Pa. 9-1-1 center switches system

By Shari Sanger
The Evening Sun (Hanover, Pennsylvania)
Copyright 2006 MediaNews Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved

Processing and transmitting calls to emergency-service providers just got easier for York County’s 911 dispatchers.

At 4 a.m. Tuesday, the 911 Center switched to a new Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system, which automatically determines and maps a caller’s location.

That information is then sent to a dispatcher with recommendations for the appropriate police, fire or EMS units to respond to the incident, officials said.

“The goal is for it to reduce response time by reducing the amount of time it takes to dispatch a call,” said Rob Sterner, director of the county’s emergency center project.

He said the CAD system speeds up the call-taking process for dispatchers who previously wrote out calls on notecards.

Most other 911 centers in the state have already been using the CAD system, Sterner said.

“We were one of the few remaining dispatch centers that were still in a manual environment,” Sterner said. “Certainly we are one of the busiest centers in the state. And the fact that these dispatchers were still tracking calls manually is a testament to how good they are at what they do.”

York County’s 911 Center fields more than 480,000 calls per year, he said. As of Thursday afternoon, the center already logged more than 3,000 calls using the new system.

Sterner said the days of writing calls on notecards are gone, unless the CAD system would malfunction. In such a case, the notecards would serve as a backup, he said.

Getting the CAD system in York County was a two-year process, which involved negotiating contracts and adding all police, fire and ambulance information into the new software, Sterner said.

“It took a tremendous amount of work, hundreds of hours of work, to do that,” he said.

He said county officials tried to institute the system on several other occasions without success.

To prepare for the new system, dispatchers completed 32 hours of CAD training. But trainers from New World – the company that developed the system – and senior department of emergency services staff remained at the 911 Center throughout the week to help dispatchers in the transition.

The software upgrade cost about $2.6 million, but those funds were secured from the state’s Wireless 911 Fund, which collects a $1 fee from cell phone users.

The CAD system is part of a $68 million Emergency Services Center project in York County, which includes a new building and a new radio communications system.

The new 38,000 square-foot facility in Springettsbury Township is about 30 percent complete, Sterner said.

He said the county is also acquiring 22 tower sites to be used with a new, uniform 911 radio and paging system that will allow all first responders to “have complete interoperability” for the first time.

The new building and radio system are expected to be finished and implemented in late 2007, he said.