Assembly Emergency Management Committee

All right. Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here. We're going to 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 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 completed 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 want to 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 California. I'd also like at this time to offer our vice chair, Heather Hadwick, an opportunity to provide opening remarks.

Thank you for that. So I want to 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 are our goal is to be able to get the technical expertise of each individual panel as it relates to 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@Cal OES, and Eric Swanson, who's 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 also invite Heather Gonzalez, who is the principal fiscal and policy analyst at the Legislative Analyst 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 Mr. Yarborough.

and

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

Hi, my name is Heather Gonzalez. 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 or enable it to work towards an alternative that the Legislature prefers. Now, you should have a handout that we prepared for this hearing. It contains summarized information on next generation 911 systems, the state's more than 10 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 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 is 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 2021, 30 states including California had dedicated networks and were in various phases of connecting phone carriers like Verizon and AT&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 NextGen 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 which has been focused on cybersecurity for these systems. CISA has noted both the value of next gen 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 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 focused 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 traced the overall state effort to as early as 2010, when the state developed a roadmap for next gen 911 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 2018-19 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 port 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 February 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 going to 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 want to 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 inoperability 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 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 provided with a statutory proposal, Taylor 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. 1 what is the exact nature and scope of the problem or problems OES encountered with the regional system? And 2 will the plan solve these problems? And before I move on to our next four questions, I want to 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, and 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 was 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 Legacy911 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 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.

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 occurrences where calls were misrouted or otherwise lost in transfer. And so in compiling all of that data, 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's at those times where we start to see some of these problems crop up. So it quickly focused our attention on these borders between the regional systems is where we were starting to see some of these problems. And then as we do that, and we 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 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.

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 million with only 23 PSAPs that were migrated?

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

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

Yeah.

And then.

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 what did you said?

Yeah, so I've been appointed as deputy director over public safety communications and so going forward it's my responsibility.

Well, no, it is CAL oes, the division Public Safety Communications.

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

And has anybody died from this transition?

I. There's one documented case in high high desert desert Hot springs hot spring that they got cut off, logged off. It wouldn't let them log back in. It was a heart attack call. 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?

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

Thank you.

Yes. So there. Yeah. In the deployment there are a couple 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 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 they're exposed to in the live production environment. Now that being said, once we get out there into the live production environment, then you do have this situation where you have multiple vendors adjacent to one another that need to 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 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 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.

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. And so there's this middle ground that both. Both fingers were pointing at one another. And so, you know, coming in 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 were on the front lines actually addressing emergencies. And so by losing focus of that vision and focusing on other things instead, we didn't end up with the results we were looking for.

So I don't want to 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 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'll 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 things that were possible now may not have been possible back then. And so from that perspective, you're also looking at a much different calculus today in terms if we were starting from a blank canvas to select 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.

My understanding is that at least a couple of them were new to this space.

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

Okay.

As of Today, the next gen 9.1-1 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.

Yeah, well, there's, yeah, there's four regions, but there's only one PSAP that's operating under a regional. The rest of them are on the statewide system.

One that's in South Lake Tahoe.

Correct.

Is the state in control of the system now?

And is it just one vendor?

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

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 all state.

By the summer of 2030?

Is the system operating properly now?

And I.

I realize that that doesn't quite answer your question.

Yes.

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.

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

No, it does not put the public at risk. What it 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 transition to the statewide provider ahead of the Olympics in 2028.

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.

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.

I would say that I think to the chair's point from earlier, that 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

I've done. I would count three, but they principally have been on the radio Communications, public safety, spectrum.

Well, those were in California, but.

No, I've also delivered radio systems statewide.

Could I just add one thing?

We really appreciate 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, in 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

Thank you, Assemblymember Bennett. I want to go back, Mr. Yarborough, you're just a messenger, so I hope you understand that we're not shooting the messenger here, but we definitely want to get to a good place for the state of California. And I want to go back to Department of Technology cal OES and whether 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. 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.

Okay.

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

Yes, the 911 advisory board 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 expert, a telecom expert, a neena expert, a deployment expert. So I wouldn't say they're without skills.

But it's different from what you might want.

So they come from three principal 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 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 to about.

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 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 their colleagues in other states and at in consortia and conferences, I'm thinking principally of something like this. In January, the Standards and Best practices conference for NextGen911 in New Orleans, a couple of our engineering team went to that and gained a lot of expertise and insight into what the new trends that are emerging in NextGen911 are for standards and practices. So there's an entire professional discipline devoted to this that I have expertise on the team doing.

So.

Awesome. Thank you for that. I'm going to try this again to go back to Ms. Gonzalez 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?

Okay, you were. Oh, you were quoting. Oh, yes. 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.

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 there still the need for the structural transition?

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 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 going to be in charge of this technology. Are we concerned with that?

