Late last night, the House Energy & Commerce Committee passed language in its budget-reconciliation recommendations (as part of the Build Back Better Act) that would authorize $10B for a federal Next Generation 9-1-1 grant program. NENA participated heavily in the development of this language, and is proud to support the Committee’s recommendation. You can find the full text of the recommendation here.

How can you help? If you have a relationship with your Democratic Member of Congress, call them today and tell them to support NG9-1-1 funding in budget reconciliation! While our chances at federal NG9-1-1 grant funds have never been better, Congress still needs to hear from us! Opposition to the budget reconciliation recommendations largely involves the criticism that the entire package is too expensive. Thus, compromise means shrinking — or even cutting completely — programs in the reconciliation recommendations. We must tell Congress that America cannot wait for NG9-1-1 and we cannot afford to cut NG9-1-1 from the budget-reconciliation package.

What should we tell Congress? 

• America needs at least $10B in federal funding to ensure a complete nationwide transition to Next Generation 9-1-1;
• NG9-1-1 will allow 9-1-1 to natively support today’s smartphones, IoT devices, and intelligent alarms to create more robust, user-friendly, lifesaving connections to emergency services;
• NG9-1-1 will promote seamless interoperability among states, cities, and field-responder agencies, allowing for transfer of information anywhere it’s needed, at a moment’s notice; and
• NG9-1-1 will improve 9-1-1’s resiliency, flexibility, and adaptability in the face of natural disasters, cyberattacks, and other failures of telecommunications infrastructure.

With your help, we can get NG9-1-1 funding through Congress and signed into law!

Congratulations to the thirty-five 9-1-1 professionals who passed the summer 2021 ENP exam and are now certified Emergency Number Professionals! Well done! For more information on how you too can achieve this prestigious professional designation, visit the ENP webpage. 

NENA’s 9-1-1 Product and Service Guide takes online buyers’ guides to the next level, delivering a content-rich, interactive site where you can research the latest products and services in the 9-1-1 industry. There are several power search tools located within the guide to help you find what you are looking for and make the best-informed purchasing decisions possible.

Click here to get started now!

 

From now through October 15, NENA is accepting session proposals for the NENA 2022 Conference & Expo taking place at the Kentucky International Convention Center in Louisville, KY from June 11-16.

Presenting a session at NENA 2022 is an excellent opportunity to share your knowledge and experience with an audience of 9-1-1 professionals eager to gain and share information. It is also your chance to give back to the profession and help inspire, inform, and educate attendees on a variety of important issues.

 To ensure your submission receives due consideration, please ensure that:

• Your proposal is issue-focused, not product-focused;
• Your 65-word presentation description contains a precise objective;
• You are able to identify three clear audience takeaways;
• You fully complete all areas of the submission form and provide accurate contact information, including phone number(s), email address(es), and mailing address(es);
• You use proper grammar, capitalization, and punctuation; and
• You provide the names of any co-presenters with your submission (or prior to the close of the submission window).

All proposals are due by Friday, October 15. Click here to learn more.

Are you interested in the health and wellbeing of the 9-1-1 industry's most important assets? As 9-1-1 professionals, regardless of your job title or role in the 9-1-1 industry, your health and wellbeing is important and NENA is committed to serving you in the best possible way.

NENA invites you to engage with your peers in this new bi-monthly, Zoom-based health and wellness discussion! We will be seeking important insight from you on the health and wellness challenges you're facing and how we can best tackle them as a community. At the beginning of each discussion period, we will host a guest speaker, who will offer some tips and tools to help you in your everyday life. Even if you just want to attend to enjoy some peer camaraderie, all are welcome!

Click here on Wednesday, October 6 at 6PM Eastern to join the inaugural huddle.

i3 version 3 was published in July 2021, alongside numerous other standards that were completed or will be completed around the same period. Version 3 brings numerous new features and fundamental changes to the overall architecture; chiefly, one of these is a move from SOAP / XML to REST / JSON for programmatic interfaces and data structures, which means that even functions that do not have any feature changes or additions may have a completely new interface. This means that many interactions that have been tested at previous events need to be re-evaluated at NENA's 10th NG9-1-1 Industry Collaboration Event (ICE).

