Key Takeaways from NENA 2024 — Part 2

A previous blog shared some of what was learned by MCP subject-matter experts during the recent National Emergency Number Association (NENA) conference and trade show. Here are a few more snippets: 

NHTSA Update

Brian Tegtmeyer, coordinator of the National 911 Program within the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)’s Office of Emergency Medical Services, started an educational session by explaining how and why the program’s focus has shifted to ensuring that Next Generation 911 has a positive impact on highway safety.

Over the last two decades, NHTSA and the program have had a broad mission to advance NG911 in the U.S., working collaboratively with the National Telecommunications and Information Agency within the Department of Commerce. Much of this work fell under congressional authorities and grant funding. But in September 2022, those authorities and grant programs expired.

“So, the program had to reinvent what it would focus on, and we had to look at our prime mission — and the prime mission at NHTSA is highway safety,” Tegtmeyer said. He added that, despite this pivot, the program still has a significant role to play in the 911 sector, given that about 13 million vehicle crashes occur annually, and about 10 million of them result in 911 calls. “911 is the critical step in saving lives on our roadways,” he said.

Tegtmeyer lamented the fact that only about 43 percent of emergency communications centers use emergency medical dispatch (EMD) protocols. “That’s an important part of this because we’re looking for opportunities for 911 to improve outcomes when it comes to highway safety,” he said. “We’ve identified, as well as others … that 911 can impact post-crash care by using emergency medical dispatch protocols. So, we’re advocating the use of them.”

Tegtmeyer added that about 42,000 people die as a result of vehicle crashes annually. “The really interesting part is that 40 percent of the people who die were alive at the time EMS arrived on scene. Imagine what we can do to impact that number if we can get there quicker and more efficiently if we can get the right resources there — [for example, advanced life support] versus [basic life support] — and use advanced EMS life-saving techniques … all these things could impact the outcome of the 42,000 fatalities a year.”

Tegtmeyer also spoke about the importance of more effectively interconnecting automatic crash-notification and advanced automatic crash-notification systems with NG911 systems and stated that NG911 systems still aren’t receiving the data that these systems generate in native Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) format. He added that numerous over-the-top solutions are available, but the real core of NG911 services is to receive this data into the ECC’s call-handling equipment directly, without other parties involved.

“That’s a goal that we need to pay attention to — interconnecting smart vehicles and other [Internet of Things] devices that can inform us about crash and other public-safety issues,” he said.  

Tegtmeyer pointed out that while the NG911 funding bill remains stuck in Congress, funding opportunities might exist resulting from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that was enacted in 2021 for projects that have a transportation focus. The law established the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant program, which is administered by the Department of Transportation (DOT); $5 billion was authorized for regional, state, and tribal initiatives designed to prevent roadway deaths and serious injuries. About $2 billion has yet to be awarded. According to Tegtmeyer, projects that could qualify include those involving CAD-to-CAD interoperability, EMD protocol implementation, and ACN/AACN/NG911 system integration.

“So, we’re working with our partners at NASNA [National Association of State 911 Administrators] and the state 911 programs to engage with state highway officials and regional NHTSA offices to see where we can start.”

He mentioned, as an example of how this might work, a project in the state of Colorado that is seeking to connect computer-aided dispatch systems to the state’s traffic management center so that the latter is immediately aware of every crash that occurs.

“Why is that important? Because when 911 knows about crashes they can respond quicker and when transportation departments know about crashes, they can clear roadways quicker … which prevents other crashes and  ‘struck-bys’ of first responders and everyone else who’s responding, like tow-truck drivers.”

Another DOT-administered program that spun out of the law is the Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) grant program, which authorized $100 million annually from 2022 to 2026 for technology projects.

Tegtmeyer suggested one potential initiative: integrating artificial intelligence with roadway camera systems to alert 911 centers and transportation departments when a crash involves a vehicle leaving the road. He cited an incident that occurred in January 2024: an Indiana man was trapped for six days in his truck in a shallow creek. He survived but barely, and only because he was discovered accidentally by a passerby.

“Some of the worst stories I hear are about are those single-vehicle crashes when someone leaves the roadway and you don’t know about it,” he said. “Why, in today’s age, do we not know about a vehicle crash for six days?” 

911 Center Culture Needs More Work

Several educational sessions explored ways that 911 centers could improve their cultures and working environments. Dru Clarke, assistant director of operations for Fairfax County (Virginia) Department of Public Safety Communications, suggested in a keynote that the 911 community doesn’t have a staffing problem as much as it has a culture problem. “We are not in a staffing crisis,” he said. “We’re in a crisis of belonging.”

Consequently, ECCs need to redefine what culture means because today’s workforce is completely different — if they do, recruitment, hiring, and retention will improve dramatically, which in turn will have a profoundly positive impact on the staffing problem that exists today.

“[The younger generations have] different needs, wants, and perspectives on what a healthy dispatcher looks like, and it’s up to us to embrace that difference. So, if we’re going to retain this new talent, we have to let go of old habits and antiquated ways of thinking and leading. … The survivability of your agencies and our industry depends on it.”

