Mission Critical Partners to Assess Hawaii’s Next Generation 911 Readiness

Firm will help the state’s 911 Board assess seven key implementation factors and then assist in developing an initial cost estimate for establishing statewide service

State College, Pa. (May 6, 2025) — Mission Critical Partners^® (MCP) announced that the state of Hawaii State 911 Board has hired the firm to assess its readiness to deploy Next Generation 911 (NG911) services statewide. The project has two phases. The first is a readiness assessment focusing on numerous factors that affect the success of NG911 system implementations. The second involves MCP subject-matter experts working with Hawaii State 911 Board officials to develop an initial cost estimate for implementing NG911 service statewide.

NG911 systems represent a quantum leap forward in emergency response compared with legacy 911 systems. NG911 systems are Internet Protocol (IP)-based and, as such, can transmit and receive bandwidth-intensive data, e.g., video and images, that can enhance situational awareness and lead to better-informed response decisions.

In addition, geospatial data is used to locate callers in this environment, an approach that is much more accurate than the databases used by legacy 911 systems. This reduces response times and saves more lives. Finally, NG911 systems foster enhanced data-sharing, a long-standing goal of the 911 community, particularly in multijurisdictional and cross-jurisdictional incidents.

The readiness assessment will leverage the firm’s proprietary Model for Advancing Public Safety^® (MAPS^®) methodology. MAPS is based on standards developed by organizations such as the FCC’s Task Force on Optimal Public Safety Answering Point Architecture (TFOPA), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), National Emergency Number Association (NENA), and Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO), as well as industry best practices and the firm’s collective expertise.

“Next Generation 911 represents a vast and exciting improvement in the level of emergency response that the 911 community can provide,” said Darrin Reilly, MCP’s president and CEO. “MCP has extensive experience in helping numerous states in their transitions to NG911, and we look forward to helping Hawaii plan and execute its implementation of this transformative technology.”

The readiness assessment will focus on seven factors that are critical to implementing NG911 service:

Governance — A robust governance structure is critical for NG911 because the change impacts every aspect of 911 center operations.

Next-generation core services — These are the functional elements responsible for NG911 call-routing capabilities; they must be implemented to enable NG911 service.

Emergency services IP network — An ESInet enables the delivery of emergency calls and associated data to NG911-compliant 911 centers. When implemented together, an ESInet and NGCS form an NG911 system.

Call-handling equipment—It must be capable of operating in an NG911 environment and should comply with NENA’s NG911 standards.

Cybersecurity — NG911 systems are more vulnerable to cyberattacks than legacy 911 systems. Consequently, they should adhere to NIST, TFOPA, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) standards and recommendations. In addition, physical access to critical infrastructure should be restricted.

Geographic information systems — In the NG911 environment, emergency callers will be located based on geospatial data generated by GIS. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) should exist to update GIS data in a timely manner.

Operations —Policies should exist to address call and data transfers and to manage the significantly increased flow of rich data into the 911 center; personnel should be trained to perform in the NG911 environment.

Regarding the cost estimate, MCP is very well qualified to support the Hawaii State 911 Board in this task. The firm helped the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)’s National 911 Program develop the comprehensive NG911 Cost Study that Congress mandated in 2012 as part of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act.