DC Center Honored for Presidential Inauguration

The District of Columbia’s Office of Unified Communications (OUC) has been honored by several public safety and 911 groups for their performance in handling the inauguration of President Barrack Obama last January. The groups made the award during the annual “9-1-1 Goes to Washington” conference. The groups also honored Blackhawk County (Iowa) comm center director Judy Flores with a  Government Leader Award, primarily for her center’s adoption of 911 text messaging, the first in the country. The DC center was formed with the merger of separate police, fire and EMS comm centers in 2004, and now use Intergraph CAD to handle incidents and track field units. In a press release, Intergraph says 1.8 million people visited Washington to witness the inauguration, resulting in a 50 percent increase in 911 call compared to an average day, or about 6,000 calls for assistance. Despite the increase, 96 percent of 911 calls were answered within five seconds, the company says, while calls to the 311 non-emergency number were answered within 30 seconds. At the peak, more than 300 OUC personnel, including calltakers and IT professionals, were on-duty. Flores helped implement 911 text messaging (SMS), which allows anyone to contact the comm center without dialing 911 and making a voice call. E911 Institute executive director Gregory Rohde said the link would allow, “greater access to emergency services for more people, especially those with special needs.”

The awards were made during a gala at the annual conference to connect public safety communications groups with the politics of Washington. The groups include the E9-1-1 Institute, Congressional E9-1-1 Caucus, NENA, NASNA, APCO and 9IA.

The OUC has been the subject of criticism by both citizens and public safety personnel since it opened. Many early complaints focused on how the separate staffs had been merged and on the CAD software. There were also several high-profile response delays, leading to the 2006 firing of then-UOC director Michael Latessa by incoming mayor Adrian Fenty. Latessa was replaced by Janice Quintara, who has also been criticized for her leadership, and who has appeared before the DC Council several times about response delays and incident handling.

The Blackhawk County (pop. 138,000) 911 text messaging service was first implemented last August, and is available only to i-wireless cellular customers, a local T-Mobile affiliate. The messages don’t carry any location information and are limited to 160 characters per message. There wasn’t a rush to text message when the system first went live—at least for the first five days, no messages were received.

Several high-profile incidents have occurred where victims or witnesses were unable to safely dial 911, sparking interest in text messaging. However, the unreliability of the communications and lack of immediate back-and-forth with a dispatcher has raised questions about its usefulness. Last August, in response to a reporter’s question about the use of text messaging instead of dialing 911, AT&T issued a statement saying that SMS is an “inappropriate mechanism for any time-sensitive, mission-critical communications.”

Read a local news story about the award.