Assembly Standing Committee on Emergency Management

Alright. Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here. We're gonna call this meeting to order. This is the emergency management committee. This is an oversight hearing. This hearing is about implementing next generation 911. This is vitally important for the safety of all of Californians. Eventually, next generation 911. Okay.

However, with all of that said, as demonstrated by the latest transition plan provided by Cal OES, the next generation 911 system and these safety mechanisms are once again delayed. It is clear that the implementation of this project has faced serious management challenges, But to move count forward, California deserves clear answers about what went wrong and how it can be fixed and what our pathway forward will be. Walking away from next generation 911 is not an option. The real question is how do we get it done right, and how do we restore public trust? The goal today is simple, to make sure that next generation 911 is reliable, accountable, and complete it without further delay.

This hearing is about solution. It's about transparency. And although there's been lots of noise, this hearing is not about politics. The legislature has a key role to play in reorienting this project towards success. In order to do that, we need to understand what has happened, what's gone wrong, and how new proposals will address potential issues.

It is our responsibility to make sure that our modernization happens within a clear timeline and that it is implemented safely and responsibly for taxpayers and constituents. We know that this is ongoing work, and we are committed to working with the administration, with our dispatch centers, first responders, and others to make sure that the modernization effort succeeds. I wanna thank everyone in advance, especially our speakers for attending today as we all work towards our shared goal of building the next generation 911 system that safeguards all of Californian. I'd also like, at this time, to offer our vice chair, Heather Hedwick, an opportunity to provide opening remarks.

Thank you, madam chair. I wanna thank everybody for coming here today. As a former emergency manager, this is dear to my heart. I also, supervised dispatch for over three years at the Modoc County Sheriff's Office. So, we were one of the, beneficiaries of a NextGen 911 dispatch upgrade, and I worked through that process with them.

So, very interested in what's gonna be said today. So thank you very much. I do have to present a bill. So if I leave, I'm only leaving for that. I'm hoping I don't miss questions. So but thank you again for coming.

Thank you for that. So I wanna start by setting the stage. First of all, we have folks in multiple committees, so you may see people coming in and out. This is an oversight hearing, and so our goal is to get answers to questions about, a, what happened, and b, how do we move forward. I'd also like to point out that we have several panels, so there may be some redundancy in information and some overlapping information.

But our goal is to be able to get the technical expertise of each individual panel as it relates to the the various, topics covered in next generation 911. So with that being said, I'm going to, go ahead and go to our first panel, which is the next generation 911 system assessment. We'll hear from Steve Yarbrough, who is the deputy director of public safety communications at Cal OES. And Eric Swanson, who is the deputy director of finance and logistics administration at Cal OES. So with that, I'm going to invite you all to join us here at the table.

And do we also have Heather?

Okay. And in addition, I'd like to invite Heather Gonzales, who is the principal fiscal and policy analyst at the Legislative Analyst's Office.

Awesome.

So you all have an opportunity to make opening statements, and then after your opening statements, we'll bring it back to the body here, and then we'll go from there. And we'll start with mister Yarbrough.

Thank you, madam chair. My name is Steve Yarbrough. I'm the deputy director of public safety communications at Cal OES. I thank you and the members of the committee, for the opportunity to provide an update on next generation 911. You'll hear us refer to it as next generation 911 n g 911 or next gen 911.

Those are all synonymous terms. I'll start by saying California remains committed to delivering a modern, reliable, and secure next generation 911 system that works for all Californians. To achieve this goal, we've developed a transition and implementation plan with milestones that have been presented to our 911 advisory board. This modernization effort is necessary because the the way Californians communicate has changed, and with that, the system needs to change to accommodate those new capabilities. The vast majority of emergency calls originate from mobile devices rather than traditional landlines.

The legacy system was built in the nineteen sixties and relies on aging analog technology. It was never designed to support digital communications. NextGen 911 will allow emergency call centers to receive voice calls, text messages, images, and video from callers, and these capabilities significantly improve situational awareness for responders and dispatchers, allowing them to better understand and respond to emergencies. California's 911 system is acquired as a service from our vendor partners, and it is funded primarily through a dedicated surcharge on in state telephone lines. Cal OES is confident that the system we will ultimately deliver will provide California communities with the most advanced technology available for this life saving service.

I'd like to give a brief history of the deployment up to this point. Between 2019 and in the 2024, Cal OES worked with our contracted service providers to deploy NextGen 911 using a regional approach. This approach divided the state into four regions, and then it had a statewide backup backup system to those regional providers in the event that something happened to one of the four geographic providers, it could fall over to the statewide system. While the regional model was designed to improve resilience, it also introduced significant complexity. Each region effectively operates as an independent system and the interaction between those regional systems and the statewide backup provider requires custom interfaces and routing logic.

So during the testing and early deployment of our system, Cal OES and its local partners identified issues relating to Cal rep call routing and transfer functionality in the system reliability. In several cases, calls were routed incorrectly, transferred improperly, or experienced degraded voice quality during those handoffs. Public safety answering points experienced operational challenges when handling calls because they had to answer calls that were both in the legacy environment as well as the next generation 911 environment. And having to decipher between which of those two kinds of calls they were answering and treat them in two different ways created an operational challenge. So rather than risk expanding service disruption in these challenges to additional public safety answering points, Cal OES made the deliberate decision to pause further transition to the network and carefully reassess the architecture.

This decision was made with one priority in mind, protecting the residents of California by providing a stable functional 911 system. Following the pause, Cal OES undertook extensive review of the system and engaged directly with local partners. During this period, Cal OES visited and inspected the public safety answering points to better understand the lived experiences and operational impacts to the dispatchers in emergency call centers. Additionally, Cal OES looked at best practices and what could be learned from other states. The feedback we received made it very clear that the regional architecture introduced unnecessary complexity for PSAP operations and created multiple points of potential failure.

As a result of that review, Cal OES developed a revised strategy for simplifying the architecture and adopting a statewide approach consistent with national best practices. This updated strategy reflects lessons learned during the early phases of deployment and aligns the system architecture with what was successfully adopted and implemented in other states. Under the updated strategy, California will move to the statewide provider model, and this system architecture will eliminate the need for multiple regional providers and custom interfaces between those providers. The statewide provider model aligns with the standards by the National Emergency Number Association, which defines the functional and technical standards for next gen 911 systems. These standards require highly resilient systems that eliminate single points of failure.

And to that end, the long term statewide provider will be required to deliver a system that has 99.999% availability, supported by multiple data centers, redundant network paths, and geographically diverse infrastructure. Adopting these standards and eliminating the California specific design elements in the regional model will enable California to procure a proven system architecture that is already operating successfully in other jurisdictions. Our goal remains unchanged. We want to deliver a reliable, modern, next gen system for all Californians. Our strategy is updating to reflect the lessons that we've learned from early deployment and aligns with California's system aligns California system with national standards and best practices.

And with that, I'm happy to take any questions that you may have.

Thank you. We'll reserve questions until the entire panel has presented.

I'm Eric Swanson just here for questions.

Hi. My name is Heather Gonzales. I'm with the Legislative Analyst Office. Good afternoon, chair and members. As you know, or as you can see, OES is moving rapidly toward major changes in the state plan for next-generation 911. It's our view that while these alterations may be entirely appropriate, changes

of this magnitude to a public safety system this important are best accomplished under close oversight. In addition, we do not know whether if faced with options and trade offs, the legislature would adopt, amend, or reject the changes that OES is pursuing. For this reason and others that I'll cover more thoroughly in this presentation, we recommend that the legislature temporarily pause forward movement on this project while it gathers information necessary to either increase confidence in the plan that OES has proposed or enable it to work towards an alternative that the legislature prefers. Now you should have a a handout that we prepared for this hearing. It contains summarized information on next generation 911 systems, the state's more than ten year effort to plan and deploy such a next generation 911 system, and recent challenges OES faced during deployment and what they propose to do next.

The handout also summarizes our findings and recommendations. And in case you'd like the longer version, we brought copies of a longer brief on this topic, which is the basis of both the handout and my comments today. Now by way of background, we direct your attention to page one of the handout, which explains what next generation 911 is. Simply put, next generation 911 uses Internet protocol based technologies instead of copper wires to deliver and route 911 calls. These systems consist of four major components, networks, core services, geographic information systems, and call handling equipment.

We include definitions of these components in your handout, but as a rough analogy, you can think of next generation 911 as a dedicated emergency highway. The network is the highway. Core services are the traffic control centers which direct vehicles based on verified addresses. The geographical information system is the official map that ensures that calls go to the right dispatch center and first responders go to the right location. And call handling equipment is in the local control rooms where dispatchers receive and manage emergency telecommunications.

To work together like they should, next generation 911 systems, all of these components, as well as the phone carriers or the the phones and carriers that use the system must be interoperable. That is to say, they must all speak the same digital language. And ideally, not just the same language, but the same dialect. Getting everyone in the system, dispatchers, telecom companies, phone carriers, and so forth, to speak the same dialect as one of the central technical challenges of the transition to next gen 911. Nationally, most states have been moving to adopt and deploy next generation 911 systems for some time.

According to the Congressional Research Service, as of 202130 states, including California, had dedicated networks and were in various phases of connecting phone carriers like Verizon and AT and T and dispatch centers to them. Some of the key issues receiving federal attention include funding, of course, as well as national interoperability and standards. The national 911 program with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has begun moving towards the goal of seamless national interconnection of all next gen systems. The central strategy for achieving interoperability between next gen 911 systems throughout The United States is through standardization. Similar to electricity, where US plugs and wall outlets work together pretty much regardless of manufacture because of previous efforts to standardize, the key strategy for seamless interconnection of next gen 911 systems has been through the development of technology standards and adherence to those standards.

This is true for next gen 911 systems within or between states. However, in the real world, interoperability has been hard to achieve because of the mix of 911 technologies that currently exist. They don't typically speak all in the same language and dialect. A second part of the federal effort stems from the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency or CISA within the Department of Homeland Security, which has been focused on cybersecurity for these systems. CISA has noted both the value of NextGen 911 but has also warned that, quote, cyber risks present a new level of exposure, end quote, for 911 system stakeholders.

Some of the potential risks include malware, ransomware, denial of service attacks, and swatting. And then, of course, in '25, 2024 and '25, the Federal Communications Commission started to engage. It issued rules designed to ensure that phone carriers and Internet providers are updating and improving their systems so that phones and devices work effectively with these networks. And in 2025, the commission focus attention on reliability interoperability of next generation networks, including interstate interoperability. And I believe the rulemaking is expected on that this year, so we should have more coming from the feds.

Turning to the state effort, as you will see from the timeline on page two, we trace the overall state effort to as early as 2010 when the state developed a road map for NextGen 09/11 under former governor Schwarzenegger. However, we date the current effort to 2015 because that is when the legislature enacted SB 1211 which statutorily directed OES to get started. That said, it wasn't until 201819 that meaningful amounts of funding became available, and that's when OES executed the contracts with regional network vendors and a statewide backup vendor, which we colloquially refer to as the regional system, to build and deploy the next generation 911 system that we have now. Deployment of this regional system included trenching and laying fiber optic lines, structural and electrical work, both at, I mean, sorry, at dispatch centers and the installation of both hardware and software. Though it is unclear to us what portion of these installed features and materials could be repurposed cost effectively if we adopted the changes that OES has proposed.

We should also note that despite the challenges OES has identified, in their 02/27/2026 report to the legislature, they reiterated previous statements indicating that the regional system is currently delivering caller location and text to 911 services to all dispatch centers in California and that 23 dispatch centers have begun transitioning voice calls to the system. Now I'm gonna turn to our assessment and findings. As OES has explained, when an initial tranche of dispatch centers began transitioning voice calls to the regional system, problems surfaced. OES reviewed these challenges and concluded that the best solution is to switch from the regional approach to a statewide approach. Although OES has not yet submitted either a budget change proposal requesting authority or legislation, we review the information that they've provided on their progress to date.

And our assessment may be summarized in five points. First, the project is overdue, and future budget needs are unclear. We feel especially strongly that the legislature be provided with the best possible estimates of the cost needed for next generation 911 the legacy system, and support for dispatch centers in this budget year and any future years under any plan it adopts. Number two, we wanna be very clear that we believe the major changes OES has proposed may be entirely appropriate, but all changes come with trade offs. We do not yet have enough information about the options OES considered or the ones it didn't to be able to lay out these trade offs fully.

But as an example, unless the statewide system envisioned by OES is designed carefully, a regional approach may offer greater redundancy and may be more able to withstand failure as a result. On the other hand, the regional approach may have too much redundancy and may have become so complex that it suffers in operability and is effectively fatally flawed. Cost may also be a trade off, although we have no information yet on which to judge, as will management needs. It may be simpler for OES to manage a single contract with a single vendor than it would be to manage multiple vendors and multiple contracts. However, relying on a single vendor could expose the state to price increases, unfavorable contract terms, or even reduced innovation because it will be painful and expensive to switch vendors a third time and because competition between vendors is an advantage to the state as a buyer.