Alongside i3v3, many other standards were also published at around the same time, and many are directly incorporated into i3. Considering that this presents a "next generation" of NG9-1-1, the ICE Steering Committee has chartered the 10th ICE to focus on testing implementations of new and updated features in i3 version 3, as well as other specifications that i3 incorporates or relies on.

Click here to learn more.

09.16.21 | Preventing Telecommunicator Tunnel Vision | ILO* | Register 
09.17.21 | Advanced Fire & EMS Dispatching | ILO* | Register 
09.20.21 | (5-day course) | Center Manager Certification Program (CMCP) | Manchester, CT | Register 
09.23.21 | Liability Issues in the 9-1-1 Center | ILO* | Register 
09.27.21 | (3-day course) | Center Training Officer (CTO) Program | Redding, CA | Register 
09.29.21 | (3-day course) | 9-1-1 Center Supervisor Program | Steelton, PA | Register 
09.30.21 | Addressing for NG9-1-1 | ILO* | Register 

*ILO stands for Instructor-Led Online

NENA is pleased to open the nominations process for our 2022-23 Board of Directors election! This election will be for the following positions:

• Second Vice President
• Southeastern Region Director 
• Western Region Director
• Private Sector Director

 

Click here to download a .zip file of documents and resources that includes:

• Statement of Responsibilities – Must be signed by nominee and co-signed by an agency representative (if applicable)
• Nomination Form – Can be completed by the applying candidate or by a third-party nominator
• Relevant NENA polices and procedures
• NENA's bylaws

 

Click here to fill out your board nomination form online. A paper form is available in the .zip file of documents and resources.

The nomination deadline is October 1, 2021 at 5PM Eastern. Contact the Elections Committee with any questions about the nomination process, eligibility requirements, or general election details.

The NENA Standard to Protect the Wellbeing of 9‑1‑1 Professionals defines the potential impacts of 9‑1‑1 work on the wellbeing of the emergency telecommunicator and directs PSAP leaders to build Comprehensive Stress Resilience Plans empowering their personnel for wellness by preventing, managing, and healing from these impacts, using resource documents provided in the appendices.

Members of the Working Group may download the document and submit comments by going here and then selecting "Add a Comment" from the "Edit" icon.

All others may download the document and submit comments by going here and then selecting "Add a Comment" from the "Document Actions" icon.

Please complete all requested data and "Save," or, if submitting multiple comments, select "Save and Add Another."

If submitting a substantial number of substantive comments and/or edits, commenters may add a single comment in NWS Comment Manager and attach an edited version of the document containing tracked changes. To do this, scroll down to "Add Supporting File" on the comment page and select the file you have edited.

If you are providing editorial comments, such as corrections to typos, grammatical errors, style/numbering errors, and incorrect references/links to documents, please document them under one comment and list the page and line number for each.  For example:

• Page 22, Line 761: correct muse to most
• Page 51, Line 905: correct Maine to main
• If the correction is within a table, provide the table name and page number of error and specific details of change

All comments are due by Monday, October 18, 2021. You may contact the NENA Committee Resource Manager with any questions or concerns.

The NENA Managing & Monitoring NG9‑1‑1 Information Document provides guidance to 9‑1‑1 authorities at all levels on considerations and best practices for adoption in managing and monitoring Next Generation 9‑1‑1 (NG9‑1‑1). The topics covered are comprehensive and general guidance is given to assist authorities in planning for NG9‑1‑1 as they transition from legacy 9‑1‑1 to a full implementation of NG9‑1‑1. The document has been updated to include Best Practice Thresholds for Monitoring NG9‑1‑1 Functional Elements, Threat Protection and Mitigation Strategy for handling various types of cyberattacks, and discussion of PSAP Credentialing Agency (PCA) and Validation Policy.

Members of the Working Group may download the document and submit comments by going here and then selecting "Add a Comment" from the "Edit" icon.

All others may download the document and submit comments by going here and then selecting "Add a Comment" from the "Document Actions" icon.

Please complete all requested data and "Save," or, if submitting multiple comments, select "Save and Add Another."

If submitting a substantial number of substantive comments and/or edits, commenters may add a single comment in NWS Comment Manager and attach an edited version of the document containing tracked changes. To do this, scroll down to "Add Supporting File" on the comment page and select the file you have edited.

