The devastating Camp Fire, which wiped out cell towers and hampered emergency communication during critical hours, was on everyone’s minds as the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services worked to design the state’s future emergency communication system.
In a state where ruinous wildfires are commonplace and the threat of catastrophic earthquakes haunts imaginations, Cal OES officials wanted to make sure the new system had redundancies to prevent widespread failure.
California settled on a design that no other state had implemented: a regionalized approach that divided the massive state into four sectors.
Between 2019 and 2025, California paid four technology companies over $450 million to build out its Next Generation 911 system, a more advanced emergency communication tool that would provide dispatchers with enhanced location services and other ways for the public to communicate with first responders operators.
But when the time came to turn that system on, it didn’t work.
Last year, Cal OES ran into disruptions after the new technology was switched on in a fraction of dispatch centers. The rollout was paused, and the leader who spearheaded the project, Budge Currier, left the agency.
Ultimately, Cal OES decided to scrap the regional design and go back to the drawing board.
Now, the state has pivoted, proposing a new statewide design similar to what other states have adopted. Cal OES plans to issue requests for proposals next year for other vendors to build out the second iteration of California’s Next Generation 911, at an additional cost of potentially hundreds of millions of dollars.
During a Wednesday meeting of the state’s 911 Advisory Board, Cal OES presented a new transition plan that identified flaws with the regional system and briefly outlined how the state plans to change course.
“I’ll be the first to tell you that we don’t always get it right,” Cal OES Chief Deputy Director of Policy and Administration Lisa Mangat said. However, she said, “the status quo is not an option.”
“Smart, thoughtful changes are necessary, and it’s also the responsible thing to do going forward,” Mangat added. “We hope that you see that we are committed to not only the success of the project but to open, transparent communication.”
That new system will likely to take years to build, and Cal OES hasn’t provided a cost estimate.
Cal OES did not make Mangat available for an interview, but a spokesperson maintained that the cost of pausing and redesigning this project is worth it to ensure California’s emergency communications are resilient and reliable.
“Like any large-scale, complex infrastructure project — especially one that must maintain uninterrupted 911 service for nearly 40 million Californians — we’ve encountered challenges that require us to proceed thoughtfully and deliberately,” Cal OES spokesperson Anita Gore said in a statement. “We’re taking the time to get this right, working closely with our public safety partners to ensure the system meets the high standards Californians deserve.”
Jeff Schlueter, the chief operating officer of Synergem Technologies, one of the vendors paid by the state to build the now-scrapped regional design, said redesigning and installing the new statewide technology will cost taxpayers even more money.
“It’s going to be hundreds of millions...to actually redo what they’ve already built,” Schlueter said.
An antiquated 911 system
Modernizing California’s antiquated 911 system was an early promise of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“The idea that it’s 2019, and we are using analog systems designed decades ago is astounding, and we need to make investments to make sure the technology aligns with the devices people are using in their daily lives,” Newsom said during his first year as governor.
Six years later, the state is still using those legacy systems, based on technology from the 1970s.
The infrastructure that these legacy systems rely on is “literally falling apart,” said Brandon Abley, the National Emergency Number Association’s chief technology officer. “It’s difficult to maintain, you have to source used parts, they aren’t being manufactured anymore, there isn’t much of a workforce left that knows how to work on it.”
Abley said the legacy infrastructure needs to be retired as soon as possible.
Dispatchers and 911 experts in California provided assurance that the current legacy system is still working, but the Next Generation 911 system will provide emergency responders with crucial information and tools to better serve the public, including improved location services and the ability to communicate with callers using text messages and video calls.
A ‘very aggressive timeline’
In 2019, Cal OES signed contracts with four companies to build out different parts of the regional system: California-based NGA 911 was tasked to cover the Los Angeles and central California regions; Synergem Technologies won the contract to cover Northern California; Lumen Technologies, then known as CenturyLink Communications, secured the bid to provide services to Southern California; and Atos Public Safety was granted the largest contract to serve as the statewide “prime” provider.
No other state had designed a Next Generation 911 system like California’s regional approach, according to an account published earlier this year by Currier, the former Cal OES assistant director of public safety communications, who left the department late last year around the same time the agency paused the project’s rollout. Currier declined an interview request.
The intent was to prevent a single point of failure from causing a statewide outage, which had occurred in other parts of the country. The “prime” provider that covered the state would serve as a redundancy if one of the regional systems went down.
The project had a “very aggressive timeline,” said Mark Chase, a 911 Advisory Board member who represents the California National Emergency Number Association. Cal OES anticipated completing the installation and transition to Next Generation 911 by 2022 at the latest.
Shortly after construction on the system began in 2020, COVID-19 hit. The global pandemic overwhelmed Cal OES and, coupled with the logistical challenge of installing a new 911 system while maintaining services, delayed the project’s timeline.
Still, by 2024, several regional providers had finished installing the updated infrastructure in the more than 400 dispatch centers across the state. The state reached other milestones, including installing statewide infrastructure that provides dispatchers with location services and callers with text-to-911 capabilities.
But when rolling out the Next Generation 911 system last year, it was immediately clear there were issues.
Cal OES opted to activate the technology in dispatch centers in rural parts of the state. Dispatchers with the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office told NBC Bay Area that calls were lost and misrouted after the Next Generation 911 system was turned on. The news organization reported that there was a 12-hour outage when residents were unable to call 911.