In short, we just do not yet know what the state options are or what the technical cost or managerial trade offs would be if the options were compared. Our third point is that changes of this magnitude to a system this important are best accomplished under close oversight, and this is currently lacking. The state 911 system has a nine has an advisory board, but it is only advisory. As we've been told by CDT, as a public safety telecommunications project, this project is not subject to a typical CDT project approval and oversight processes. And to date, the legislature has not been been provided with a statutory proposal, trailer Bill Language, or a budget proposal to consider.

This puts us to our fourth finding, which is that available information leaves key questions unanswered. Although OES has provided high level descriptions of its plans and reasoning, we are missing or have insufficient answers to the following six questions. One, what is the exact nature and scope of the problem or problems OES encountered with the regional system? And two, will the plan solve these problems? And before I move on to our next four questions, I wanna pause and really stress the first two, nature and scope of the problem, and will the solution address the problem?

And the reason I highlight these questions especially is because when we asked independent experts and stakeholders what advice they would give you all if they were faced with the same question you are facing now, the near universal response we got was to get very, very clear on causes and solutions. The other four sets of questions we have include whether their options were considered, how do these options compare, how will the system comply with state privacy and security laws, and is there sufficient oversight of this project? And that takes us to our final finding, which is that 911 technology is going to continue to evolve. It's a mischaracterization to think of the deployment of the next generation 911 system as having an end date where the project will be done. Yes.

You can likely identify a date at which the legacy system can be decommissioned, but that doesn't mean next generation 911 will be complete. It's a system that's going to continue to change and evolve from here, And this will likely happen at a much faster pace than what's historically possible with the legacy system. So based on these findings, we recommend that you do, a few things. The first is oversight hearings like the one we're having today. We strongly recommend the hearings focus on unearthing answers to the key questions that we have raised and that they include to the best extent possible a meaningful comparison of options and trade offs.

If this kind of analysis is not possible in the immediate term, we recommend that the legislature consider adopting language in budget or policy bill that would prohibit OES from implementing the statewide approach until an independent, technically proficient third party or team, which could include the state auditor, a blue ribbon commission, or even a select committee until that kind of analysis could be conducted. To strengthen oversight of the current project, we recommend quarterly fiscal reports and monthly progress reports to the legislature until legacy 911 has been fully decommissioned. And lastly, looking at the long term future for these systems, including the potential for nationwide interoperability and future innovations in the field and the myriad of trade offs and policy questions that might develop as a result, we recommend the legislature consider whether whether additional ongoing oversight is appropriate and what form that oversight should take. Thank you for your time and attention, and, we're available for questions.

Thank you. So I wanna thank Mr. Yarbrough with Cal OES, as well as Miss Gonzales, with the Legislative Analyst Office, for those presentations. I think that's a a great starting point, for this hearing. And I I'm sure and just for edification, you all talked about the timeline and and all of the efforts and work that has gone into this, which is kind of brings us to today and why we're here. In fairness, we know that this started back in 2010.

But in fairness to oh, yes. And to all involved, once budgets were, approved, it looks like we really got started in 2018-2019. But this is a very important project that was as was mentioned for our state. Just a couple of weeks ago in our oversight hearing, we had the sheriff from San Joaquin County talk about, you know, the mass shooting and responding to that and the need for being able to locate not being able to locate very quickly folks who were calling in from cell phone systems. So this is just not an arbitrary conversation.

This is a very important conversation about safety and and where we go from here. So with that being said, I'm gonna start, and then we'll kind of round robin it to colleagues who I know have lots of questions about where we go from here. And we know that this has been a long time coming, but I would like to start with a question for director Yarbrough, and that's in regards to the precise technical operation and governance problem that the state is attempting to solve by switching away from a regional approach to a statewide approach. What data study studies information, What has been what have you looked at that said that this is what needs to happen to move forward?

So in terms of data that we had to support this, from the time that we began implementing, we began collecting trouble tickets and issue logs of of occurrences where calls were misrouted or otherwise lost in transfer. And so in compiling all of that data, it it became clear that there were a few fundamental problems that were going on. And so tracing those back to their root cause was the beginning of how we narrowed our focus, if you will, to what what exactly needed to be solved. And so in doing that, it became clear that, as I mentioned earlier, that having these separate systems that are then required to interact with one another, the regions operate as independent systems. But occasionally or more than occasionally, they need to interact with one another.

And it is at those times where we start to see some of these problems crop up. So it it quickly focused our attention on these, borders between the the regional systems is where we were starting to see some of these problems. And then as you as we do that and we and we, you know, trace through with our technical teams where the actual issues were happening and where the call was being dropped or under what circumstances if the transfer is initiated, where, you know, where does the actual packet of data, you know, go? Does it not go to the correct answering point? So when we start looking at those things, then it becomes clear that when we have a complex system, and I think it was alluded to by the legislative analyst office, that that they need to be able to the regions need to be able to speak the same language and dialect with one another.

And so solving for that problem amongst partners who are not necessarily aligned in terms of speaking the same language, then it creates the opportunity for problems to arise. So that's sort of the background and basis for how we narrowed our focus to the solution that is moving from a regionalized approach to a statewide approach. And I hope that addresses the question.

I'm gonna reserve the right to follow-up on that because I do have some additional follow-up. But right now, I'm gonna defer to assembly member Hadwick who has a question.

Hi. Sorry. I have to run and present a bill, so I was trying to get in here. My first question is just how how do you justify spending over $456,000,000 with only 23 PSAPs that were migrated.

So this is, I think, addressed best by understanding the nature that these contracts is that we acquire 911 or next generation 911 as a service. And so we're going to be paying a service fee that covers a period of time. And so much like your cell phone, you pay, you know, your monthly subscription for your cell phone. And at the end of that month, you have gotten the service and then you pay the next month's fee. And so that, I think, is is how you look at how do we get to a $450,000,000 spent during this contract period?

Eighty five percent of that total is for these monthly recurring service fees. So I think as we go forward, we can expect to also see monthly recurring service fees continue to happen. Whether we stay status quo or move to a statewide system, there will be monthly recurring fees that amount to something on that order of magnitude.

And how much more will it cost to complete it? And how many more PSAPs that answering points are there that have to be migrated?

So there are there are over 440 public safety answering points throughout the state of California. So the 23 that have transitioned to NextGen 911 for voice represent a small fraction, probably somewhere on the order of 5%. So, obviously, we have 95% of them that haven't transitioned for voice. And and that is, I think, the you know, what's required going forward. I I would like to point out that some of the some of the things that slowed us down during this window of time were in 2020, we had the COVID pandemic, which stopped a lot of progress from being made.

And then subsequent to that, we had supply chain interruptions that were, stemming from the COVID pandemic. So those were a couple of unique factors that impact us during this particular time frame to slow us down. Further, there was a lot of of preliminary work that went into this period that won't have to be repeated going forward, such as site surveys, site remediation. If if you need increased environmental controls for cooling the equipment or power requirements if if you need to increase the electrical service at a PSAP, that won't have to be redone. That's durable durable benefit that already has been paid for and will be accrued going forward.

So it it it you can't just extrapolate that window of time out into the future. There are some benefits that we have.

And who's accountable for the delays and the the costs overrun? Because nobody's there that was there when this started. Right?

Yeah. I I believe that's probably true. Yes. I there there's been a number of of retirements that have happened during that period of time and just yeah. Okay.

And then

Excuse me. I didn't hear the answer that quick because you partially answered and then said correct, and he said yes, but I didn't hear what you said.

Oh, I had asked who's who's accountable for the delays and the cost overrun because I I was told that none of the people that were originally there and worked employed there for the project are still there.

So so what's the answer to the question? Okay. So he said yes, but so who's responsible? Yes.

So I I've been appointed as deputy director of public safety communications. And so going forward, it's my responsibility.

So who was responsible before you? Was it your agency? Was it your department? That's what I'm trying to find out. Were these regional people?

Well, you know, no. It is it is Cal OES, the

Okay. The

the division public safety communications.

Thank you.

And then is the current system the way it is putting lives at risk?

So right now, the the voice traffic is being carried principally on the legacy system, and that system is operating and carrying the traffic right now. The 23 that are on the NextGen system are being carried on the NextGen system. So all of the PSAPs are having calls routed at this time.

And has anybody died from this transition?

No. I I don't know that of a of an instance that can be attributed specifically to the transition.

I there's one documented case in High High Desert Desert Hot Springs.

Desert Hot Springs.

That it they got cut off, logged off. It wouldn't let them log back in. It was a heart attack tell call. The Okay. The man died from that. I'm very nervous with the upcoming wildfire season. And do you think this is going to work in a major disaster?

Yes. I do. I think and I think this gets to the heart of of one of the concerns or criticisms of the plan going forward is the reliability of a single vendor solution. And the way we address that is by making sure that we're adhering to the National Emergency Number Association standards and stipulating in our contract requirements for whoever our eventual statewide partner is that they achieve certain benchmarks that give us the reliability we're looking for. So reliability isn't a function of the number of vendor partners that we have or the number of contracts we have.

The 99.999% uptime is the standard that measures that. And so that amounts to about five minutes a year of downtime. So that's the performance metric that we're looking at as being how we get to the reliability that I think your question is pointing to.

I have one last one for Heather. Sure. Should there be an audit of this project?

Well, we're we're recommending that the auditor that you consider engaging the auditor to evaluate the solution going forward at this point in time. We think the the critical decision before you is what to do next.

K. Thank you.

Thank you, assembly member. Okay. I wanna go back to, your original comments in regards to, the original rollout and how the regional systems you you found didn't work. So first, I wanna know I'm gonna ask a two part question. Was there testing before deployment? And were the regional issues because were there different vendors handling different regions and then their their systems would not talk to each other? Is that why you're partially why you're trying to go to one system?

Yes. So there yeah. In in the deployment, there are a couple of of key testing benchmarks that happen. Initially, obviously, we perform testing in our laboratory environment. There's a protocol that's followed there to make sure that it any solution meets our requirements and passes the testing protocol.

But the lab environment cannot replicate all of the 440 unique public safety answering point configurations. And so, there's a gap there that can't be tested for in the lab environment because of the unique nature of all of the answering points. So certain things don't get tested in the lab environment that that they're exposed to in the live production environment. Now that being said, once we get out there, into the into the live production environment, then you do have this, situation where you have multiple vendors, adjacent to one another that need to, you know, work together collaboratively to solve problems and to make sure that traffic gets routed to where it needs to go. And I think translating the language from one of those regions to another of those regions, which I think, was alluded to in the LAO portion of this, is speaking the same language and dialect.

That's where the interface control documents between those need to drill down to such a degree that you can find what, how to how to route a piece of data from one database into another database. Or, particularly when you're crossing from one vendor to another. Within one vendor, they they know their own language and and and how their data is structured. So the problem doesn't show itself within the context of a single vendor. It shows itself in the context of multiple vendors.

And that, I think, is another reason why our proposed solution is to go to a single vendor solution is because then you eliminate entirely the issue of not understanding how the data is structured or how to speak the language of your neighbor.

Thank you. So looking at how we got here and spending nearly half $1,000,000,000 between the vendors Mhmm. Whose responsibility was it? I would imagine that we expected the vendors to have the technical expertise to understand what issues they may run into upon deployment. Whose responsibility was it to ensure that we were ready to operationalize the system before we actually tried it in the real world?

So I think from a from a management standpoint, the deployment is handled as part of the service that we contract for. And so we contract with the vendor to manage the deployment within that region. And then also, making sure that between regions, they work together to solve problems. I think what we found is that in a lot of circumstances, it was unclear, as to where the responsibility lied. And, because of that, there ended up scenarios where one party thought it was another person's responsibility and vice versa.

So there's this middle ground that both both fingers were pointing at one another. And so, you know, coming in and and solving for, you know, how do we actually like, the main goal has to be for the system to operate effectively, not to assign blame or, you know, what have you. And so I think that was one of the things that probably wasn't being, you know, you know, found in the dialogue back then is that we weren't actually focused on the main mission, which was delivering a communication system that worked for the people who are on the front lines actually, you know, addressing emergencies. And so by losing focus of that vision and focusing on other things instead, we we didn't end up with the results we were looking for.

Okay. And then for the expertise of the vendor. So clearly, you're Callaway. Yes. Right? You're not a Right. Data technical person. And so it it kind of begs the question about why the Department of Technology is not overseeing this as opposed to your department? And what is the experience of the vendors? Like, how did you select the vendors?

Did they have experience in other states? Were they, you know how did we select these the vendors that we were working with that ultimately failed at delivering the system?

So I don't wanna speculate, but my understanding of it was that we were selecting for vendors who could come in and innovate in ways that perhaps hadn't been seen before with with vendors who've been in operating in this space for a long period of time. And so by being able to I mean, it's a next generation system and with that comes the idea that we should be forward looking technologically. And I think leaning more into the innovation side of how we could put together a system rather than perhaps tried and true methodologies. And I will say this too, that at that time, I mean, we're talking about 2017, for example, that being nine years ago at this point or thereabouts, technologically is a lifetime ago. And so I think things that were possible back then may not or or things that were possible now may not have been possible back then.

And so from that perspective, you're also looking at a a much different calculus today in turn if we were, you know, starting from a blank canvas to select the vendors today who have proven solutions. And so all of that is to say, I think that it's a much different time and we would make much different decisions now.

So did the vendors have experience with emergency technology? 911

I understand is that at least a couple of them were new to this space.

