DC leaders speak on recent 911 call center outages

want to stand kind of like in you want to come forward kind of like right here okay greetings my name is Kevin Donahue I'm the city administrator we've just finished briefing reporters about the events of August 7th involving the disconnection of CAD uh from our workstations and the dispatch for all the incident but in particularly um uh the incident involving a five-month old child um and we are all here to answer any questions that you have our purpose to be transparent answer what questions you have and also recognize we have Assist of 1.8 million calls that come in each year uh makes us the highest per capita for police for Fire EMS in the country and we want to make sure we maintain the confidence of DC residents they can call 911 and get a timely highquality response and with that will open up to any questions that you have has G uh sure so when with this system went down we did a review and we asked Our IT department uh to take a third-party look at what's happened we went back to December of last year we found that there were 18 incidents that involved some part of the 911 system doesn't mean it was all owned by the UN office of UniFi Communications it impacted telefony dispatching the connectivity of our police and fire units in the field to what's happening in our Center of those 18 about 10 of them were very limited in scope they might have affected one or two s or small number of workstations eight of them though were fairly systemwide of those eight we found that six impacted dispatching um and in particular we found that the sixing passing dispatching really happened from miday until August uh which for us typically will have over the course of time maybe one or two instance in a year where something will happen to cat uh six is unusual so we identified and recognized that something is happening with greater frequency so then we looked at what the root causes are for that and we found and my assumption was that there might be one or two root causes when you see an a an elevation of this kind of activity in fact we found many root causes really different one for each cause in this case on August 2nd we had a case of an IT contractor that worked for the city's it Department pushing through a change into a system that was supposed to be done to one or two workstations in a really controlled training environment and in invert certainly pushed it through to every workstation in all of OU totally unacceptable totally outside of what the norm one expectation was that this person s should have done uh that involves changing when we do changes to our system what time of day what days of the week and controls around it that's different than the other causes of the outage of forat crowd strike effected the entire Globe it also had the effect on CAD during that obviously a completely different root cause out of that we have a 22 points of fixing it so a 22 point plan that addresses both the cad outages and any other of the 18 incidents that affected OU and 911 operations over the course of that review and that's something that will make public and really hold ourselves accountable for uh I want to make sure we have law enforcement answer a law question about a law enforcement investigation I think the basic premise of it is looking at the question of whether or not um there was negligence to the point of being criminal negligence in what was occurring that caused some of the outages but I really want to make sure law enforcement would answer more detailed questions about that equipment uh the system has been in for a number of years has had equipment updated there's a significant Capital project that we have in our budget for the fiscal year starting October 1st so as soon as octo identified one of the root causes being old equipment uh that for different reasons was having an effect on an i1 system we Advanced octo the money to be able to initiate that project right now so right now we're seeing work done to procure and replace some of that equipment that was slated to begin in October uh so some of that we forward we've we've moved forward to right now to make sure that that equipment gets replaced uh and that their uh the complexity of what we're asking the servers and the databases to do is reflected in how up toate the actual equipment is doing it uh well we're going through a quick procurement right now um and the project was supposed to last through the course of the 12 months beginning in October we're seeing how much we can advance that through faster procurement and really having a laser focus on this project as the most important work being done by octus so they're going to search some resources to it that can accelerate the work as well uh it is the exact uh Capital line item I want to get to you I can get to you after the interview but it is a specific Capital project on replacing and updating equipment associated with our 91 system sure so um since staffing has been an issue um over the last couple of years at the office of unified Communications um starting in May of 2023 we started some new initiatives with Prospect Day um where instead of a nine-month hiring process we we really brought it down for a majority of the events happen in one day um and so we are now able to hire folks in about three months um the the biggest time piece is um working through background checks and um certainly through uh the suitability which is a psychological um element that we have all of our call takers go through because this is such a traumatizing um and tough job and so we have had class sizes anywhere between 15 and 24 uh dispatchers or call takers coming in um which is huge uh previously we had call call taker class sizes about seven or eight um we have 22 openings right now for call takers we have 63 people going through background checks so uh 22 people will start um at the end of this month and then from that we will fill the 19 vacant dispatcher positions uh from a promotional process so folks that are already working at OU will have the chance to promote from call taker to dispatcher we'll get them through class and then we will use our pipeline to to backfill those 19 positions yes absolutely uh when I took the job we had 57 call taker positions absolutely um when you're here for 12 hours you're taking about 70 or 80 calls when we're adding hours on to that the the risk of mistakes happening um in those extra hours certainly increases one of the things that I did was I changed the policy from a six-h hour holdover to a 4H hour holdover uh because we recognize that folks who were answering the question in our 17 and 18 were were making mistakes and these were folks who had not been making errors previously um so making those changes ideally um once we're fully staffed we would certainly look at even reducing the shift hours from 12 to either 8 or 10 which um the employees have expressed they they would really love and enjoy but we need full Staffing to be able to do that Public Safety