Public Safety, Industry Groups Issue Recommendations on 911 Governance, Reliability

Seven industry and public safety organizations submitted a proposal to the FCC recommending key principles for guiding efforts to deploy and operate next-generation 911 systems with effective governance and accountability, said a news release from Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions. For the IP transition, the recommendations said efforts should be made to accelerate the continued development and implementation of NG-911 standards and systems, while assuring reliability. On governance, providers of 911 services must be accountable for the reliability of their services and vendor contracts, the filing said. On NG-911 reliability, the transition to NG-911 must be accomplished in a manner that doesn't undermine the availability, reliability and resiliency of the system, it said. ATIS is one of the seven organizations that submitted these principles. Others are the National Emergency Number Association, National Association of State 911 Administrators, Industry Council for Emergency Response Technologies, USTelecom, Commission on State Emergency Communications and the Texas 911 Alliance. The principles included in the proposal are designed to help the FCC address the issues about governance, accountability and reliability that exist in today’s evolving 911 systems and services, ATIS said in docket 13-75.