Okay. Thank you. I'm gonna defer to colleagues. I saw some hands down here.

I have a lot of questions and comments. So I'd like to have the answers be fairly tight if Okay. If you can. Right? And then so up to this point in time, is it accurate to say that's that OES has been the the agency responsible for the management of this implementation of this change?

Yes.

Okay. And then have have the regional coordination issues been resolved as of today?

As of today, the the the NextGen 911 system, the regions three of them have been transitioned onto the statewide provider. And so since they've been on the statewide backup provider, we haven't experienced the problems that we experienced in the regional setup

But there's still a lot of re there's still many regions out there that haven't that that that haven't been switched over to the statewide system. Correct?

Yeah. Well, there's yeah. There's four regions, but there's only one PSAP that's operating under a regional system. Which the rest of them are on the statewide system. Which one is that one? That's in South Lake Tahoe. Okay. So the other three are now on the statewide system. Correct. So the the is the state in control of the system now? Yes. That statewide system is under contract or not it's under tariff, but we are yeah. We, Cal OES, are managing that relationship with that vendor.

And is it just one vendor?

Yes. A single statewide provider.

Okay. What percentage of the major call centers, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, What percentage of them support going to the statewide system?

I don't think that we've asked the question that way. So I don't have an answer for that.

Okay. What is your timing if we did nothing except say keep going? What's your timing for when you think you will have this you'll never be completely implemented, but you'll have this conversion be at the point where you'd say we no longer have regional, we have Allstate.

So the plan that we've put forward to implement the new strategy shows us having all of the PSAPs onto the single statewide provider by the 2030.

By the 2030. Yeah. Is the system operating properly now?

I think the system is operating the way we've experienced it. And so I I think we are exposed to those same problems now. And that that I I realized that that doesn't quite answer your question.

It doesn't quite answer the question. The system's operating how we're experiencing it is sort of saying the system's operating like the system's operating.

Yes.

My question is, is the system operating adequately? The head you know, you guys from OES, you're in charge of this. Right. Are we safe today? Are we adequately protected with our 911 system today?

To the extent that the PSAPs are routing traffic through the statewide backup system, We are not experiencing the problems that we had in the regional alignment.

But you don't wanna answer the question whether system adequately is safe today?

I I think it's safe the way it is. Yeah. With them on a single statewide provider.

We we we have a proposal from LAO that we slow down. We stop for a little bit. I wanna know if we stop for a little bit that you're saying we can we're we're not we're not at some great risk and we we can't afford to stop. Now if you're saying we're not gonna be implemented all the way until 2030 anyway, the question is is is a pause going to put us at great risk? Let me ask it that way.

Okay. No. It does not put the public at risk. What it does put at risk is the ability to transition additional PSAPs onto the statewide provider. Specifically, one of the goals of our plan is to get the Los Angeles area transitioned to the statewide provider ahead of the Olympics in 2028.

Do they want to transition?

right now? We're actively engaged in conversations with stakeholders in that area to explore how many of them do want to. We know of at least one agency that does. But right now, you don't have an answer whether

the the the LA area agencies want to make this transition or not.

I had I've had one meeting with them last month about this topic, and I have one scheduled for Thursday of this week about this topic wherein I hope to discuss with them that point.

But we don't know yet. We don't have an answer from them yet. Alright. The you you referred to the question from the chair about, you know, why did the past system start to have these problems? What was what was what was done to make sure that we didn't have these problems?

And you referenced that, we had contract language with the vendor that was supposed to take care of that. Mhmm. But it it didn't happen. The the vendor didn't do it, didn't do it properly, etcetera. When you're when we're asking the question now, how can we be sure that one statewide system without the redundancy Mhmm.

Question, your response is we'll put contract language in there to make sure that that's the case. Now if we had contract language in there before Yeah. And we didn't monitor that contract language tight enough to make sure that the vendor actually performed, how why should we think this is going to be different when we put contract language in that our current system with our current oversight Yeah. Current OES in charge, how what makes us think that that contract is gonna be managed differently, more appropriately than the past one?

I would say that I think to the the chair's point from earlier that the there has been several leaders who have retired and different leaders have been now put in place. Up until recently, this function in OES has not had a deputy director over it. And so, having been appointed to that role, I intend to see that we do manage our engagements and our deployments to a much higher standard. So

we had a five years ago when I first arrived, a few of us, David Chu being one, assembly member David Chu, We expressed a great concern about the fact that if you look at the state's history of implementing new technologies, it is cost overrun, timing delays, and failure over and over and over again. Right? And part of the part of the view at that point in time was agencies that are very good at running their agencies do not necessarily have the expertise to manage the implementation of new technology. That that needs a separate kind of oversight. People that would say, hey, if you just write this in the contract, that's not good enough.

You actually have to have somebody monitoring that part of the contract every week, every day, every month, whatever. Alright? We need somebody to be able to anticipate what are all the things that are going to go wrong with a new technology implementation and advise agencies to be able to do this. Now we have the the the agency of technology oversight, but they're obviously not in charge of of this. Right?

But I would definitely say this911 is so important. And with the Olympics coming, it's so important. We cannot blow this. We cannot blow this transition. And to just sit there and say that we're gonna have the people who blew it with the last six years or so of doing this, in terms of managing the contract, etcetera.

Just say, well, we're just gonna let you now actually control it even more. Right? In in terms of that. And when I say blow it, I mean not managing the contract language and and and and the implementation even tight enough. Manage that even more.

Mhmm. Seems to be very risky for the state of California. And so I want to I'm really grateful that we have an LAO. I'm really grateful that the LAO was willing to make some strong and not necessarily popular recommendations. That the LAO is not supposed to make popular recommendations.

They're supposed to make these for stepping up and saying, we need closer oversight. So there is no way that I, as a member of this committee, would be supportive of moving forward without a definite independent oversight and things like quarterly reports or monthly reports. This is too important. Almost of every implementation that we're going to do in the state of California, there probably can't be one more important than making sure we get 911 right. And so I strongly support the idea of pausing and letting us figure out some of the answers that LAO has suggested we get and some of the and time for us to figure out how we could get that kind of oversight so that a new professional like yourself who's coming in, who personally is not responsible for what those people did, but is in the exact same sort of position as the people before you.

Right? We you know, I would ask this. How many of these new statewide systems have you implemented before?

I've done. I would count three.

But they principally have been on the radio communications public safety spectrum.Well, those were in California.

Mhmm. Right.

Uh-huh. But but I mean so statewide, this would be your first statewide No. Implementation? Alright.

No. I've also delivered radio systems statewide.

So anyway Yeah. To to to again, to put that just to one person in terms of doing this. But I would hope that we'd have oversight in terms of the reports and all of that. Just the current advisory committee set up usually does not. The advisory committee does not come with us as as strong a focus of oversight as you would have if you had a true oversight committee one.

And so we need an oversight of the implementation. And And we also need an oversight of the technology. That's where I'm really concerned because look at what we're saying here. We're saying this regional problem was created by the interfaces. So then we all get caught who who are not experts at the interfaces, and we become dependent upon that.

We need somebody independent that we trust who's checking those interfaces, who's asking the question. Before we did the regional implementation, the question should have been asked not on theory, but let's get in there and actually run. I've been with some organizations. They literally do dry runs in the field with everything except it being live to make sure everything touches. Those things obviously need better oversight of and we need a technical expert to do that.

So those are my thoughts. I appreciate the straight answers as as we got here. I want you to be successful at this. So my comments are not intended to be hostile about this, but they are intended to make sure that we don't blow this. And I don't think that our current path is the way to go without a pause and without much more oversight. Thank you very much, chair.

Let me just can I just add one thing? Yes, sir. We really appreciate the the comments you've made. And I think one thing that we definitely are open to is to discussion on going forward, you know, the the proper level of oversight, the proper level of transparency. One thing I'd also mention too is that we're in a different spot than we were, when this began and that, we have lots of, best practices to review.

That's not my expertise. That's more in Steve's realm. But there's a lot of states that have taken this taken this road so we can look at those as we go forward.

If if you don't mind, Sherry, if I could just add one thing. You know, the statement was made, you know, hey, there are a lot of things we can do today that we couldn't do nine years ago. There will be a lot of things we can do in 2030 that we can't do today. We need an oversight and technical advisory professionals to be able to anticipate what's coming in 2030. How do you have, as the Elio system said, you're never gonna have the thing done.

How do you have the thing be constantly tweaked, constantly adjusted, etcetera, Similar to to what you're saying. Yes. We we you have some things now, but there will be things different. And with the rate of change in technology, this is going going to be really fast, and we have to be nimble. And it's the state of California, probably the state that has as many natural disasters, as many emergencies as any place in the in the country. We have to get 911 right. Thank you.

Thank you, Assemblymember Bennett. I wanna go back and and miss mister Arber, you're just the Messenger, so I hope you you understand that we're not shooting the Messenger here, but we definitely wanna get to a good place for the state of California. And I wanna go back to Department of Technology, Cal OES, and whether it it there needs to be more involvement with folks who have more technical expertise when it comes to our procurement of very technically, you know, technical products such as something that will continue to evolve. Yeah. Who's there to check the evolution, to check the homework, if you will, of the vendors.

Can you talk a little bit about the role of CDT and what that looks like? Sure. So

yeah. While it is true that we we haven't come under the traditional oversight structure that an information technology project, under the Department of Technology would have because this is a telecommunications, project. But even with that being said, we are working closely with the Department of Technology right now as we speak to make sure that we have all of the most current cybersecurity requirements, all of the most current current terms and conditions for technology projects included in our solicitations. So that we have the benefit and the the essentially, the contract structure necessary to lay the foundation to manage the project more scrupulously. So I think we do value our partners at the Department of Technology and their input on this stuff.

And I it it's I think it would be incorrect to describe it as us, you know, not working with them. We are working very closely with them.

Okay. So it sounds like they are reviewing your contracts, but they're are they reviewing the work, and the progress of the vendors?

No. My understanding is statutorily, it falls outside of the purview.

Thank you for that. So I'm gonna move to missus Gonzalez in regards to first of all, I wanna say that I appreciate that you're not making a mandate. You're saying this could or could not work, but we need to look further. I think it's really clear to all of us that there is for something like this, we need some sort of oversight, and and so I'm just gonna let the elephant out of the room in the room right now. But you spoke a little bit about the advisers.

What is the expertise of the advisers? Are these people who have experience in technology and technology deployment?

Of the advisory board? Yes. The 911 advisory board? I'm OES might be able to speak to this more thoroughly than I, but it's my understanding that, most of the folks on the advisory board come from the dispatch and the PSAP community, and from public safety. But I wouldn't assume that they therefore have no technology experience as well.

Some of them have technology experience. I'm not it's it's not necessarily the suite of expertise that you might need for a system like this where you would want an IP IP expert, a telecom expert, a Nina expert, a deployment expert. Some of them have technology experience. I'm not it's it's not necessarily the suite of expertise that you might need for a system like this where you would want an IP expert, a telecom expert, a Nina expert, a deployment expert.

Like, so it it's it's I wouldn't say they're without skills.

Right.

Okay. But it's different from what you might want.

Okay. So is it safe to assume or ask? Are these advisers mostly end users? People who work within the system in different areas of public safety and not in the areas of technology?

So they come from three principle disciplines. We have law enforcement, fire service, and then the public safety answering point professionals who actually do the management and dispatch work in the in the answering centers. So those are the three disciplines that are represented vocationally. But many of them have expertise that they've gained either from prior incarnations and careers. Some of them own businesses and technology as well.

So and I and I think it's worth pointing out that they're representing large swaths of the 911 community. And in doing that, they have access to many people within the community who have the skills you're talking about.

Okay. Thank you. And we know that different systems and as you learned to do through deployment, they all have a they sometimes have different processes, different technologies, different vendors on their end. So as as you're it sounds like you're in conversations with Los Angeles. How are you what conversations are you having across the state to ensure that whatever statewide system you are implementing or or planning for will actually connect with whatever infrastructure, or is there a goal to to transition all of the different PSAPs to a different technology that connects?

What is the plan?

No. So we we do have technical staff working at the public safety communications office. So we have a team of engineers who are trained and well qualified and have extensive expertise in the next generation 911 systems. Similarly, the team engages on a regular basis with public safety answering points throughout the state of California and goes out to those locations and meets on-site with them. And so between those engagements with local stakeholders and engagements with, with their colleagues in other states and at, in in consortia and, conferences, I'm thinking principally of something like, this in January, the standards and best practices conference for NextGen 911 in, New Orleans.

A couple of our engineering team went to that and gained a lot of, expertise and insight into what the new, you know, trends that are emerging in NextGen 911 are for standards and practices. So there's an entire professional discipline devoted to this that I have expertise on the team doing.

Okay. But my question was about how they connect with the people on the ground and the systems that are in existence. Do we know how many different I know we're talking about 400 different, PSAPs, but we do we know how many different technologies, that we are trying to connect with? I appreciate the conference reference and all of that, but do we have we investigated that yet?

So well, I don't have a a number of different technologies that are that are being deployed, but I will say that there's a suite of standards that are are created specifically so that you have interoperable equipment regardless of vendor or a manufacturer. So the the idea being that if you don't have a call handling system that can connect to your network, it's not useful to you. So we create those standards so that we make sure that they do interoperate.

