Key Takeaways: This article highlights why the final, nearly $1 billion round of currently authorized SS4A funding is a timely opportunity for public safety agencies to modernize 911 and EMS and improve response times.
Topics: Funding
The promise of artificial intelligence has stirred both fascination and fear. We’ve seen headlines declaring that AI will soon replace artists, lawyers, doctors, and even leaders. Elon Musk once said AI could become “more intelligent than any human on Earth”, and Geoffrey Hinton, often called the godfather of AI, left Google in 2023, warning that “these things could get smarter than us.”
Topics: Artificial Intelligence
In today’s emergency communications landscape, staffing shortages, skyrocketing call volumes, and increasing public expectations are driving Emergency Communication Centers (ECCs) to seek innovative solutions. Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems are often seen as lifelines, offering a way to handle nonemergency calls efficiently, freeing telecommunicators to handle the highest-priority incidents.
Since MCP’s founding 15 years ago, we’ve taken great pride in our ability to help our public-safety and justice clients prepare for the future, both short term and long term, mostly by knowing what’s coming around the corner before anyone else does.
Mission Critical Partners (MCP) is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. Looking back to the beginning, the vision exhibited by the firm’s founders — Kevin Murray, Brian Bark, and Len Kowalski — is astounding.
Last week, AT&T’s commercial wireless network suffered an outage that affected tens of thousands of AT&T customers in multiple locations nationwide. The company issued a statement that the outage was not caused by a cyberattack, which initially was feared, but rather a network expansion process that went awry.
Topics: Wireless & Broadband
Last week I attended the IJIS Institute’s first community forum in Austin, Texas, with several MCP senior-level colleagues, including Joe Wheeler, who chairs the IJIS Institute’s board of directors.
A few weeks ago, Darrin Reilly, MCP’s president and CEO, authored a blog that explained why the new
A rash of “swatting” incidents recently occurred across the country.
Exactly one year ago, MCP announced the acquisition of Seattle-based MTG Management Consultants, which today is known as our Justice, Management, and Technology (JMT) services team. This acquisition has generated enormous benefits for our clients and the firm over the past 12 months.
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.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted every aspect of life for most Americans and our nation’s emergency responders particularly have been affected by the disease. Like first responders working in the field, 911 professionals (i.e., telecommunicators, aka call-takers and dispatchers) working in public safety communications also have suffered. Many 911 authorities that are already experiencing dramatic staffing shortages are struggling to keep the coronavirus out of their emergency communications centers (ECCs) through the use of masks, social distancing, enhanced cleaning measures, temperature checks, and quarantining measures.
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