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My hell as a 911 operator

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Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#161

Post by scott_s »

eksith wrote: post #56
EvanAnderson wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't agree w/ this assessment more. I did some contract work on network gear in a rural Ohio county's 911 center a couple of years ago and spent a few days around the dispatch center. I have a ton of respect for the work that the dispatchers do. I listened to them stay calm, cool, and collected while taking calls from people who were completely freaked-out (angry, injured, scared, etc). The job is certainly a lot…

Obviously there's a whole heap of details, systems and other areas to be thoroughly familiar with. My criticism was of OP suggesting that somehow 2 months not being good enough was a stretch and the story was hyperbole. Although I haven't dealt with 1/100th of the stress a 911 operator has to go through, I can say that sentiment is quite silly.

EvanAnderson is agreeing with you. Perhaps you misread his comment?

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#162

Post by thezach »

ams6110 wrote: post #105
thezach wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing twitter to a 911 call center is like comparing a monochrome display to a 4k display 911 call centers have to interface with many different computer systems (for example the National Criminal Information center, department of motor vehicles, FBI CJIS, in house databases, court records systems, mapping, computer aided dispatch, weather information, etc. Many of these systems (the NCIC, and CJIS have very stri…

While not entirely disagreeing, I would ask whether there's room to question any of those requirements. WHY does the 911 call center need to interface to all those systems. WHY do I need an interface to the FBI or court records in order to respond to a call from a woman whose husband is having a heart attack in the living room? Tight coupling of many separate systems is a classic anti-pattern in software.

because in most areas of the united states your the same person that is taking a call from a woman whos husband just beat her

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#163

Post by rlu »

People always say being an ATC is the most stressful job that you can have. But this sounds worse, even if the system worked properly.

Does anyone know starting salaries for air traffic controllers?

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#164

Post by lemmsjid »

milhous wrote: post #46
greghinch wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was freelancing, I did some government work. I was flabbergasted by the slow pace at which things moved, and that I had to create accounts in 3 separate systems to submit and get paid for even very basic invoices. Government is a place that is ripe for disruption, but the walls around it are so high, I don't know how to really breach them. There is a huge machine in place of contractors and lobbyists which ess…

Large scale disruption is impossible because the government and its employees are protected by guns and the force of law, permitting special interests, cronyism, and incompetence to flourish. We in the marketplace (minus Industrial Military Complex) have no such protections, and actually have to produce value to make a living in a fair exchange of goods and services. Most government employees are unemployable in the…

Responding to your edit about "a SF startup could've built out an amazing system at a fraction of the price"-- I hear that kind of attitude a lot, I'm not so sure it holds to scrutiny.

Tackling the problem of a system that must be 100% reliable, synchronous, with complete uptime from day 1 is very very difficult, and not many startup environments will prepare you for it. A lot of systems that are scaling decently now (twitter was used as an example early on) had extreme early growing pains.

In fact, I think it is impossible to build such a system without significant upfront cost, because a lot of the cost should go into the testing phase. It's almost as though you'd want to create a testing call center that receives realistic calls and needs to route them correctly, and have it running for months while the software is iterated on. A lot of effort should go into making the testing center as realistic as possible, and a lot of time should go into teasing out the inevitable bugs.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#165

Post by josh2600 »

dkarl wrote: post #154
josh2600 wrote: post #87

Ok, I have something to add here for the following reasons: * I build big call centers for a living * I'm a really big Telecom Nerd You might be wondering why something as important as 911 is not automated or accessible via any other mechanism; why is it that the most critical service in the country runs on a system that hasn't materially changed since 1984? For one, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is ex…

The supposed advantage of a hodgepodge is that somewhere the right approach has been tried and is working well, and pressure will mount on cities with inferior systems to either match or adopt the better systems. Where, if anywhere, is 911 being done well, and how slowly or quickly will the successful approaches spread? Do you think this dynamic will lead to places like New York having faster and more reliable 911 sy…

911 isn't being done well anywhere IMHO.