Awesome. Thank you for that. Yep. Gonna I'm gonna try this again to go back to miss Gonzales, in regards to some things that were in a couple of your reports. So thank you for all of the data and information. So in one of the comments that you made, you talked about the technical and operational designs being significantly adjusted from industry standard principles, increasing fragility and risk. Can you explain what the differences are that increase this risk?

We were actually quoting OES.

Okay. You were oh, you were quoting OES. So back to you. So can you can you tell us, please, what exactly what are those standards? I know you've touched on it a little bit. I wanted to get your perspective, but if you can the fragility and risk factor.

So that's the the National Emergency Number Association standards that is the standards that govern it's not a governing set of standards, but it is a a a compilation of best practices and industry agreed upon ways of doing things that are the best practices. And, those are obviously compiled and promulgated through that association so that you don't end up in a situation where each jurisdiction comes up with their own standard. So it's accepted within, North America and parts of Europe that this, set of standards is taken as being the way that we do NextGen 911. And, so when we deviate from what is published in there, then we start to have custom solutions. And that's, I think, what was referenced in in our document that then you referenced was that we deviated in certain ways that exposed some of this risk and fragility that we then were on the receiving end of problems because of.

And so, we talk about misrouted calls or calls that were dropped in in transfer or degraded audio, it's the root cause from the from the investigation that was done tied back to the deviation from the single statewide provider, which is the recommendation in those standards.

Okay. So if you rigorously rigorously enforce the existing those standards that you're talking about, along, of course, with contract requirements, would the identified issues somehow resolve themselves without structural transition or is is there still the need for the the structural transition?

Well so yeah. Transitioning to an architecture that more closely aligns with the standards will do away with a lot of the adverse experiences that we had because those adverse experiences were tied to the deviations from the standard. You create a regional system that now has to have multiple regions talking with one another. You create a technical complexity that's hard to hard to get right. And for that reason, it's been defined as nonstandard amongst those, association standards.

So the best practices are to have a single statewide system. And so by having one of those, we eliminate the risks that come from a multi vendor solution.

Okay. And what are the risk of having just one vendor? Any concerns about kind of having this perpetual relationship, this infinite relationship? If you have one vendor, you know, what is the ability to have a a backup system? What does that look like? Because that is a concern that was raised from other folks is having one system one vendor. It's not the state that's gonna be in charge of this technology. Are are we concerned with that

So aspect? Usually, when this topic is brought up, it's under the idea that you can't have system reliability with just a single vendor. And the number of vendors is unfortunately conflated with the idea of of resiliency. And so it it it kinda gets into a technical conversation where can you can you have resiliency of your system without having multiple vendors? And the answer to that question is yes.

You do that by adhering to the standards that we've been referencing, which call for having no single point of failure within your system. And so you do that by tapping into data centers that are multiple data centers distributed throughout the geographic territory so that they aren't subject to the same calamity. If you have a fire or if you have an earthquake that might take out one data center. But if you have six data centers, it's not going to take all of them. So you design for that by having multiple data centers.

You design for it by having multiple transmission lines and fiber optics. And you design for it by having multiple hardware appliances in the network. In case one of them fails, you have an installed backup. Similar to if you have, you know, two lungs to breathe with or two kidneys to filter. Right?

Is you have an installed backup so that if one of them if something happens to it, you have another one there ready to go. That's the design that is contemplated by these emergency number association standards. No single point failure. And so you can get to that reliability, within a single vendor solution by having multiple redundancies. And you don't need multiple vendors to get there.

Okay. So what I hear you saying is that a solid system has, like, two lungs, basically, kind of a backup. Yeah. The redundancy is what you're referring to. Right. And so with this reduce resent reduce redundancy, how is this the system still sufficient?

Well, it has multiple elements built into it. It's a single system, but it might have six core services.

Okay. Okay. Alright. Thank you. And then in regards to I'm I'm gonna transition because folks left me with questions because they can't be here. In regards to the cost of eventually building this single system with multiple redundancies or within the system, can you speak to what the cost of of such a system would be?

I can take that one. Okay. Yeah. I think that is one thing we agree with the LAO. We do owe we do owe the plan going forward fiscally fiscal wise and they're, you know of course, we're abiding by the budget calendar. There's set points where we'll we'll present that plan as well.

Okay. And do you have an estimated time frame? I know that you said as you're presenting the plan, but when when is the estimated time line for that? What does that look like?

It probably in the next month or so.

Before the May revise?

Well, I think the I think it'll be we'll we'll have to we're we're working on it. We're we're trying to get that point.

It is a work in progress. Okay. Awesome. Thank you for that. Okay. So when we're talking about the privacy protections required with the the future upgrades because it seems like the security protections, I'm sorry, with the cybersecurity risks and things like that. Are these costs the costs that are bared by the state or are these costs bared by the vendors? How does that work?

So yeah. The requirements will be informed by the Department of Technology's requirements and terms and conditions, and that will be part of the solicitation that the vendor will have to respond to. And so but your point is valid. They aren't going to bear that cost themselves. They will pass that on in the form of what the what the fee for the service ultimately ends up being. And so it will be paid for out of the out of the funds that are collected from the surcharge.

Okay. Thank you. And then with the single vendor, what termination penalties or litigation risks not only exist with the previous with the single vendor, but also with previous vendors. Are there, penalties or litigation risks that are expected?

There's there's terms and conditions written into those contracts, that we will continue to abide by, with the guidance from the Department of Technology on those terms and conditions. That being said, it's it's part of the contract. And so, the contract with the previous vendors went from 2019 to 2024. And as such, it has been it it reached its end and it expired and therefore there's no additional payment or liability required under that.

Okay. Thank you. And and I know you all thank you all for your patience. This is probably gonna be the longest panel because Cal OES is not gonna be able to stay throughout the rest of the the hearing. So I think it's really important that we get these questions answered.

So in the last couple of weeks, we saw with NGA 911 there was a termination of the contract. Can you tell us what has changed over the last few weeks that necessitated that or led to your decision to terminate that contract?

Yes. So we've been obviously engaged with that vendor for a number of months now working a problem resolution issue dating back, to last summer. And, through each of the each of the iterations of us engaging with them, we've gotten to a point where we're coming to the end of the contract that's currently in existence for call processing equipment. And with a new solicitation going out so that a new contract can be established by the July time frame, the, you know, devoting the time and energy necessary to work through that cycle with that vendor for a contract that'll be expiring in a matter of months. It didn't seem to make sense.

So we're focusing on the future in the new contract. Obviously, I expect they'll probably be one of the respondents to that solicitation.

Okay. Appreciate that. We we really wanted to it's better to get the answers from the horse's mouth as opposed to us making assumptions. So thank you for that, mister Yarborough. I'm gonna pass it to my vice chair. Did you have any follow-up?Sorry. I wanted to ask Heather. Do you have does your view of single provider redundancy differ from Cal OES's or align with Cal OES?

I wouldn't consider myself technically proficient to judge. However, I will say that in the conversations that I have had with people who are experts, I have been advised that there have been states that have single providers that have had statewide failures. That's not to say that would happen here. It would depend on how the system is designed. I have also been advised that cybersecurity issues can be more of a challenge in those scenarios.

But, again, system design really can mitigate that, and I'm not qualified to assess. One other thing with single vendor provider that I would feel qualified to assess is the vendor lock in question, which is if you have a single vendor for a state this large, this will be a very large contract. And it would be hard to walk away from if the vendor doesn't deliver. If the vendor sends us a bid and then it ends up we have a lot of additional costs that we didn't anticipate. I mean, these things happen.

Change of work, especially with innovative projects. Like, this is not unusual, but it that is something that we would be wanting to ensure would be addressed in some way.

So the other states that you compared to, how do they compare in size with California?

Well, Pennsylvania I mean, no states, really.

No. That's what I'm that's what I'm getting at. Yeah.

No states really compare. But Pennsylvania, which is another large state, has had a statewide outage. Other states that are large don't may not have had those problems. I have not done a comprehensive analysis of all 50 states and what systems they have. It's something it's on my to do list, but I don't have that information for you today.

Thank you. Okay. This will be my last question unless you say something that leads to another question. But as we're we're we're talking right? As we talk about other states and just really, like, the ownership of these systems, the technology.

Are other states owning the system? Meaning, are are the vendors building the system and passing it to the state and this being, you know, contracted for for updates and for technical things? Are other states in the situation where their 911 systems are basically in the hands of an outside vendor in in perpetuity?

Yeah. Best practice within the industry is to contract for the service with a vendor partner. And I'm not aware of a state that actually owns their system and maintains it themselves.

Anything to add? Nothing else. To that. Okay. Awesome.

So I wanna, first of all, thank you all for answering, you know, coming today to answer the concerns of the state and our constituents and the taxpayers in regards to what we've experienced and what your plans are to move it forward. I think this is part one of a very lengthy undertaking and discussion, but I I definitely wanna appreciate you all showing up and answering the questions. And so at this point, before we let you go, if there's any closing statements or additional information that you would like to to offer, we're gonna turn it back over to you to wrap up.

Yeah. I I just wanna express again my gratitude for the opportunity to come have this dialogue with you. And I think, you know, exposing all of these ideas to, you know, other points of view, make them, you know, reveal them to be however strong they actually are. And so, you know, by doing this, I think we ultimately will arrive at the, the right outcome. Thank you.

I'll be here for questions if you need anything else.

Okay. So with that, Cal OES is going to depart. Our LAO is going to stay, and we are going to, again, thank you for your patience. We're gonna invite our second panel. We are ready for the second panel, which is comprised of vendors contracted under the regional approach.

We'll have Don Ferguson, who's the chief executive office officer of NGA 911. That's the Central And Los Angeles Region vendor. Then we have mister Holt, and mister Holt is the chief executive officer of Synergen Technologies, the Northern Region vendor. And then we have mister Carson, who's the senior director of public sector of Lumen Technologies, the Southern Region vendor. And I think is that it?

And I believe there's a mister Bivens, the client executive partner of Atos, the statewide backup prime vendor. So I wanna welcome all of the vendors here. And with that, I'm going to start with mister Ferguson. You have I'm sorry.

Yes, ma'am.

They they were going this way. I'm sorry. If you can, you have a few minutes to give us your opening statements before we go into questions.

Yes. Thank you. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you here today, and thank you for your ongoing focus on public safety in California's 911 system. My name is Don Ferguson. I'm the CEO of NGA.

I I live in Los Angeles. Our company operates next generation 911 services across The United States and globally. In California, we've deployed the Los Angeles and central regions. Our solution is Nina compliant and Cal OES tested and approved. We built it on the most modern cloud services available, Amazon Web Services, and we subject ourselves to well architected review by their, engineers annually.

The architecture is not only locally geo diverse, but also nationally diverse. It does include multiple data centers, diverse networks, and does deliver 99.9999 level of service. Five nines. Thank you. Ensuring this ensures a modern, robust, flexible, scalable, and up to date 911 system for Californians.

California's transition to next gen as approved by the legislature and in 2019 is some similar to the regional architectures deployed in Florida and Texas, where risk is mitigated across geographic regions and multiple vendors. To add some historical context about California NextGen, in June 2021, the NextGen core service was validated at the Cal OES testing laboratory, including successful interoperability testing between the regions and the statewide provider. The first the first PSAPs went live later that year. Additional deployments followed in 2022 and 2023. By 2024, the next gen infrastructure installation was completed at all 449 public safety answering points across California.

Currently, the next gen network is connected to more than 100 telecommunication service providers, geospatial routing is validated, and the system has been successfully tested statewide. All 449 PSAPs have been equipped, connected, and tested to support the transition. Around August 2024, in the middle of pre migration readiness testing, when at least 62 PSAPs were readied for turn up, the project was paused. Meetings were canceled, and all communication from Cal OES stopped. This was very odd.

In November 2024, Cal OES asked NGA to provide a detailed record of system incidents that occurred during the early deployment of NextGen. These incidents occurred in 2022 and 2023 during the initial deployment and were highlighted by the media. Unfortunately, the media was not interested in the fact that the early incidents were all corrected. In any event, we complied with the request. We provided, approximately 3,000 pages of documentation, including logs, trace files, root cause analysis, maintenance records, and operational procedures.

All of this empirical, factual data provided lessons learned that have been applied to the impressive system in place today. Here are some of the findings from that detailed analysis. First, the regional provider was a single point of contact, so all issues were reported to the region. This had the appearance that all issues were caused by the regional provider. This is a false narrative.

Second, 21% of these very early issues were attributed to the region. And the breakdown of these 21 tickets is as followed as follows. 12 tickets were related to test configuration or system system, mitigation. Six were service degradation, where 911 calls were still delivered. One was an actual outage that affected T Mobile calls only T Mobile calls to Tuolumne County Sheriff.

It lasted about forty minutes. One triggered the automatic failover to the statewide provider, and 911 calls were unaffected, demonstrating the importance of a multi vendor regional architecture. The conclusion is that the regional architecture was not the major contributor to these early issues. So a plan to dismantle the regional architecture does not align with the lived experience of the California NextGen 911 project. Third, and this is very important, the majority, 79% of the early issues encountered had nothing to do with the regional provider, but rather with associated alignment with the legacy system, statewide provider, adjustments to next gen call delivery from the carriers, operational procedures, PSAP training, and project communication.