Staffing is something that every agency around the country talking about and I don't know if there's any government FAL they most upware Compu system all it seems like problem to dc11 system re system failes how come this doesn't happen anywhere else it happens it happens a lot of different places I was just at the um appco large um ECC which is emergency Communication Center director's meeting um this has happened at a lot a lot of large centers we are not alone in this um I think it you know being in the nation's capital and being the call center for the nation's capital uh a lot of folks are looking at us and so I think what happens is when we have these issues these mistakes when we're doing things uh there's a lot of hyperfocus about what we're doing um I think that we're also trying a lot of different ideas and that brings a lot of attention we're also doing a lot of training so we train folks from all over the nation here in Washington DC um through some grant funding that we get from uh FEMA and through uas funding uh that allows us to open up training so a lot of people are watching what Washington DC 911 is doing and so I think that that is is something that's just drawing a lot of attention to our area um other jurisdictions nearby far reaches of the nation across the globe are experiencing the same staffing issues the same um challenges of answering the the call Standard um in the 15 seconds or less um in fact appcode just changed the call Standard from 15 seconds to to 20 seconds um and so these challenges are common amongst all emergency Communication Center I think we're just talking about them more here the consequences similar other places I'm not sure uh consequences as far as mes un absolutely I think that the consequences can can certainly be the same anywhere um I think it's how you handle them right and so we are holding people accountable here you know it's it's not something that um is is the most glamorous part of my job but we hold people accountable we we retrain and we separate when we have to um and we celebrate the wins when we have them and so you know we have a dedicated Workforce here in Washington DC they show up every single day they're your friends they're your neighbors uh we have one of the highest percentages of washingtonians who serve in our agency about 54% of the people who work at the office of unified Communications called Washington DC home and so these folks are showing up every day to to support their Community because they love what they do um and we need to recognize them as the public safety um folks that they are they're First Responders right they're answering the call and and they deserve that recognition and they they deserve that that that law for the great amazing work that they do every day is to ex so you know when we talk about the August 2nd we explained just when we've spent time in this room we had to do a lot of digging to find things our normal course of action to investigate this incident wasn't available to us we didn't have a cad system we had to use the AED we had to get uh our medical director involved we had to get the body worn camera pulled so we needed to get ccum the deputy mayor did put out a statement and advised that we were working on it I work for the deputy mayor she it was a systemwide issue that involved everybody it wasn't just the office of UniFi Communications it was the fire department it was the police department and she was speaking for all of us say I'm sorry what you offer I I am my condolences to the family losing a child is unimaginable our call takers did everything that they could in those moments to reassure and offer guidance during that time we train there was a system mistake we are addressing that we are working Chief donelly and I are meeting with Deputy Mayor AIA tomorrow actually tomorrow afternoon of how we can make the system better no one person did anything in this if one person had done something in this I would be holding them accountable they wouldn't be answering 911 calls or dispatching units at the office of UniFi Communications has anybody from the administra um I know that uh uh MPD had conversations with the family but the Administration has not reach out to the family at this point a lot of didn't go right you explain in why why your sure it was a it was very chaotic in that moment switching from manual to I'm sorry switching from automated to manual those are things that that we're certainly going to improve upon going forward when in the automated sense those things are all happen automatically they go in route they go arrived automatically we rely really heavily on technology just like fem and MPD rely really heavily on technology and so those are things that we just have to practice more and we're committed to doing um in the future so I think what we've talked about is that we process 1.8 million calls here um we're getting to those calls U yes there's a bit of a challenge at times getting the phone answered and we want you to stay on hold while that's going on but I have confidence in the OU we are um director mcgaffin and I have been working together for a long since before she became the director um to address any issues that are coming up so I have confidence in the OU see I've had to call it myself IND so thank you for that question we are um reminded in this case of the importance of learning CPR um we have a Hands-On heart program in the District of Columbia where we go out and we train folks how to do hands only CPR uh we are working relentlessly to get more aeds out into the community and fill in our AED deserts and and this case reminds Rems us of the critical importance of of all those things we're really fortunate in this case that there was somebody at the address who is performing CPR almost immediately uh when when the parents summoned help and they were supported by the arrival of some uh Federal officers that were in the area that continued uh CPR with without interruption our crews responded immediately after they received the call they deployed an AED did high performance CPR I reviewed the call from top to bottom uh care was completely appropriate um so I don't think that um despite the challenges here um I don't think there was any degradation and the quality of care that was provided we take 1.8 million calls a year and I recognize that some of them don't go perfectly but for a large majority of them they go really really well with really great outcomes and we're committed to that we're committed always to minimizing errors minimizing mistakes and you know I my goal has always been and will always continue to be to have a reliable 911 system that is fully staffed with minimal weight times that the residents and visitors of Washington DC are confident in we will continue to do that work to get it there and when you call 911 one don't hang up that's the most important thing you can do if you are in an emergency situation stay on the line right thank you now e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e