology. That’s understandable. NG911 represents a quantum leap forward compared with legacy 911 systems — an apt analogy is that the former is an airplane while the latter is a horse and buggy.

Emergency communications centers (ECCs) — also known as public-safety answering points (PSAPs) —handle an enormous volume of 911 calls, about 240 million annually nationwide. This figure is expected to rise significantly over the next few years, driven by smartphones, alarm systems, and internet of things (IoT) devices (e.g., wearable medical monitors).

As call volumes rise, telecommunicators who already are short/understaffed, undertrained, and under siege in many ECCs will be subject to even greater pressures as they work to send the correct response in the shortest amount of time. Fortunately, ways exist to relieve these pressures, and many agencies are exploring how they can strengthen and diversify how they respond to calls for service, both 911 and non-emergency.

As part of our effort to inform our clients about potential and serious cybersecurity issues, MCP provides advisories about vulnerabilities and exploits that could threaten the operations of their critical communications networks. Sign up to receive these advisories in your inbox as soon as they are released.