79%. It is important to note that incidents that occurred during early deployment were not concentrated in a single vendor or component, so singling out one vendor does not seem logical. The incidents were distributed across the broader ecosystem that makes up a modern 911 system. This is a real systems integration effort. This is what it looks like.

Many of the challenges encountered during this period stem from a reality that every state in the country faces, namely that old legacy 911 equipment is an obstacle to a perfect 911 system. The question is not whether modernization should continue. It absolutely must and at a much faster pace because the legacy system has been failing for a long time, as evidenced by large scale legacy network and CPE outages in Los Angeles and other parts of the state in the past six months. The question is whether decisions about the future of the system will be guided by the evidence of how the system actually performed or by narratives that do not reflect fully reflect the operational record. The regional approach adopted by the legislature and Cal OES is the correct approach, and it is, in fact, currently able to function as designed and anticipated.

Redesign affects real costs and risks. The regional networks continue to provide service today and have not experienced systemic technical failures. The ESINET is solid. There have been software application bugs, all of which been have been aggressively addressed during the life of the project. The decision to pause has placed the entire state at risk as people are forced to rely on the failing legacy 911 system.

The situation worsens every day, and the risk increases. The Olympics, World Cup, and Super Bowl are coming to California. Lives should be entrusted with a robust regional design that is ready for turn up. And I underscore that, ready for turn up. We welcome oversight and accountability along with technical review.

All of the regional components are ready, and we are excited to turn it on. Decommissioning the legacy system can start and does not need to wait until 2030. Interim contracts and solutions are unnecessary since the current active tariff structure can hold vendors accountable to high service levels. And there is no need to build a new system since the one we have works and is ready for turn up. If we learned anything from the LA fires, it's planned for the worst.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket and have multiple contingency plans. When the single statewide provider provider architecture fails, it will take out all 449 PSAPs affecting all 40,000,000 residents across the entire state at the same time, just like it did in Pennsylvania. That is a tragedy we can avoid with a little more oversight and a regional design that divides the state into four distinct regions. Let's turn on the regional system we know it works and deliver California as a system they've already paid for. Rather than ask them to wait another five years and spend hundreds of millions of dollars more. Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

Thank you. We'll move forward. Now we'll hear from Mister Holt.

Madam chairwoman, members of the committee, thank you for having us here today. We appreciate it very much. My name is Frank Holt, chief executive officer of Synergem Technologies. Since the early two thousands, Synergent has focused exclusively on the next generation 911 marketplace. As one of the early providers in this space, we have been involved in several industry first.

In 2016, Synergem Software helped deploy the nation's first true statewide NG 911 system in Massachusetts. That system continues to operate today with five nines reliability serving more than 7,000,000 residents and nearly 200 public safety answering points across the Commonwealth. Today, Synergent provides software and network services to PSAPs in Florida, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Missouri. Working with our partners, we are also involved in statewide NG 911 launches in New Jersey and Ohio. Here in California, Synergent serves as the regional network service provider for the Northern Region.

One of the most technically challenging regions in the state, It includes a 165 PSAPs across rural and mountainous terrains. In the South Region, we also partner with Lumen to provide core services network and call routing functions. Taken together, Synergent Technologies support services to reach roughly half of California's PSAPs. Due to the work of Synergent and the other providers, California has a resilient n g 911 system built and operating today. The question before you is whether to build on that progress or start over and put both time and taxpayer investment at risk.

This panel has been convened to gather our perspectives on Cal OES' recent change in direction from the regionalized and redundant architecture that has been built to a proposed statewide platform with a single vendor and uncertain backup options. If I had to summarize Synergems initial reaction in a single word, it would be this, shot. We designed and deployed a modern platform based on the latest n three in Nina I three standards tailored to the unique needs of California with its large population, vast geography, and higher than average exposure to natural disasters. When wildfires rage or earthquakes rumble, it is essential that 911 calls get through. The system we have built was designed with exactly that resilience in mind.

The decision to use a regionalized architecture is a prudent one and not unusual in the industry. Three of the four largest states, California, Texas, and Florida, are using regional approaches to deploy n g 911. And while New York state continues evaluating its strategy, New York City is proceeding with its own independent n g 911 system. This approach is fully consistent with the NENA I three standards, which anticipate multiple n g 911 networks interconnecting seamlessly to route emergency calls. That is precisely the architecture that has been designed, built, and validated here in California.

In March 2025, following the program pause announced in late 2024 Cal OES convened a meeting with the vendors. During that meeting, they expressed an interest in working collaboratively with us, leveraging our experience in other states to determine the best path forward

in

California. However, after that meeting in March and despite repeated attempts to follow-up, we had no further contact with Cal OES Leadership until June. When we did meet again, instead of discussing improvements to the current architecture, we were informed of a plan to abandon the system already underway and pursue a different approach, one similar to the what is being now proposed. As you as you might expect, that news came as a surprise. Many things have changed since last June, including shifts in Cal OES Leadership and the proposals now under discussion, but one thing has not changed.

Synergent continues to operate and support our systems for California PSAPs today, systems delivering Five nine's reliability and ready to expand further across the region. We welcome the opportunity to work with Cal OES to accelerate deployment of n g 911 across the state. We have developed solid working relationships with the other vendors in this project to support that effort. And we believe the object the objectives recently outlined by Cal OES can be achieved without discarding the architecture already built and without abandoning the $450,000,000 already invested. That outcome would be a win for the state, a win for taxpayers, and most importantly, a win for the 911 callers who depend on these systems in their most critical moments.

Thank you. Look forward to answering any questions.

Thank you, mister Holt. Now we'll hear from mister Carl James Carlson.

Good afternoon, madam Ranson, members. My name is Jim Carlson, and I hold the role of senior director of public safety sales at Lumen. In my role, I'm responsible for the experiences of 911 customers across the country that we work with. Lumen has been engaged in NextGen 911 deployments in 12 states over the past fifteen years. We have experienced statewide, city based, and county based deployments and have learned how effective design and collaboration leads to successful implementation and management of NextGen 911 systems.

While there are NextGen 911 standards, best practices, and lessons learned from the history of NextGen 911 deployment across the country, every deployment has its unique goals and requirements such that no deployment is identical to another. So design matters. The journey of NextGen 911 is a complex transformation that will deliver capabilities to California public safety professionals that will enable them to save more lives. Additionally, the platform of NextGen 911 will position California to take advantage of future applications and data, and that's particularly exciting. Next gen 911 deployment is essential for public safety in California.

There's three observations I wanna make, on Next gen 911 in California. First, its importance. As stated many times this afternoon, the evolution of next gen 911 is essential to public safety in California. Current California 911 technology is dated and limited in terms of functionality. A well designed California NextGen 911 system will deliver exceptional performance and resiliency.

That's complicated. The evolution of NextGen 911 in any state or in any situation is complicated. In California, the addition of a regional and prime service provider design has increased complexity. The design intention for this complexity is heightened resiliency, and resiliency is very important. While resiliency is essential, the added complexity, as it does, brings challenges to implementation and management of the next gen 911 system.

And finally, collaboration. The complexity of the California NextGen 911 system requires comprehensive collaboration between the vendor community, the Office of Emergency Services in California PSAPs, as well as others. The effective collaboration will minimize the risk of complexity and deliver the design of a high performing and resilient NextGen 911 system. Next steps, I think it's important to note the value of the conversations we're having today where we exchange observations, learnings, and perspectives on moving forward to best position California for a future of NextGen 911. You're talking to a range of individuals who look at this particular situation from a range of different viewpoints, and that's important.

The current pause provides the opportunity to honestly look at the past five years and celebrate the progress that's been made and learn from the challenges. The path forward will be made better by what we do now. Thank you, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Carlson. We'll hear from Mr. JB Bivens.

Good afternoon, Chair Ransom, Vice Chair Hadwick, and members. My name is Jason Bivens. I am, the vice president and client executive partner for ASOS Public Safety. I was previously a 911 director for Santa Clara County Communications. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss our work in support of California's NextGen 911 system.

Before I address the specifics of our role, I want to acknowledge a fundamental principle that guides everything we do at Atos. 911 reliability and resiliency is non negotiable. Atos understands the consequence of failure in operational terms. As a Californian myself, I know when 911 is dialed, help is required. There's no margin for error.

Monetization cannot come at the expense of service continuity for Californians or frontline telecommunicators who serve them. I wanna be precise about Atos' role in this project because context matters. Atos has served as a statewide provider, the backbone of California's next gen 911 system. We are not a regional provider. Our current responsibilities are network infrastructure and core services that deliver text to 911, Internet based 911 calls, and 911 calls from small telecom carriers, and act as a statewide backup when regional, providers require support.

We have demonstrated our ability to carry live 911 traffic since 06/01/2023. These distinctions between the roles of the state, Atos, and regional vendors are important because of the challenges this committee is examining. And I wanna provide as much clarity as possible. Let me turn now to our performance. When regional networks have needed our support, our our network has been there and it has performed.

Beginning in spring 2025 and continuing through late 2025 the Central Los Angeles and Southern regions were permanently failed over to our network. To date, Atos continues to provide primary call delivery in these three regions. These are documented events in which our network has carried live 911 calls that might have otherwise been at risk. The statewide backbone performed as designed and delivered 911 traffic to 22 of the 23 live PSAPs. I would also like to highlight the critical statewide services Atos provides directly to California's 911 system.

First, text to 911. When a Californian in crisis sends a text message to 911, Atos is the provider responsible for delivering that message to the dispatcher. We are the primary text to 911 provider for the state, and the system is operational today and delivered a 186,400 calls texts, excuse me, in 2025. Second, location services. Atos is responsible for the state's location database and geographic information services system.

The geospatial data that underpins how 911 calls are routed and correct to the correct dispatch center. We store the statewide provide the state provided GIS data and synchronize it with regional network service providers to deliver accurate location information to dispatch centers. These are foundational services that support every 911 call in California. Our relationship with Cal OES has been one of collaboration and partnership. We've worked closely with the Cal 911 branch throughout the project and ensure transparency and provide regular status updates.

When challenges have arisen in this complex multi vendor environment, we have engaged constructively to find solutions. ASOS believes strongly that transparency fosters trust, and we have endeavored to bring clarity and honesty to every aspect of our engagement with the state. When the state needed Atos to step in and support regions experience services experiencing service disruptions, we did so. Looking ahead, I wanna assure the committee that the foundation is in place. The statewide network and core services are operational.

California has significant public events coming up, such as the 2028 Olympics, and continuity of service through those events is critical. In closing, I wanna reiterate our commitment to the mission, ensuring that when a Californian dials 91, help arrives. ATSUS is prepared to support whatever path the state determines is the best in the best interest of California's 911 system, and we are committed to being a constructive partner in that effort. Thank you, and I welcome questions.

Thank you, mister Bivens. I wanna thank all of you, for a taking time to prepare your statements and and also for being here to deliver those statements. I'm sure this has been a very trying and frustrating experience for you as well. And so with that being said, we're gonna go ahead and and move into the questions so that we can figure out how from your perspective how we got here and definitely get your input on where we go from here. So before I I start, I'm gonna defer to my vice chair.

Did you have, it looks like she's ready to go. I'm gonna defer to Heather Hadwick.

I always have questions. Thank you guys for coming. I really appreciate it. My first question is to Don. You are among the regional vendors that say taxpayers, will pay hundreds of millions more for a new provider to take over. Is that accurate?

Sorry. Repeat the question.

That, you're among the regional vendors and that say taxpayers will pay hundreds of millions more if, a new provider is is to take over. Is that accurate?

That is accurate.

And do you can you estimate how many hundreds of millions or even are we just ballparking?

I can't estimate that. I think, Calabrio is going through an RFP process of soliciting perspectives from multiple vendors, and I think they would have the most recent, data. I, though, experienced the the build out. What we did is we built out Central Los Angeles region. That's about 200 PSAPs.

We went to every PSAP. We physically visited the PSAP. We installed our rack, which had our equipment and the statewide provider's equipment in it. We ran redundant circuits to that so you can start to calculate the number of PSAP visits and the disruption that was necessary for those PSAPs. In many cases, we remediated power.

That was a long cycle. That was about three years or so. And I know what it cost us. So and and so being just from our experience in Los Angeles and Central Region, I'd say it's a ballpark. Okay.

Has NGA played a role in any of the delays that we're seeing?

I think, answering just for myself, absolutely. We, in the middle of pre migration readiness readiness testing that all of us were part of, we discovered some CHP use cases that were not handled. And they were they were surprised. It's like and I remember us looking at each other. CHP wants that.

And so as a, core service provider, we had to do modifications to our core, which you modify it, and then you have to test it, and then you have to deploy it. It's a whole cycle. So to that end, certainly, we have. But I would like to add to that that every one of those issues that we've discovered, either by surprise or a bug or a software failure, were all identified root cause analysis performed and then handled.

Why why are you lobbying Cal OES to continue the regional model? Why is it important?

I I the regional model is what was dividing the state into four regions. And we I live in Los Angeles, and we have I I have my family and my voice, stake in this service that's here in Los deployed across the state. Four regions means, diversity is realized. And not just diversity geographically. We have those already. The regional design has multiple data centers, multiple circuits. All of that diversity is already there delivering five nines.