If you are providing editorial comments, such as corrections to typos, grammatical errors, style/numbering errors, and incorrect references/links to documents, please document them under one comment and list the page and line number for each.  For example:

• Page 22, Line 761: correct muse to most
• Page 51, Line 905: correct Maine to main
• If the correction is within a table, provide the table name and page number of error and specific details of change

 

All comments are due by Friday, October 15, 2021. You may contact the NENA Committee Resource Manager with any questions or concerns.

Having adjudicated all comments, the NENA Standard for Emergency Incident Data Object (EIDO) is now considered "stable." Per NENA IPR & Antitrust Policy, Section 4.5.1 "Stable Form Notice" is being issued and can be viewed here.

Having adjudicated all comments, the NENA Standard for Interconnecting Emergency Services IP Networks and Public Safety Broadband Networks is now considered "stable." Per NENA IPR & Antitrust Policy, Section 4.5.1 "Stable Form Notice" is being issued and can be viewed here.

Docs & Tools resources are vetted by a panel of 9-1-1 industry leaders and include policy documents, plans, and reports across several topics, including governance, management, technical, operations, and standards and best practices. The repository is created by the 9-1-1 community, for the 9-1-1 community, and industry experts, organizations, and other key stakeholders are welcome to share relevant content that would be of use and interest to colleagues through an easy-to-use online submission form.

All 9-1-1 stakeholders may submit links and documents to showcase and share valuable, practical documents such as government reports, job descriptions, and standard operating procedures.

The National Association of EMS Physicians (NAEMSP) is conducting the first national EMS Physician Medical Directors Workforce Assessment in the United States. All physician medical directors for EMS and air medical services, 9-1-1/Emergency Medical Dispatch centers, fire services, and law enforcement departments are encouraged to complete this anonymous survey to help create a comprehensive picture of pre-hospital physician medical leadership. The survey will take approximately 10 minutes to complete and will close on October 4, 2021. 

Implementing Telemedicine in EMS and the 911 Communications Center
Hosted by NHTSA’s Office of EMS on September 22 at 2pm ET / 11am PT
Register here!

No one could predict the speed at which COVID-19 changed healthcare, including the acceleration of telemedicine. For EMS and 9-1-1 systems, telemedicine has enabled safer triaging of possible COVID patients, avoiding unnecessary and expensive visits to the emergency department, and getting patients the right care at the right time.

But not every EMS agency or 9-1-1 emergency communications center is familiar with telemedicine or knows how to take advantage of these new tools and implement them in their agency. Even for those who are, figuring out how to fund these programs and get reimbursed adds an additional challenge.

To help address that gap, the Federal Interagency Committee on EMS collaborated with EMS leaders from across the country to create the "Telemedicine Framework for EMS and 9-1-1 Organizations," a 45-page guide explaining how agencies can use telemedicine to deliver high-quality, cost-efficient care.

In this webinar, you’ll hear from people who were involved in the creation of the Framework and who have helped implement telemedicine in an EMS system. They’ll highlight some of the challenges faced by EMS and 9-1-1 organizations—and how to use the Framework to help find solutions.

Recently, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) published RTP-Mixer Formatting of Multiparty Real-Time Text, which describes the use of RTT mixers for multi-party sessions. This functionality facilitates the transfer of emergency calls involving real-time text and audio between call takers, callers, and other agents by identifying the source along with the text generated by each participant in a conference associated with an attended transfer. The NENA i3 Standard for Next Generation 9-1-1 provides standards to support RTT-to-RTT deployment. In order to determine if the NENA PSAP Readiness for Real-Time Text (RTT) Information Document should be updated to further support RTT-to-RTT calls, we would like to know what level of RTT deployment has occurred or is planned. Proprietary and/or confidential information is not being sought as part of the inquiry.

 The NENA RTT Workgroup would like your input on the current state of your RTT support by answering the following:

• Do you have experience of RTT 9-1-1 calls handled by a TTY equipped PSAP?
• Do you have experience of RTT 9-1-1 calls handled in an RTT capable PSAP?
• Are you willing to be contacted by the NENA RTT Working Group Co-Chairs regarding your experience? 

Please submit your responses via email here.