Other suggestions include establishing core values that telecommunicators and supervisors can embrace and finding ways of nurturing personnel without coddling them. One of the best suggestions concerns training. Typically, new telecommunicators receive intensive training when they first are hired to prepare them for the rigors of the job and teach them the skills required to handle emergency calls effectively.

Often, they perform admirably to a point where they are promoted to the position of supervisor — and then receive no training to handle the rigors of this new role, which is very different than the one they had. Even when they do receive such training, they do not receive leadership training — and leadership — which was the subject of several educational sessions during the conference —is a foundational element of being a supervisor. Clarke defined it as “the practice of constantly listening.” (An aside: it’s important to note the difference between “listening” and “hearing,” which are not synonyms. Hearing is involuntary and a function of the ears while listening is voluntary and a function of the brain. Listening results when we take what we hear and then try to understand it.)

Corollary to this is the idea that 911 centers need to do a better job of selecting supervisors and avoiding promotions based on seniority or exemplary telecommunicator performance — not everyone is cut out to be a supervisor or a leader. On the other hand, everyone in a 911 center is responsible for leading, i.e., influencing those around them positively. Thus, 911 centers should consider two training approaches: one for authoritative leaders, i.e., supervisors, and another to improve general leadership amongst their personnel.

Clarke further opined that people do not leave jobs; they leave people. This, too, speaks to culture—when everyone leads, culture generally improves, and when culture improves, people usually are less eager to leave the organization.

One thing that everyone in the 911 community can do — and we believe should do — is pursue a NENA emergency number professional (ENP) certification. We were thrilled during the tradeshow portion of this event to hand out challenge coins to those who have attained this certification after participating in MCP’s preparation class, which is expertly led by our Louisa Lake each year. An ENP certification enables telecommunicators and supervisors to add knowledge and skills that will make them better at their jobs. If you’re interested in attending our ENP preparation class, request to participate here or email LouisaLake@MissionCriticalPartners.com.

Conference Shifts Focus, and That’s a Good Thing

In the past, we’ve observed that NENA’s conference was skewed heavily toward sessions that targeted technology and vendor capabilities. This year, the focus seemed to shift toward telecommunicator support, growth, training, and improving workplace culture. Technology sessions were focused less on the “shiny object” aspect and more on how ECCs can leverage emerging and evolving technologies to improve their operations and ease some of the burden on telecommunicators and supervisors. Perhaps this is the reason behind this conference being the best attended in years, maybe ever. This is a subjective observation, to be sure, but MCP’s booth was hopping, and seating was difficult to find in many educational sessions — as the adage goes, seeing is believing. We heard from many people who told us they were attending their first national conference, and some had 20 years or more invested in the 911 community.

Transcription is Light Years Better Today than Before

Numerous call-handling solutions now incorporate transcription and it’s really good, not just in the sense that it will make telecommunicators more effective and less stressed, but also in the sense that the quality has improved dramatically in just a year or two. This improvement is being driven by advancements in artificial intelligence (more on that in a future blog). We saw during the conference quality-assurance solutions that leverage AI to generate and review radio and 911 call transcripts to not only identify when improvement is needed but also to flag keywords that might indicate it’s time for a supervisor to step in to prevent a telecommunicator stress-related incident. Real-time transcription of 911 calls has tremendous operational benefits as well, e.g., when a telecommunicator is having difficulty understanding an emergency caller because they’re experiencing a headset issue — in such a circumstance, they don’t have to constantly to ask the caller to repeat themselves, which wastes critical time and is upsetting to the caller, raising their stress levels — which in turn can make it more difficult for the telecommunicator to extract the information needed to dispatch the appropriate response.

Translation Also Has Improved by Leaps and Bounds

Solutions have emerged — again, driven by AI — that can translate multiple languages in real time, which will ease the burden on telecommunicators and the frustration experienced by 911 callers, by keeping the former from repeatedly repeating questions. In addition, language barriers often result in telecommunicators receiving one- or two-word answers, which makes it much more challenging to gather the information needed to dispatch a well-informed response.

Staffing Still is a Big Problem in the 911 Community, but Not in Every Center

One educational session focused on the success experienced by the city of Nashville, whose 911 center is not only fully staffed but also has a virtual bench of telecommunicator candidates. The situation is so positive that Nashville has folded the operations of its 311 center into its 911 center.

Strategies Nashville used to accomplish its unusual staffing success include streamlining the hiring process to reduce time to hire — which in many centers is measured in months — relaxing residency requirements to significantly increase the hiring pool, and relaxing the typing requirement, because the telecommunicator role today has evolved and typing skills aren’t as important as they once were. (We first wrote about this trend last year in our Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials conference coverage — click here to read the item.) An interesting side benefit of deemphasizing typing as a skill needed by telecommunicators concerns the effort to convince the Bureau of Labor Statistics to reclassify them as first responders and not as clerical workers.

Part three of this blog series will wrap-up our NENA coverage — so stay tuned!

Glenn Bischoff is MCP’s content specialist. Email him at GlennBischoff@MissionCriticalPartners.com.