City vs. County Dispute Over Automated Attendant

The city of Madison (Wisc.) and Dane County, already involved in disputes over their joint comm center, are now feuding over a county plan to install an automated attendant to filter out telephone calls about parking problems, which the county says comprise 10 precent of the daily call volume. The two entities were involved in handling the murder of Brittany Zimmerman in 2008, and an investigation found that a 911 call-handling error resulted in no officer responding to a hang-up call from Zimmerman’s apartment. She was later found murdered, and no suspect has been arrested. Now, trying to reduce the dispatchers’ workload, the county has implemented technology to automatically answer incoming phone calls, and transfer them to the appropriate department or agency. The county’s 911 board voted against the plan, but the county administrators implemented anyway. Now city officials say they’ve filed a request for an injunction to prevent installation of the system. Read more here. Update: A county judge granted the injunction on Feb. 19th, but only for the portion of the automated attendant system related to parking violations. Read more here and here.