Q: The Congressional Summary was submitted to Congress on September 11. What continuing follow-up efforts are planned by the Commission and/or NENA from here forward?
R: The Commission will continue to function as the entity responsible for the Report to Congress. An updated Summary will be submitted to Congress every two years, unless requested annually by Congress. NENA is presently working on the full Report Card to the Nation report which will be available early in 2002. Details will be on the NENA web site soon.
Q: On page 6 of the RCN Congressional Summary Report, a discussion of 9-1-1 data base updating ends with the statement that updates are `virtually real-time. The Data Technical Committee questions this statement, as data base updates can take as long as several days from service initiation to database update completion in the live ALI database; error correction timeframes are also a major factor. Please explain the questioned statement in context of the background and meaning of this area of the Report.
R: This statement is part of the section covering overall 9-1-1 Quality of Service, and is a general summary of national quality levels of the main components of 9-1-1 call and data delivery, and the publics satisfaction with 9-1-1 service. In the first part of the paragraph, reference is made to daily, and sometimes hourly updating of data bases by the ALI DBMS Service Provider. The intent was to note the 9-1-1 industrys orientation to rapidly update the 9-1-1 data bases, in comparison to other large customer data bases which often take days or weeks to update. The summarization process minimized this description, and unintentionally used wording that may have an implication of nearly instantaneous updating.
It is well known within the 9-1-1 industry that data base updates are not always or consistently handled within hours of telephone service initiation, change or disconnect to live data content available to the PSAP. Even when errors do not occur, the timeframe from dial tone provision until service order completion and transfer of TN records to the 9-1-1 processing system can be measured in days, although this may also happen in periods of hours in a few systems. The focus is to shorten this interval to provide real-time updates, but that is still some time off in the future. The Data Committees ongoing work to establish standards and recommendations to accomplish more complete and consistent performance is recognized, and must be supported by the parties to 9-1-1 data base management. This process and the issues around it will be covered more completely in the full Report to be published in about two months.
Q: How is NENA updating the 9-1-1 coverage map for counties in the U.S.? Where would I submit changes to that map?
R: Please submit any changes to 9-1-1 status to Roger Hixson, ENP at NENA at [email protected] or 800-332-3911.