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

Okay. Okay. All right, thank you. And then in regards to. 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 within the system, can you speak to what the cost of such a system would be? I can take that one.

I don't remember.

agree with the lao.

We do owe the plan going forward 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.

Probably in the next month or so

Well, I think the.

We'll have to.

We're, we're trying to get that point.

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. 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.

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 reached its end, it expired, and therefore there is no additional payment or liability required under that.

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, 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 will be expiring in a matter of months 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.

Sorry.

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 that is something that we would be wanting to ensure would be addressed in some way.

Well, Pennsylvania, I mean, no states really.

But Pennsylvania, which is another large state, has had a statewide outage. Other states that are large 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 that's on my to do list, but I don't have that information for you today.

Okay, this will be my last question unless you say something that leads to another question. But as we're talking. Right. As we talk about other states and just really like the ownership of these systems. Right. And the technology. Are other states owning the system? Meaning are the vendors building the system and passing it to the state and this being, you know, contracted for updates and for technical things or other states in the situation where their 911 systems are basically in the hands of an outside vendor in. In perpetuity.

Anything to add?

Okay, awesome. So I want to first of all, thank you all for answering, you know, coming today to, 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 definitely want to 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 add to offer, we're going to turn it back over to you to wrap up.

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

Yes, ma'.

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 and California's 911 system. My name is Don Ferguson. I'm the CEO of nga. 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 NENA 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 geodiverse but also nationally diverse. It does include multiple data centers, diverse networks and does deliver 99.9999 level of service. 59 thank you ensuring this ensures a modern, robust, flexible, scalable and up to date 911 system for Californians. California's transition to NextGen as approved by the legislature and in 2019 is 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 PSAPs went live later that year. Additional deployments followed in 2022 and 2023. By 2024, the NextGen infrastructure installation was completed at all 449 public safety answering points across California. Currently, the NextGen network is connected to more than 100 telecommunications 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 of 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. Twelve tickets were related to test configuration or 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 40 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 Next Gen 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 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 Terra 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 turnout. If we learned anything from the LA fires, it's plan for the worst. Don't put all your eggs in one basket and have multiple contingency plans. When the single statewide provider architecture fails, it will take out all 449 PSAPs affecting all 40 million 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's 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.

Now.

Madam Chairwoman, members of the Committee, thank you for having us here today. We appreciate it very much. My name is Frank Holt. I'm Chief Executive Officer of Synergy Technologies. Since the early 2000s, Synergium 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 firsts. In 2016, Synergy software helped deploy the nation's first true statewide NG911 system in Massachusetts. That system continues to operate today with Five9's reliability, serving more than 7 million residents and nearly 200 public safety answering points across the commonwealth. Today, Synergem provides software and network services to PSAPs in Florida, Wisconsin, Nevada and Missouri. Working with our partners, we are also involved in statewide NG911 launches in New Jersey and Ohio. Here in California, Synergy serves as the regional network service provider for the Northern Region, one of the most technically challenging regions in the state. It includes 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, Synergium Technologies support services that reach roughly half of California's PSAPs. Due to the work of Synergium and the other providers, California has a resilient NG911 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's 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 Synergy's initial reaction in a single word, it would be this shot. We designed and deployed a modern platform based on the latest Nenah I3 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 NG911, and while new York State continues evaluating its strategy, New York City is proceeding with its own independent NG911 system. This approach is fully consistent with the Nena i3 standards, which anticipate multiple NG911 networks interconnecting seamlessly to route emergency calls. That is precisely the architecture that has been designed, built, and validated here in California. In March of 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 what is being now proposed. 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. Synergium continues to operate and support our Systems for California PSAPs today, systems delivering Five9's reliability and ready to expand further across the region. We welcome the opportunity to work with Cal OES to accelerate deployment of NG911 across the state we have developed solid working relationships with the other vendors in this project to support that effort, and we believe the objectives recently outlined by Cal OES can be achieved without discarding the architecture already built and without abandoning the $450 million 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.

Look forward to answering any questions.

Carlson Good afternoon, Madam Ransom 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

Blumen has been engaged in Next Gen 911 deployments in 12 states over the past 15 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 next gen 911 systems. While there are next gen 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 NextGen911 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. NextGen911 deployment is essential to public safety in California there's three observations I want to make on NextGen911 in California. First, its importance. As stated many times this afternoon, the evolution of NextGen 911 is essential to public safety in California. Current California 911 technology is dated and limited in terms of functionality. A well designed California Next Gen 911 system will deliver exceptional performance and resiliency that's complicated. The evolution of NextGen911 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 Next Gen 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 Next Gen 9.1 1 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 next gen 9. 1 1. 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.