All of these vendors here do that. That was part of the original contract. But the regional design, it adds a couple other dimensions. One, it puts the state's hands in more than one vendor's sort of puts the state in more than one vendor's hands. Mhmm.

So if NGA is not performing, turn to Synergim. Synergim's not performing, turn to Lumen. Or if the region's networks are not servicing properly, failover to a backup, which would which would be Atos. So you're you're afforded those opportunities when you have multiple region multiple regions with multiple providers. And if you look at the outage that occurred, and there have been many, but the one that hit the news most recently as 911 does, Pennsylvania, and you look at the root cause of the Pennsylvania failure, it was the root cause that is pretty typical in 911 NextGen 911's systems, it's human error.

Mhmm. And as much as you want to say, I've got the best engineers, I've got the best processes, that human error is just a factor. And AI is not gonna solve that. I mean, it'll solve some things, but it's not gonna solve that human error. And the way you mitigate against that is to have distinct regions, distinct responsibilities, different versions of of software running in separate NGCS instances.

So and with their own processes that are completely distinct. You have a firewall, essentially, between the two. And and so in addition to that, to LAO's point, you have a you have someone else to bounce ideas off of. You're not stuck with one vendor. You can really pit the vendors against each other and say, hey, is is is he telling me the truth?

And and what is the what is the all of us will agree that we're Nina compliant, we're Nina standards, that we interoperate. The the challenge there and part of this discussion, and it's a healthy dialogue, is that there is gaps. There's areas in the Nina standard where you can interpret or you can implement it in a certain way, and that's some of the discussions open discussions that we've had and improvements in lessons learned this lessons learned that that that we have made. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you. Are there cybersecurity risks with NextGen 911 that could be for any of you with the system?

I talked a lot. Anyone else wanna say that?

Certainly certainly with any with any communication system, they're they're cybersecurity risk. So they they show up in in NextGen 911 as well. So the the importance of the design of the cybersecurity profile is that you you really understand where the vulnerability points are, and you have proper tools and methodologies in place. What we're seeing across the country is we are engaged with states who are, right now, are making decisions about their first journey into NextGen 911 that they're very particular about asking questions about cyber security and having bidding vendors go through rigorous steps to demonstrate that all the proper controls are in place, whether it's on the hardware devices, whether it's software systems, access, policies, and procedures. All that, has to be taken care of.

And it it it never ends. It's an always changing so, having a structure in place that's always analyzing what's going on, is always looking for vulnerabilities, and always remediating those vulnerabilities is essential.

And do you think there should be an audit of this project? Do you think the money seems about right?

I think it's great that the state is stepping up and asking these types of questions, you know, on audit. But whatever you wanna see. I know we at Synergent, and I'm sure they do too, have the backup for all the you know, details for all the answers that you're looking for. And as Don has mentioned, there's been a tremendous amount of work amongst the vendors. This was pride of ownership.

We were all united behind one common cause to give California a modern nine you know, n g 911 system. And that's what we were doing. And we were overcoming all kinds of obstacles, learning each other's languages. Well, we do it this way. How do you do it?

And and our team and some of my team is here today, but we have tremendous amount of people doing this every hour, every day. So, you know, to to to have the oversight, the LAO, whoever, bring them on. We've got the data. We've got everything, that we show the state on a weekly or monthly basis now to prove what we've done and why it's working and the checks and balances that are in place to justify the money that state's spending. And we are at the doorstep of having this done.

We really are. We've been frozen since March or June 2024. We're going on two years of nothing. Like, you know, we've continued to maintain things. Of course, we're not gonna let things die. Yeah. But the fact that that y'all are doing this is is very positive, and we at Synergent welcome any and all oversight you want. I promise you, we have the backup, you know, you're looking for for detailed answers.

Did you wanna add something?

Yes. Back to my opening testimony, CalOS essentially went dark about eighteen months ago. Mhmm. And I I'm I'm not understating that. It was it was a cut in communication, and we were in the middle of turning up the of the of the of the testing that would turn up PSAPs.

So I want to underscore that and say that this is refreshing for me. K. I am happy to have an open discussion and happy to dig into any issues that that that that were had or processes that can be improved. It's very much welcome.

And were you ever given a reason why they weren't responding or just went dark? Nothing? Like, is it because I know there's a lot of transition and turnover at that time.

Yeah. So it it coincided with the change the the the going dark coincided with a specific change in leadership at OES. And I can't answer that. That's a question for OES. I can't

Sorry. One more. What's the path forward from here?

It's very clear from from and I I I will speak only from from my perspective. We, I think, Frank, had mentioned, we're very proud of what we've created. And it works, and it's ready to turn up. Now having sat on it for eighteen months, you gotta go back and you gotta go back through pre migration readiness testing and you gotta test everything fine. But, the path forward to me is is very clear.

This architecture is sound. It's robust. It's deserving. Californians are deserving of the extra resilience between a region and a prime statewide provider. You've heard Atos even test testify about how important that statewide provider backup is, and the regions give the diversity to ensure that you don't have a single statewide outage.

So the path forward is to is to engage in the project today. Maybe take some time to new processes Cal OES has implemented or whatever because they have gone dark, but to start it immediately.

I don't disagree with Don's perspective. I do think that it's fair to say that there are single statewide providers in The United States that are successful. And they do that by implementing redundant solutions within their own systems, including things like data centers, lanes within a data center, and other pieces of equipment that are redundant, that would be more than double resilience, to that.

So, so from Lumen's point of view and I I'm hearing it echoed on the panel this afternoon. You know, when I think about the Southern Region and I think about all the work that's happened in the last four years, and and in particular, the areas where we were able to have, control over what needed to happen, when it would need to happen, resources. We had a clear path. I'm proud of the progress that we made. And, it it was, representative of what we've done across the country.

Now I think we have to be honest with the situation that we're in now. The complexity that we have does create questions that need to be answered. And having to do with how elements work together, how do we get decisions made, what documentation that we use, that's important. Because what what I'm hearing in in this venue here as well as budget hearings is, fair questions are being asked, and they need to be answered. And there there's a lack of confidence that makes it difficult to move forward in public safety.

Everybody it it I think we can all disagree on certain elements of what's happening here, but we all agree on the importance of what's happening. And we all agree that the system that's in place going forward, what the next step is, has to be the the resilient and the best design system for the state of California. We're deploying right now in the state of New Jersey a next gen 911 system. It's18,000,009 and a half million people with 200 sites. It's a different world than California with 40,000,450 sites.

It was already complicated to start off with, and it's more complicated here for all kinds of reasons. And so maybe five years ago, we underestimated the complexity, or maybe we underestimated the operational l impacts of the complexity. Now is the time to fix that. And and I think this forum here, as well as others, gives us a chance to honestly look at what has not gone well and make it better. So I think, from Lumen's point of view, we're, we're anxious to be a part of the solution going forward.

We believe that we've learned a tremendous amount from our NextGen 911 deployments across the country, and we've seen them based on the single city. We've seen them based on counties and seen them statewide. They're all different. They all have unique characteristics. But at the end of the day, it comes back to design. It comes back to design, and you have to design the proper approach that gives you the resiliency and performance you need.

From from Synergent Technologies point of view, we wanna get back to work. We wanna turn up the Northern region. And I understand the the conversation about statewide and regions, but to me, that ship has sailed. We've got a regional approach that can work. There's been half a billion spent.

And to, you know, pull that out, which you're going to have to do, you're gonna have to go to each PSAP, pull out hardware and those types of things, and the new statewide provider puts it in. You know, you're talking about a lot of time, money, to be reworked. And we feel like we should get back to work and turn up our region. We're ready to do that.

Awesome. Thank you. Okay. So I'm gonna kind of follow-up on some things that are who we heard and then some some pre prepared questions. And and so I guess I'll start with you all are the regional vendors, and I'll start with Atos. What does redundancy it sounds like what you talked about, you have redundancy in your system. What does that look like?

Sure. And just to be clear, we're we're the statewide backup provider.

You're the statewide backup provider. For text only or for

No. For the entire 911 system. Okay. We do provide and it's important, I think, to know that we do provide the statewide services for text to 911 and location services. So we're not just a backup provider.

We're also providing statewide level services. But I think redundancy, and and I I agree with my colleagues in that. You look to the NEEM standards, they're ANSI standards. They they speak to what redundancy looks like. That can, be in a a regional flavor, that can also be in a single provider flavor, that can be in different flavors than even that.

And so the the most important thing, and and what I appreciate about this, is that we're having that conversation, and I think that that conversation will become more nuanced with engineering teams and and other technical teams as this is developed.

Thank you. Is there a world, and I don't think I heard it this way, where there is one provider and then we have regional backups? Is that something that's been discussed, is having the if the if the statewide system fails, we have regional backups as opposed to having a regional four regional systems. Has that been discussed with you all?

It's not been discussed with us. The only thing that really resonated with me, and I'll just echo the LAO's report or the testimony, is that the language and dialect has been a key concern as we've deployed. And I think that's been echoed by my colleagues. Right? And and that is is one of the biggest issues. And I don't know that if you reverse the scenario that that will be improved.

It's it's with the original question about resilience, which is accomplished by redundancy of components within the network, Whether you flip them or not, you you arrive at the same place that if if Atos is primary on delivering a call and in fact, the design was was was was built with that in mind, The statewide provider takes all the regional calls, the VoIP calls, the Internet calls. The regional providers take the three wireless providers and the two large CLECs, ILECs, Frontier and AT and T wireline. And and should a wireline call fail, then we're gonna fail to statewide provider. Should a regional wireline call fail, well then, that's just gonna fail over to the the region. So that's actually already worked into the design, that resilience, that bidirectional resilience.

Okay. I'm gonna pretend to understand. No. I do I understand. I vaguely understand.

It it sounds like you feel like it would work one way without the other, but I I guess what my question or or what my thought, I should say, is is it seems as if if there's a statewide system, you know, like, everyone who complies regionally would have to speak the same language as opposed to region a having one language and region c having a different language. Is does that make sense to you?

So I think that's exactly right. And that is why, when designing the interaction between the regions so for example, if NGA needs to transfer a call to Synergent's region and we're backed up, we're in the middle, so we're backed against both Lumen and Synergent. We pass that call through the statewide provider and the statewide provider delivers that. So our point, we don't we don't transfer calls directly to Synergym. We send them to the statewide provider which then delivers them. So

That avoids that and that's in the design today. That's what avoids the complexities of region to region. It's actually region to prime and then.

Which okay. It kinda makes a good good case for why the statewide approach, but I'll I'll save that for for another day. You mentioned in in your opening comments, mister Ferguson, something about that 79% of the concerns that took place had nothing to do with the the providers with with the four vendors. So I'm wondering, should you not have been aware?

And that this is the concern is that under you know, having you all lead the technology, we we want to ensure that we're being thoughtful and proactive and there's, you know, forethought into looking down the road and what some of the concerns could be. Can you tell us why you didn't you don't feel that you should have been aware that these concerns were taking place?

All of those so first, I can send you that report, not the 3,000 pages, but the summary.

Please. Okay.

Yeah. We were very much aware of them. In fact, that's how we built each of the regions and the the the statewide provider

Okay.

The prime. That's how we built our knowledge base, and that's one of the aspects that hasn't been talked about yet. There is a tremendous depth of knowledge that has been built in the Southern Region, in the Northern Region, in Los Angeles and Central Region, as well as operating as the statewide backup. Ton Ton of knowledge over five years. So so each one of those incidents that I referenced, what what would happen is a situation would occur at PSAP.

Something doesn't seem right. It's not making sense. They call our support line. Our support line logs that issue into a ticketing system, and then we proceed to handle it. And the information that I gave to you and the and the summary report that I'll provide to you actually cataloged all of those incidents.

So we had to handle each and every one of them. And some of them were new, so then you ex expand your learning. Some of them were reoccurring issue or or similar issue that you carry the knowledge you learned before to handle that issue. And that's why we did that report.

Awesome. Thank you for that. So are all of the vendors using the same I I heard that we were on the Amazon cloud. Is everyone using the same computing service within their system?

No. No.

No. Okay. And were you have you all previously worked together? It seems like you have a very congenial relationship before now, but prior to receiving the these these various regional statewide contracts, can you speak a little bit to, like, what your experience was, a, working together and have what what's what kind of projects did you work on before the receiving the contracts?

Yeah. So I can begin. So we've worked specifically with Synergy in several states. We're deploying with them right now in in New Jersey. And we work with them in counties in Florida as well as in Nevada. So I I know Frank and his his team, and we've worked together So I I know Frank and his his team, and we've worked together

In multiple situations. We have a, you know, an equally positive relationship with NGA and Otos in different where in different areas. You have to remember that Lumen as a company is a network company. Mhmm. And so in some situations, I sell to them because they need network resources and they buy them from Lumen.

And so there's an element of working together in different contexts that just brings, you know, a new set of possibilities to us. I think that there's a there's all there's always a people element to things. Just like you all see in in the work that you're in, how you work together with the people sitting around you. Yeah. There's personalities that's important, but there's also structure to it.

That there is a way you handle a hearing. There's a there's a process that you don't invent it every time you have one.

Right.