In the initial phase, the state transitioned 23 public safety answering points, another name for dispatch centers referred to as PSAPs, to the new system.
By late 2024, Cal OES halted further roll out of the projects because of “significant operational disruptions,” according to the state’s transition report.
The report outlined key issues with the regional system including that it created undue risks for dispatchers responding to emergency calls and unnecessary strain on dispatch staff. Additionally, the design forced the four vendors to depend on one another to resolve issues, which could delay fixing problems such as outages.
For months, the vendors waited for additional communication from the department about when the state would resume deployment. In June, they got their answer.
Cal OES sent letters to the three regional providers informing the companies that the state planned to throw out the regional design and eventually end their contracts, once the agency adopts a statewide approach. Cal OES said the companies could reapply for future contracts.
In all three letters, Cal OES noted that the change was “not a reflection of vendor performance.”
‘We just don’t have faith in the process’
The changes and delays in the rollout have prompted criticism from several key stakeholders.
The California Fire Chiefs Association sent a letter to Cal OES earlier this year raising concerns about a lack of redundancy and transparency associated with the transition. The group said that several agencies, including large PSAPs such as the Los Angeles Police Department and the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management reported that Cal OES did not consult them before the transition was initiated.
Jeff Meston, CFCA’s executive director, said one of the association’s biggest concerns is the lack of transparency from Cal OES about the dramatic changes made in the last year.
“We just don’t have faith in the process, nor have we been necessarily engaged in the process,” Meston said. He added that the delays are particularly concerning as California prepares to host several massive events in the coming years including the Super Bowl, the World Cup and the Olympics.
The devastating fires in Los Angeles in January were unfortunate reminders of the need for reliable emergency communication tools and that those technologies need to be updated as soon as possible, said State Sen. Laura Richardson, D-San Pedro.
Richardson didn’t go so far to say that taxpayer dollars were wasted as a result of the changes, but she did acknowledge that “time is money” and more delays will ultimately drive up the project’s total cost. Richardson, who chairs a Senate budget subcommittee, grilled Cal OES officials about the lack of a timeline and the project’s ballooning cost during a May hearing.
“When we set a budget, we need to work to it. When we set a timeline, we need to work to it,” Richardson said in an interview with the Bee. She added that Cal OES needs to provide an estimation for the project’s ultimate cost because “we can’t continue to expect the taxpayers to pay and pay and pay.”
Taxpayer associations in Los Angeles and the Central Valley have bristled at the idea of spending even more money on the project.
For the vendors, the decision to scrap the regional approach and redesign a statewide system took them by surprise, Schlueter said.
Representatives for Synergem and NGA 911 both said that Cal OES is making the wrong decision to discard the regional approach. The companies, which were paid $59 million and $104 million, respectively, for their work building the new 911 system, said the state could have worked with them to improve the project. Instead, the state decided that the issues associated with the regional approach were insurmountable.
“The proper handling is not to kick the can down the road for another group of people to deal with it,” said Don Ferguson, the CEO of NGA 911. “It’s to take the experience that has been accumulated in this project and to allow that experience to carry it forward.”
Gore, with Cal OES, said that the decision to transition to the statewide approach was made by Cal OES as an organization.
Ferguson said instead of paying for new statewide providers, the state could save millions by using its resources to educate PSAPs on how to use the new system. Schlueter added that California taxpayers will have to pay for a new provider to take over the infrastructure that has already been installed in 911 centers throughout the state.
“We are the ones who actually own and operate that equipment. So Atos would have to somehow either get access to or go back in and put in all new equipment in order to actually take over the role that the regional networks are currently providing,” Schlueter said, referring to the statewide provider. Atos and Lumen did not respond to requests for comment.
Transition plans leave questions unanswered
A new transition report for the 911 system design, published by Cal OES last week, has several 911 Advisory Board members frustrated by the lack of details and timeline for the eventual rollout of the updated system.
“This doesn’t have any benchmarks, no deliverables, it’s just a high-level report with a lot of zeros at the end,” Santa Barbara County Deputy Fire Chief Garrett Huff, a board member, said Wednesday.
Cal OES leadership acknowledged at the meeting that the report is not exhaustive. Steven Yarbrough, Newsom’s newly appointed deputy director of public safety communications, characterized it as the “opening stanza” of the transition plan.
Yarbrough’s position was recently created by the Newsom administration to help get this vital system up and running, said Gore, the Cal OES spokesperson.
The project has had several leaders in recent years. After Currier left the agency, Cal OES selected Paul Troxel to chart a new path for the project as 911 branch manager. But Troxel recently retired, which was a “personal decision,” Gore said. Troxel did not respond to an interview request.
Chase, a board member and veteran 911 dispatcher, said it was good that the state took a step back and redesigned the system using a statewide approach, which he said will be more simple and effective in the long run.
“It’s much more simple than dealing with all these regional partners,” he said.
The report provides a rough timeline for the project’s future: By next year the state hopes to procure two companies as statewide providers, one to serve as the primary provider and another to serve as backup, and begin migrating dispatch centers from the legacy system. But California will continue to rely on the legacy system until the new statewide system is rolled out.
On the cost of the project, the report stated that the new design would build on the infrastructure that already exists. The new technology is still being used to receive calls in some parts of the state, and the location and text-to-911 services are in use statewide.
By 2030, Cal OES hopes to fully decommission the legacy networks.
What “concerns me is that every day technology changes,” Richardson said. “The last thing we want to do is to spend this money and then get a system that’s already outdated.”
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