APCO recently filed comments in response to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) issued by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).  NTIA and NHTSA, which jointly constitute the “National 911 Office” responsible for a $115M federal grant program, sought comment on how to implement the grant program.

Given the welcome but limited amount of funding available through this program, APCO recommended that the National 911 Office use these grants to create model deployments that demonstrate proofs of concept for fully-deployed and interoperable NG9-1-1 services in urban, suburban, and rural areas.  In this way, the grant program can better serve the entire country by producing blueprints for efficiently modernizing 9-1-1 systems nationwide.

APCO stressed that interoperability should be the top priority for the grant program.  Interoperability means that PSAPs can seamlessly (1) receive calls and related data from network service providers, (2) share calls and related data among connecting “Emergency Services IP Networks” or ESInets, including across state boundaries, and (3) hand off calls and related data with each other, regardless of call handling or computer aided dispatch solutions and without the need for costly after-the-fact integrations or specialized interfaces.  As one strategy, the National 911 Office could solicit proposals demonstrating interoperability among adjacent jurisdictions using different vendors and system designs.

APCO also suggested that since technology is increasingly creating opportunities for new approaches to designing NG9-1-1 systems, the National 911 Office should encourage forward-thinking solutions, even if the proposals deviate from traditional approaches to NG9-1-1 network architectures.