DC councilmember introduces new legislation to address 911 concerns

WASHINGTON — After a particularly bad month for D.C.’s Office of Unified Communication, District Councilmember Brooke Pinto has announced an oversight plan to improve 911 emergency response.

OUC, which manages D.C.’s 911 call operations, faced a lot of criticism in August. Early in the month, a 5-month-old infant died while a family waited 17 minutes for an ambulance because a system update caused the computer-aided dispatch to fail. The person who had implemented the system update was fired, but another connectivity issue occurred days later for about 20 minutes. 

In addition to the system failures, OUC is facing extreme staffing issues. There are 20 vacancies and the employees they do have often don’t show up to work — to the point where OUC began offering $800 bonuses to anyone who showed up to work for all of their scheduled shifts in a month. 

Now, Pinto is trying to implement a new plan to patch these holes. 

According to a press release, this fall, Pinto and the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety will hold monthly public oversight hearings on OUC, conduct unannounced visits to OUC's 911 call center every other week and introduce the Transparency in Emergency Response Amendment Act of 2024.

The monthly oversight hearing will focus on recent operational failures and accidents, performance and transparency metrics and technology and multi-agency coordination. 

The Transparency in Emergency Response Amendment Act of 2024 will require the public release of after-action reports within 45 days of any incident where there is reason to believe errors led to serious injury or death. It will also require the public release of the computer-aided dispatch report, transcripts and recording of the 911 calls and any other documents describing possible errors or concerns regarding the emergency response. 

This is just the latest in OUC oversight. D.C. Councilmember At-Large Christina Henderson sent an oversight letter to OUC at the beginning of August. OUC responded on Aug. 29 addressing both the computer glitches and staffing issues.

In the past four months, there have been eight different incidents that impacted computer-aided dispatch, the letter states. Of those eight instances, six lasted for an hour or longer, with the longest one lasting 17 hours.

As for staffing, OUC says it currently has 20 call taker vacancies and 19 dispatcher vacancies. Dispatcher positions are internally hired and external applicants cannot be considered for the job. 

OUC’s recruitment process is typically six months long. To cut that to three months, they have been hosting “prospect days” where the process is streamlined in one day. Though OUC received 979 applicants for call taker positions on its most recent prospect day, only 61 of those applicants made it to the suitability portion of the recruitment screening. They will hold two more prospect days on Sept. 24 and 26. 

With the vacancies and employees calling out frequently, overtime spending is also high. In the letter, OUC writes that it has spent nearly $3.6 million on overtime pay so far this year.

"I join residents in expressing deep concern around continued errors and challenges at our Office of Unified Communications 911 call center operations," said Pinto said in the press release. "The standard for our emergency response must be 100% accuracy. The Transparency in Emergency Response bill and oversight interventions I will be focused on this fall target improved performance, transparency, and public trust in our 911 operations to provide residents the emergency response they deserve."