And so that makes for an efficient way of you leading the journey that you're on. I think the same thing happens with us. You know, having structures in place that help us communicate together well, that help us implement together well, that is what takes us to success.

Okay. And so to be clear, so you had worked together with with Lumen, and had you worked on a similar what what sort of product? If just very briefly, like, one sentence.

There's nothing similar to California. And I and I'm not being We're so unique. ... with with Synergent, the the closest state would be New Jersey with 200 sites and 10,000,000 population. If you look at what tends to make things more complicated for NextGen 911 it's number of locations and population because populations tends to be spread all over geography. The more people you have, the bigger the geography is.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Appreciate that. And if you all can very briefly respond to questions.

Add to mister Carlson's statement that we also collaborate as a public safety community in the standards that we're talking about. So all of us as industry experts participate in the working groups that develop and maintain the standards.

Thank you.

Synergent was founded solely on NENA I three standards.

Okay.

And so we worked with with Lumen and others within this new framework of of, you know, the with the direction that the industry is going. And I think what what what he just mentioned regarding standards boards, I mean, people that work within these companies have been over the last two decades designing, collaborating, and building the future for this country and and, you know, the reality of of, you know, mobile phones being the the original, you know, calls to 911. So, you know, it's pretty important.

Thank you. Mister Ferguson?

It is a small community. It is a tight knit community and and in fact, so so close and so tight knit. As California as California released and then awarded a a contract to deploy NextGen 911 in 2019, there was a lot of excitement across the nation. California entered into being a leader for NextGen across the nation. The pause unfortunately put a pause on that, and it left a lot of confusion not only in California, but in the rest of the nation.

Calling into question the viability of NextGen 911. Does it does it really work? What what are they considered? What did you learn? I've got tons of tons of calls and we all live that that that situation together. So I think in terms of a a community, we are all connected. We all go to the same trade shows, drink at the same place in the hotels, and meet each other at least 50 times a year.

Alright. Shrock, the last comment. That's fine. Alright. Cool. And so was it was this a joint proposal? Like, when you all was this it's it's because you have those relationships? Was this regional concept, like, a joint proposal? No. It was not. It was not. So you just happened to okay. Gotcha.

As an RFP. Right.

Alright. Cool. Thank you for for that. We're just like I said, we're trying to understand, you know, how we go forward and if we go forward with pieces and parts and and how you all are connected. It's clear right now that you've you've worked well together, so we do appreciate that.

So when we talk about I'm gonna go and go back into some of the questions that other folks had. Structural consolidation and what that would look like as far as the impact on technological innovation. So I guess the question is, will structural consolidation impact techno technological innovation in your personal in your opinion? And whoever would like to answer that question.

Yeah. I'll I'll start. You know, I think there's a there's a whole wave of technology innovation that's just happening whether it's artificial intelligence or cloud native applications or however you wanna describe that technology evolution. And and so I think that the different design models across the country for NextGen 911 are either going to enable those new technology options or or be an obstacle to it. So I think you look at the model in in in California, and and you wanna make sure that the model enables those future technology.

I don't see you know, in terms of what enables or what, inhibits new technology and flexibility. So, the system needs to evolve and and that's been mentioned before. It's the notion of 911 in the future is changing and evolving and the systems need to evolve with it.

Thank you. And currently, is Atos are you the only company that's still working actively with Cal OES?

Well, I would say that we all have active contract or active on the tariff. We we do have connectivity to all of the PSAPs throughout the entire state as part of our tariff based services.

Are you the only one in current communications and continuing to I've heard others say they wanna get back to work. Are you the ones that that are are you currently

I mean, I

actively actively engaged, I guess, I should say, as a backup?

I mean, we are we are taking primarily calls for three out of the four regions. Okay. I think it was was noted earlier, South Lake Tahoe is is still active in the Northern region.

Okay. Thank you.

To to further clarify that, over the the other regions, location services are being provided. The Azzie Nets are being maintained. Our NOC is active. We still receive tickets every day. By by getting back to work, what I mean is not that it's not working. It is working. The SNES Live, we're we're delivering location across all the PSAPs. It's to start turning up new PSAPs on on NextGen is I think what we mean.

Yeah. Understand.

So I would answer and say, we are working with Cal OES. We're in conversations with them. We're interested in having our point of view heard, and and so we're in those conversations.

Thank you for that. Okay. Awesome. I'm just if you can give me one second. From verification. I believe that we answered you all answered most of the committee questions. I'm gonna turn is there anything else that we need to? Awesome. So with that, I'm gonna turn it back over to you all to give closing statements. And if there's any additional information you'd like to add, we'd be happy to hear it. We'll start with you, mister Burgess.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to share. And so I, you know, I would say that you scratch the surface on a complicated subject. And so there's more to be learned. And so please, in the future, if you have a need to hear more of our perspectives, please let us know. So we'd like to be a part of that. And we appreciate the the vigilance of your questions. So thank you.

I would just say OES has been a really great partner for all of us, and and we have learned a lot along the way. I do think that we heard, you know, deputy director Yarbrough in his testimony say that oversight or in his in his questions and answers say oversight's important and it's necessary. And those are things that will continue to air out what the best practices are for California moving forward, and we look forward to being part of that conversation.

Yeah. We appreciate our business with California, and we look forward to continue in working with Cal OES. We welcome oversight. We welcome all kinds of questions that we will answer in detail, and we'll continue to work with our our colleagues here to, you know, get you what you ordered.

Thank you. And, very much welcome to further engage. We'll make ourselves available as needed for any additional follow-up questions or meetings or discussions. We're glad to answer whatever questions come. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you all for your responsiveness. We're gonna move forward to the next panel. This is our third and final panel. This is the advisory board and public safety answering points perspective.

And so we're going to hear in this final panel from our very, very patient panel presenters. We have chief Andrew White. Alright. So we have chief, chief White, who's the chief of the Martinez Police Department and NG 911 advisory board member, as well as our last panelist, which is Casey Young, the executive director of stem cell regional 911 and and Cal Nina's second vice president. So thank you both for joining us.

We're gonna just jump right in. Thank you again for your patience. So we're really looking forward to your perspective as I think it really puts every pulls everything together nicely and and gives us a an additional way to look at this. So I'm gonna move forward with the question which is what role has the 911 advisory board played in the adoption? Sorry.

You know what? Thank you. This is why we have people helping us out because I was just gonna jump right in. I wanna give you a couple of minutes to give us your opening statements. I'm gonna start with chief chief White. Thank you.

Thank you, madam chair and members of the committee. Appreciate the opportunity to be here to testify before you today. My name is Andrew White, and I serve as chief of police for the city of Martinez. And I've been a member of the state 911 advisory board for nearly five years. By way of background, I began my career in public safety as a dispatcher.

I served as a police chief most recently for nearly eight years at two different jurisdictions. I've also been deeply involved in public safety technology, leading county wide radar in our ability initiatives. I only share that to emphasize that I've seen this system from both an operational and a technical perspective. Every day in California, people dial 911 during the worst moments of their lives. The system handles more than 24,000,000 emergency calls per year.

The system supporting those calls must be reliable, resilient, and trusted by both the public and the professionals who answer them. I think you stole this part of it, but I'll repeat because I wrote it down. But I what I wrote was the question before us today is not whether we should implement this system. Modernization is clearly necessary. The question really is how do we do it?

How do we ensure it's done reliably, transparently, and in a way that supports the professionals who operate these systems? Local agencies operate these systems, but they have little role in shaping the decisions that are made about them.

The legislature recognized the importance of local expertise when it created the state 911 advisory board. That principle remains just as important today. However, the role and authority has not evolved to match the scale, the complexity, and the implications of implementing next generation 911 let alone changing the entire system approach mid project. In practice, the advisory board is often presented with decisions after they have already been made rather than being asked to provide input beforehand and actually guide the decision making. Significant developments are often learned first through the media, vendors, or other informal channels rather than direct communication.

A most recent example cited earlier occurred just last week when the state terminated a contract for next generation call handling equipment. Although we were notified, it was after the information had already been released out. The current governance structure of the advisory board creates challenges that impede successful implementation of this project. Cal OES, by statute, serves as chair of the advisory board, meaning the very entity responsible for implementing the program also controls the body intended to provide some level of oversight or advice. For the board to function more than commentary after decisions are made, it must have a clear and more independent role.

Greater oversight is greater oversight authority is also needed when you consider the lifespan of this project for both continuity and also staff turnover. It was mentioned earlier in the hearing, a number of the people that you hear when this started have left. And even in the interim time of the pause, people have gone from working at Cal OES or as a contractor to work for the vendors and testify before you today. More broadly, the board lacks clear visibility in key elements of the program, including fiscal impacts, detailed timelines, and other core components that you would expect of a large scale project and basic project management principles. I wanna emphasize that this is not just a technology project.

It's a public safety infrastructure project and probably one of the most significant since the original rollout of 911. Next generation 911 is moving California from our largely analog communications network to a modern software driven system. This is a tectonic shift. This shift requires a different approach to leadership, governance, and project management. To me, it's not clear that the shift has been fully appreciated and reflected in how the project has been managed.

The processes that successfully sustained a legacy system are not the same that are required to successfully implement this project. If those approaches are not adapted, at best, they'll slow down progress. At worst, they'll lead to project failure. This is not abstract. It's why we're here today.

We are here today in part because a significant component of this project is slated to be set aside after substantial investment, both time and money, underscoring the need to fully understand how we arrived at this point. Without a clear and honest assessment of what actually went wrong, whether technical, managerial, or structural, or a combination thereof, we risk repeating those very same mistakes as we chart the path forward. I agree with the LAO's office that California should carefully evaluate the available path forward, including whether any elements of the current system can can be recovered or adapted, as well as alternative approaches and their operational, their performance, and fiscal implications and trade offs. You spoke earlier about statewide failures. I landed on a plane in Pennsylvania when they experienced the statewide failure with my daughter.

At that time, there was discussions going on about what the path forward was, and I think what has been mentioned is that a statewide system isn't necessarily unsafe and isn't necessarily prone to statewide failure when appropriate guardrails are in place. But the risk is real, and I got to see it firsthand. At the same time, I don't think the continued delay can be the answer. We must move forward in a deliberate and informed way. We also need to have productive and collaborative relationships with all the vendors who deliver the system components, whether in its current iteration or what the future one may be.

I'm not here today to advocate for any particular vendor or a technical solution. My goal is to ensure that our deployment moves forward in a way that prioritizes reliability, transparency, and collaboration with the very professionals who operate that system every day. Modernizing 911 is not optional, but neither is getting it right. Public safety systems cannot afford to fail. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you, Chief White.Alright. Miss Young? Alright.

Well, I wanna thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Kasey Young, and I'm here on behalf of the board of directors of the California chapter of the National Emergency Number Association, also known as Cal Nina. Cal Nina represents 911 professionals who answer the call for help across California. We are comprised of public safety dispatchers, supervisors, managers, and IT professionals who are responsible for processing millions of 911 calls each year. We serve as the first point of contact for individuals experiencing emergencies.

We play a critical role in ensuring that help is a phone call or text away by rendering aid over the phone within seconds of answering, and we ensure responders are dispatched promptly and accurately. We would like to express our support for the implementation of next generation 911 technology. Modernizing our 911 infrastructure is essential to ensuring that emergency communication systems keep pace with how the public communicates today. Developing a modern and resilient network that will provide reliability and redundancy is imperative. As society has moved on from landline telephones, our 911 system must incorporate enhanced location technology and provide the ability to communicate via text message or live video.

The current NextGen project has been delayed many years, and the deployment experienced many challenges. At its onset, we were promised that new equipment deliveries and implementations would be seamless and well communicated to our staff. Instead, we experienced breakdowns in communication as multiple vendors and subcontractors would arrive at PSAPs with limited information asking to install equipment without an appointment or prior confirmation. Sometimes, they even arrived at the wrong communication center attempting to do work that was not scheduled or necessary. We were assured that test calls would be made during non peak hours and scheduled well in advance.

Instead, during our peak windows of activity, we would receive competing calls on 911 lines asking to do testing while we were receiving calls of criminal activity in progress, medical emergencies, and traffic accidents. Many dispatchers perform the dual function of answering emergency calls while also handling radio traffic. Imagine a dispatcher handling an active incident on the radio now having to field unscheduled test calls and sometimes their busiest hours of the day, adding stress and mental fatigue to an already challenging work dynamic. For the centers that did begin taking calls, there were many issues with a dropped or misrouted calls, audio issues, hearing the callers, and more. The promises of a seamless transition were not met.

Calnea also has concerns regarding the frequent leadership changes within the Cal OES 911 branch over the past two years. These transitions have created challenges related to communication and clarity around staff changes, as well as updates to the state's approach to the new network RFP. As this project continues to move forward, we would welcome more consistent communication and transparency regarding timelines, decisions, and implementation plans. It is important to ensure that the rollout does not place additional strain on PSAP resources or the dispatchers who are responsible for answering emergency calls. We also recognize the importance of moving forward with urgency as a legacy system continues to age, and we appreciate the efforts being made to modernize the state's 911 infrastructure.

From the perspective of those working in 911 centers every day, our mission is simple. Ensuring that every person in California has a reliable and immediate access to emergency services when they need it most. When someone dials 911, the public's primary concern is that the system is reliable and efficient. It is our responsibility at both the state and local level to ensure that expectation is met every single time. Advancing the next generation 911 project will ensure that when Californians reach out for help, 911 professionals are prepared, always ready to answer the call, and that help is on the way.