Good afternoon Chairman 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 Next Gen 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 want to be precise about ATOS role in this project because context matters. ATTOZ 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 Delivery 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 June 1, 2023. These distinctions between the roles of the state atoast and regional vendors are important because of the challenges this committee is examining and I want to provide as much clarity as possible. Let me turn now to our performance when regional networks have needed our support. 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 186,400 calls texts excuse me, in 2025. Second Location Services atoast 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 Cal911 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 at those believe 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 ATTOS to step in and support regions experiencing service disruptions, we did so. Looking ahead, I want to 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 want to reiterate our commitment to the mission ensuring that When a Californian dials 9 one help arrives. ATOS 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.

I always have questions. Thank you guys for coming. I really appreciate it. My first question is to dawn. 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?

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

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

Okay.

I think answering just for myself, absolutely. We, in the middle of pre migration 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 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.

I the regional model is what was dividing the state into four regions. And we, I live in Los Angeles and we have, I have my family and my voice stake in this service that's here in Los Angeles, 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. So if NGA is not performing turn to Synergy, Synergy is not performing turn to Lumen or if the region's networks are not servicing properly, failover to a backup, which would be ATOs. So you're afforded those opportunities when you have 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 next gen 911 systems. It's human error. 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 going to solve that. I mean it'll solve some things, but it's not going to solve that human error. And the way you mitigate against that is to have distinct regions, distinct responsibilities, different versions of software running in separate NGCS instances 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 Elio's point, you have a compet, 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 he telling me the truth? And what is the all of us will agree that we're NEENAH compliant, we're NENAH standards, that we interoperate. The challenge there, and part of this discussion is, and it's a healthy dialogue, is that there is gaps, there's areas in the NEENAH 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 and lessons learned this lessons learned that we have made. Thank you.

Are there cybersecurity risks with Next Gen 911? That can be for any of you with the system?

Certainly with any communication system, there are cybersecurity risks. So they show up in NextGen911 as well. So the importance of the design of the cybersecurity profile is that 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 next gen 911, that they're very particular about asking questions about cybersecurity 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 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.

I think it's great that the state is stepping up and asking these types of questions, you know, on audit, whatever you want to see. I know we at Synergy, and I'm sure they do too, have the backup for all the 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 NG911 system. And that's what we were doing. And we were overcoming all kinds of obstacles, learning each other's languages.

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 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 the state's spending. And we are at the doorstep of having this done. We really are. We've been frozen since March or June of 2024 that we're going on two years of nothing. You know, we've continued to maintain things.

We're not going to let things die.

But the fact that y' all are doing this is. Is very positive. And we at Synergy welcome any and all oversight you want. I promise you we have the backup, you know, you're looking for for detailed answers.

Yeah. Back to my opening testimony. Cal os essentially went dark about 18 months ago. And I'm not understating that. It was a cut in communication and we were in the middle of turning up the testing that would turn up PSAPs. So I wanted to underscore that and say that this is refreshing for me. I am happy to have an open discussion and happy to dig into any issues that were had or processes that can be improved. It's very much welcome.

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

It's very clear from, from. And 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 18 months. You got to go back and you got to go back through pre migration readiness testing and you got to test everything. Fine. But the path forward to me is very clear. This architecture is sound. It's robust. Californians are deserving of the extra resilience between a region and a prime statewide provider. You've heard Atos even 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 kind of re. Familiarize yourself with what new processes Cal OES has implemented or whatever, because they have gone dark. But to start it immediately.

So from Lumen's point of view, and I'm hearing it echoed on the panel this afternoon, when I think about the southern region and I think about all the work that's happened in the last four years, and in particular the areas where we were able to have control over what needed to happen, when it needed to happen, resources, we had a clear path. I'm proud of the progress that we made, and 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 I'm hearing in this venue here, as well as budget hearings, is fair. Questions are being asked and they need to be answered. And there's a lack of confidence that makes it difficult to move forward in public safety. Everybody, 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 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 9101 system. It's 9 million, 9 1/2 million people with 200 sites. It's a different world than California with 40 million and 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 impacts of the complexity. Now is the time to fix that. 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 anxious to be a part of the solution going forward. We believe that we've learned a tremendous amount from our next gen 911 deployments across the country. And we've seen them based on a 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

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

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

No, for the entire 911 system.

We do provide, and it's important I think to know that we do provide the statewide services for. 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 I agree with my colleagues in that you look to the NENA standards, they're ANSI standards, they speak to what redundancy looks like that can be in a regional flavor that can also be in a single provider flavor, that can be in different flavors than even that. And so the most important thing, 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 other technical teams as this is developed.

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 that is one of the biggest issues. And I don't know that if you reverse the scenario that that will be improved.

Okay, I'm going to pretend to understand. No, I do, I understand. I vaguely understand. It sounds like you feel like it would work one way but not the other. But I guess what my question or what my thought I should say is it seems as if there's a statewide system. 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. Does that make sense to you?

which, okay, it kind of makes a good, good case for why the statewide approach, but I'll save that for, for another day. You mentioned and in your opening comments, Mr. Ferguson, something about that 79% of the concerns that took place had nothing to do with the providers with the four vendors. So I'm wondering, should you not have been aware, and this is the concern is that having you all lead the technology, we want to ensure that we're being thoughtful and proactive. And there's 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?

Okay.

Awesome. Thank you for that. So are all of the vendors using the same. I heard that we were on the Amazon cloud. Is everyone using the same, same computing service within their system? No. No, no. Okay. And were you. Have you all previously worked together? It seems like you have very congenial relationship before now. But prior to receiving these various regional statewide contracts, can you speak a little bit to like what your experience was a working together and what kind of projects did you work on before receiving the contracts?

So

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? Just very briefly, like one sentence.

Okay.

Yeah, lots of.

Okay, thank you, thank you. I appreciate that. And if you all can, very briefly

Thank you.

So

Thank you, Ms. Ferguson.

All right, Shrock, the last comment. That's fine. All right, cool. And so was this a joint proposal? Like when you all. Was this. Because you have those relationships, was this regional concept a joint proposal? No, it was not. So you just happened to.

All right, cool. Thank you 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 how you all are connected, it's clear right now that you've worked well together. So we do appreciate that. So when we talk about. I'm going to kind of 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 technological innovation in your personal. In your opinion and whoever would like to answer that question?

Thank you. And currently is atos. Are you the only company that's still working actively with Cal oes?

services, are you the only one in current communications and continuing to. I've heard others say they want to get back to work. Are you the ones that are. Are you currently. I mean actively, actively engaged? I guess I should say as a backup.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I understand.

Thank you for that. Okay, awesome. I'm just. If you can give me one second. I believe that we answered. You all answered most of the committee questions. I'm going to turn. Is there anything else that we need to. Awesome. So with that, I'm going to 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, Mr. Burgess. Yes.

So thank you.

Yeah, we appreciate our business with California and we look forward to continuing 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 colleagues here to, you know, get you what you ordered.

Awesome. Thank you all for your responsiveness. We're going to 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. All right, so we have Chief, Chief White, who's the chief of the Martinez Police Department and NG911 Advisory Board member, as well as our last panelist which is Casey Young, the executive director of STEM SLA Regional 911 and Cal Nina's second vice president. So thank you both for joining us. We're going to 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 gives us an additional way to look at this. So I'm going to 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 going to jump right in. I want to give you a couple of minutes to give us your opening statement. So I'm going to start with Chief. Chief White, thank you.

Thank you, Chief white. All right, Ms. Young. All right.

Okay, so first I want to 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 really do want to appreciate you all for doing that. I'm going to 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 are getting information after the fact, but have you played any role in the adoption of the regional approach or have you had any discussions about the development of a transition plan?

I appreciate that. And has the either Cal, 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

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 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.

Okay, that's good to hear. From your perspective, looking at the makeup of the advisory board, do you feel that you have sufficient technical experts? I know that you have 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?

So I would echo 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 or something like that that could help guide the advisory board in these matters.

I'm aware. So again, from the Cal Nino 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.

Very much appreciate it. That's why you're here. Yes, we understand that. Okay, I'm going to talk about Nina'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, do the plans meet the standards that you have?

Okay.

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, where they've shown up, installed the systems? And we know that it's pretty much about 6% of the state so far. So 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?

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

at all was true.

Right. Thank you. Well, I want to thank both of you for providing 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 during very real emergencies. So at this point, I'm going to give it over to you to. Is there anything else you'd like to offer, any closing statements? And then we're going to open it up for public comment.

Thank you for being here, Chief.

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 critical incidents that we face. And. And just for every people's everyday public safety. So I want to 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.

I guess it's not.

Okay. My name is Steven Sprague. I'm a business professional here 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.

As Cal OES has pointed out in previous meetings, a legacy 911 system built in the 1970s is fragile and 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 of 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 down across the state Next Gen Zero location outages Legacy 6913 hours first responders had no location for the callers. Next Gen 124 hours Call processing equipment Legacy 5121 hours that 911 personnel did not have access to critical data. NextGen 2.9 hours and where did I get all this information from? Well, it was pulled from the Cal OES911 Advisory Board meeting presentation presentations from October 22 through October 2024. What else happened?

What's that?

Okay, there was even a death that happened in la.

Let's get to the thing. Finish it out. Transparency should not be limited to the issues that fit Cal OES's agenda. Their pivot from a redundant approach to less redundant single statewide solutions being questioned. We lost $455 million 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.

Boom.

Oh, gosh, I'm sorry.

It.