But thank you for your time and your continued support of California's emergency communication system, and we're available to answer any questions.

Okay. So first, I wanna start by thanking you both for, very great opening transparent, like, really shining a light through your opening remarks on what it means to be an end user, have that lived experience, and, go through this attempted transition. So I I really do wanna appreciate you all for doing that. I'm gonna start with my first question is going to be regarding the advisory board and what role the advisory board you alluded to a little bit. It sounds like you kind of getting in or getting information after the fact, but have you played any role in the adoption of the regional approach or the have you had any discussions about the development of a transition plan?

So I was not on the board when the decision was made to adopt a a regional plan. My understanding that was a result after studies were completed, etcetera. So I can't speak to that as far as the board's concerned. In terms of the, the paths forward, certainly, there was a subcommittee that was created, back in late 2024 early 2020, '5, I believe. And that subcommittee I serve on with a member from Calmina.

And we have had discussions. But my point was that most of those discussions relate around here's what we're doing and here's your chance to say something about it. And I've said time and time again, while we may get that initial information, why not bring it to the board and say, here's what our options are. We're at a crossroads. You are the people that, you know, operate the system day to day and frankly deal with the results good or bad.

What do you think what should be the path forward? And for whatever reason, that just is not how it's it's worked. Sorry. That's not how it's worked out.

I appreciate that. And has the the either Calle Nina or the advisory board expressed, even though you get the information after the fact, any issues with the plans, once they are given to you? Have you expressed issues that would give the agencies time to make corrections and to consider what your input may be?

Sure. I would say as a board, I don't know that our role is to necessarily guide project management. But certainly, we have expressed the need for more consistent communication and transparency and definitely some flexibility in standards and how we are scheduling, testing, upgrades, and implementations as it stands today. It seemed that we could only upgrade during, like, nine to five hours, which is difficult operationally for dispatchers. Usually, we're work scheduling those types of things in off hours so that we don't they're not competing with 911 calls.

So I guess we would ask that, the PSAP community 911 professionals are more involved, consulted, and communicated with.

I would just add that the advisory board has expressed on, multiple occasions concerns, and not necessarily disagreement in some cases, but legitimate concerns. For example, at the most recent advisory board, there was comments made by advisers regarding the timeline. Is it really practical knowing what we know today, Even if all the money and everything else is taken care of, can we really accomplish it within that timeline? And I think, you know, frankly, the answer is I don't know that anybody really knows because we don't have a proposal from a vendor who says here's what we're gonna do. And, you know, I don't think that that's a fault necessarily of Cal OES because they wouldn't know either they're giving a best estimate.

But having served on the advisory board for a long time, we've constantly been told, oh, this is a delay. This is a delay. And so if we're gonna change this course, we really have to be certain on what those timelines and deliverables and also to the PSAP experience. That's been one of the top concerns raised from the board throughout this pause period. The transition period is what is the experience like for the dispatchers who are picking up the calls Right.

And trying to deal with it. And that that has to be first and foremost. And I will say that, a consultant, Russ Nichols, who came on definitely heard that, working for Cal OES. We had many conversations. And also to deputy director Yarbrough, I think is embracing that and including it in the the plans.

The question will just be how successful are we in the execution. And I have one more comment which is, you know, going back to January '25, I guess it would be, one of the things that the board and I pushed especially was boots on the ground. That when we're asking these PSAPs to engage in testing or take a software updater or whatever else, with the amount of money we're spending on consultants and every other part of this project, there should be representatives sitting in those PSAPs. You're talking a very small amount of them.

To CalOS' credit, they got out in the field that January and we saw some positive changes happen.

Okay. That's good to hear. From your perspective, looking at the the makeup of the advisory board, do you feel that you have sufficient technical experts? I I know that you have the the end users of folks who've been in the dispatch centers, but as there's a lot of focus on technology and, you know, one system regionalization, things like that, Do we feel that the advisory board, is sufficient in its makeup currently?

I do go ahead first. So I think the makeup, is fine with the exception of the chair issue. I don't think that that should be filled by a a Cal OES member for the reasons I cited. In terms of technical expertise, I would say that, no, the board isn't engineers, but I think that's important. I think it's the same way why you all is legislative oversight.

We wouldn't wanna put all the technical people up there. Right? We want people understand the various dimensions and impacts. And I think with the current board setup, you have law enforcement professionals, both police and sheriff, have Cal....

It's very broad representation. Police and sheriff, you have .... It's very broad representation. The challenge is we can't require engagement. We have no authority to require to say, hey, come give us a specific report on this.

We can provide input and say, here's what we would like. But in the end of the day, we don't control it. And I think that that's part of the problem. So I think the makeup is correct, but the authority isn't there in order to enlist those experts. Like, we as a board, I think if we had that authority, we would be talking to a third party, say, you come talk to us and tell us this and is what they're saying correct.

Because I'll tell you personally as a board member, when this all you know, the train kind of went off the rails back in 2024, I started reaching out. I started picking up calling agencies to figure out what's actually really going on here. And I think that the challenge is you hear different stuff. You heard it today. You heard cross between tenders of one saying the other, a relationship's good, relationship's not, or whatever.

You're seeing play out the dysfunction that's caused part of why we're here first hand real time.

So I would echo chief White chief White's comments. I think the board makeup is, sufficient. Maybe there is opportunity here to explore the opportunity for the board to reach out to technical experts. Certainly, as a Cal Nino board, we lean on our subject matter experts for technology. So maybe something else is born out of this, a more technology based committee, maybe. Mhmm. Or something like that that could help guide the advisory board in these matters.

Thank you for that. Okay. I'm gonna kinda switch gears a little bit in regards to your thoughts about, you know, based on your experience and and knowledge, what structural reforms, if any, do you think are needed to ensure project success? That's a big question. Yeah.

I'm aware.

I'm aware.

So again, from the CALNENA board's perspective, we're not here necessarily to guide the project or speak on the how we deploy infrastructure, but we are certainly here to express our concerns and to request that we are more involved again with consistent communication. We understand our infrastructure needs to be upgraded. We are on decades old system built for landline phones. The public communicates today through mobile devices and data, and we have a responsibility to meet meet that expectation. So I would ask or we would ask as the board.

Again, we need consistent communication and coordination from Cal OES.

I would ask that you consider amending the current law that forms the advisory board. It was called the 911 act, I believe, is Senate bill 911 I think. But to consider amending that with the recommendations that I gave, I think that the board needs greater oversight authority. I think you could approach it in two ways. One is you just change it in perpetuity.

The other middle ground option would be is you time limit it. So maybe you either take the board as is and give it temporary increased authority while this project is going on for the timeline set forth by Cal OES or until some conclusion, or you just change it ongoing. I think that, like everything else, there's pros and cons. And I think what we both and really the board agrees on is it's not our roles to replace the staff at Callaway and what they're doing in their management structures, etcetera. But it needs a level of oversight because at the end, we deal with it.

Mhmm. Very much appreciated. That's why you're here. We we're yes. We understand that. Okay. I'm gonna talk about MENA's the standards. So based on the current plan and, I guess, the current situation, would you say that the backup provider meets the standards for the NENA standards in regards to the components compliance? So the standards that you will have are is it do the plans meet the standards that you have?

So that is something that I would need to consult with our our board specifically and look into exactly what standards that we are addressing or that we're referencing.

Okay.

And holding them accountable too.

Okay. Thank you. And then, I'd like to know what and you've already spoken to this a little bit. But in regards to the PSAPs and what's needed for them, are there any desires or any feedback that you've gotten from the folks who have had the systems deployed, you know, who where they've shown up and saw the systems, and we know that it's it's pretty much about 6% of the state. Yeah.

So far, so it's it's not a lot of folks, but the folks that you that have this that you are working with, what are some of the things that they are telling you they'd like to see?

There's a lot of pain points. I think initially, it was difficult to get information. There wasn't a lot of information flowing as these PSAPs came online, and so we weren't as a community hearing a whole lot. And in fact, some of us had to go and and visit the PSAPs ourselves to get a better idea of what they were experiencing. So as I stated in my opening statement, there were dropped calls, misrouted calls, audio issues, or in testimony early.

We heard about an incident where the dispatcher was logged out, had to log back in, and we hear the same. A lot of pain points coming on to the new system, which, with lack of communication, I think, makes the community hesitant to move forward.

Thank you. Chief, did you have anything to add?

Yeah. I think it you know, you're hearing it's the the PSAP experience. I think that, you know, in the path forward, whatever that may be, I think there needs to be some sort of, like, PSAP advocate position

Within Cali West or maybe it's a contract or something. When I reached out to the agencies, one of the challenges that was just navigating the bureaucracy, like, who do you call? Who do you contact? And then also too frankly, a fear. And I think that the fear is real in the sense that, you know, some of these places worried, well, if I make too much noise, like, you know, is there gonna be something that happens?

The reality is I don't think that at all was true. And I think that Calvius staff were ready to try to assist, but nonetheless, that's what they experienced. That's what they told me. And that's why I think that having something along those lines could help because it could also surface independently to the advisory board. Here's the PowerPoint.

Here's what you're hearing from the staff, but here's what we're hearing on the ground. And if it aligns or if it doesn't align, we can try to resolve those things. Because I'll tell you something else that I've learned throughout this process is everything's nuanced. You'll hear something that sounds good about, well, this thing's going here or traffic's been rerouted to here or whatnot. Then you start asking some details and find out, well, it's not exactly what it seems and not unexpected with a very complex project.

Right. Thank you. Well, I wanna thank both of you for providing a a different perspective from the folks who actually have to implement these systems and use them on the ground to be able to help people in during very real emergencies. So at this point, I'm gonna give it over to you to is there anything else you'd like to offer, any closing statements? And then we're gonna open it up for public comment.

Sure. I think I just, again, want to express our our strong support for the project to move forward expeditiously. And we are here and ready to collaborate with the legislature with Cal OES to ensure that we have a system that not only supports our 911 professionals, but that works. And so thank you again for allowing me to be here today and share with you.

Thank you for being here, chief.

I would just say I appreciate the interest of the legislature. Obviously, that impacts everybody in California with what's going on. I hope that what doesn't get lost is the significant progress that has been made. And I think that with asking the right questions and folks collaborating that we can get things on track, and deliver what everybody, deserves in terms of, service. The other thing that I don't want to go unnoticed is that the changes at CalOS, while they've been disruptive, we've also made some good progress there.

And I think that there's some lessons learned that will apply forward. We've had different people come in. I don't know if Russ is still in the audience, but, he was a breath of fresh air just of somebody to talk to and get an outside, perspective. And I think, you know, although he's been here a short period of time, deputy director Yarbrough, has, you know, tried to increase the engagement. It's just not where it needs to be at. So with that, I appreciate your time.

Thank you both for that. As was stated during the, opening remarks of this hearing, this is the emergency management committee. So we are clearly, looking at this from the perspective of how we keep our our state moving forward and safe, during the various, in critical incidents that we face and and just for every people's everyday, public safety. So I wanna thank each and every one of you who showed up to provide testimony, those of you who came to learn more about this this the subject matter, and I just look forward to us resolving this as we move forward as a state. So thank you both for being here.

And with that, I'm going to ask if there's anyone from the public who would like to make a comment. You can please line up. There's a microphone to the right.

Not much of a line. A one minute.

Right? Like, yes. Doesn't say then you have the whole minute.

Okay. My name is Steven Sprague. I'm a business professional here in in California, but I was also a firefighter paramedic, in Northern California for many years. My family continues to serve in that capacity down in Southern California, so I'm extremely interested in what's been going on with the 911 system. Alright.

As Cal OES has pointed out in previous meetings, a legacy 911 system built in the nineteen seventies is fragile and end of life. Yet Cal OES now wants to keep it in place through at least 2030. This should be the biggest concern and should be looked at by the legislature. Cal OES previously reported outage data at the 911 advisory Board Meetings, but abruptly stopped reporting after June 2024. Here's what they aren't sharing, and this is what should be being looked at.

From October 22 through June 24, 911 network outages. Legacy 22,000 hours 911 was down across the state. Next gen, zero. Location outages, Legacy 6913 first responders had no location for the callers. Next gen, hundred and 24 hours.

Call processing equipment, legacy5,100 and 21 hours that 911 personnel did not have access to critical data. NextGen2.9 hours. And where did I get all this information from? What was pulled from the Cal OES 911 advisory board meeting presentations from October 22 through October 2024. What else happened? Ten seconds. Was it what's that?

Ten seconds.

Oh, wait. Okay. There's even a death that happened in LA, but we'll get to that. Let's get to think finish it up. Transparency should not be limited to the issues that fit Calaway's agenda.

Their pivot from a redundant approach to less redundant, redundant single statewide solutions being questioned. We lost $455,000,000. Right? When the Bay Bridge, a critical lifeline, was found to have flaws during the completion, California didn't tear down the bridge and build a new one at the expense of taxpayers. They they implemented oversight and mitigated the issues.

Thank you, sir. Alright. Is there anyone else? Alright. Well, seeing no one and no further questions, this meeting is adjourned.