If you look at the way 911 works, there's no location information unless you use the cellular radio (and this assumes your carrier is using the cell tower to anchor your location). If you use IP to call, let's say via an application like RingCentral, how does the 911 service know whether you're in San Francisco or New York? It doesn't.

This isn't pie in the sky fantasy, this is actually how all over the top VoIP connections work. You pick a location and that's where your 911 calls originate. It doesn't matter whether you're using your SIP client in New York, your 911 call will still go to a San Francisco 911 center because your office address is in SF. That's not good.

So IMHO the right approach is a top-down rewrite and rolling that sucker out nationwide. Normally, we'd see one vendor start to dominate over other vendors, and while there has definitely been some consolidation in the 911 market, the fact that these services are federally mandated (Read: Allocated budget automatically) there's not a huge incentive for municipalities to shop around. These systems are essentially free as far as they're concerned.

Part of the reason we're not on IP is because the federal dollars can't be legally spent on IP in many places (gotta love lobbying). In short, the correct approach, IMHO, is IP-enabled PSAPs with GPS information for location combined with reform efforts in congress. The logically addressed world of the phone network is a fantasy and our emergency services should model reality instead of our dreams.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#166

Post by wisty »

300bps wrote: post #30

Holy hyperbole. Definitely seems like this worker is frustrated beyond sense or has an agenda with saying things like: They give rookie operators two months training, and after that just throw ’em in. They’re not ready. Two months training is not enough training? This is implausible. At its core, they're answering the phone, determining the reason for a call and typing information from the call into a computer. They'…

Here's the problem:

"911"

"You have to send the cops over!"

"What happened?"

"It's my parents ..."

If they don't triage properly, they'll be sending the police to deal with angry kids whose parents won't give them their pocket money. Or they'll not send the police to a violent confrontation.

Also, you have to consider the kind of people who make a lot of 911 calls. It might be a drug user getting threatened by a dealer. It could be a drunk guy, who's had an accident. It could be something really embarrassing ("I fell on it"). Doing triage can be quite difficult, when the caller doesn't really say what has happened, but they need to find out enough to justify sending help.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#167

Post by gdubs »

hga wrote: post #62
ErikAugust wrote: post #47

"...and Intergraph [the Alabama company that designed the new system]." http://www.intergraph.com/ - Flash header on company's homepage hangs on Chrome. Not a good start.

They used to be a really hot hardware and I think software (e.g. CAD) company, even did a lot of Chipper RISC chip work ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_architecture ; not to be confused with the Clinton administration cryptographic debacle). Then they exited the hardware business in 2000 and among other things became a patent troll: https://www.google.com/search?q=intergraph+lawsuit Which of course is an even…

I was surprised to see that it was the same Integraph. Their NT graphics workstations were big competition to SGI in the late 90's, when SGI was losing steam to the PC market.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#168

Post by Locke1689 »

snitko wrote: post #109
moocowduckquack wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Emigrate and revoke your current citizenship. People do it all the time.

To where? To another country which is going to tax me the same or more?

How is that anyone here's problem? Don't like it -- you can leave. Where you go is your business.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#169

Post by lostlogin »

gregd wrote: post #11
thezach wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't always take lowest bidder.... sometimes it really just boils down to who the contractor knows, or what favors they've done for people (even if they are incompetant)

This is generally not true. What it generally boils down to with government contracts is a really sweet dog and pony show from the RFP process. Generally people lack the critical thinking skills necessary to determine if a company can really fill their needs. They don't know the difference between a COTS system and one built from the ground up. They don't know the difference between a hosted solution and one running…

Just to throw in a situation I'm in at the moment. A public hospital has put out a tender for a new MRI scanner. I know who is likely cheapest (GE) and I know who is likely the most expensive (Siemens). I suspect Philips falls nearer the higher end, but will be in between. I have nothing to do with the purchase but work with those who do. I'd bet everything I own that GE don't win as the corners cut and unreliability are not winning any favours. Their scanner ticks all the boxes, but in the worst possible way. Multi-transmit RF? Yes! (But it doesn't work). Wide bore? Yes! (But you can't scan any further laterally than with a narrow bore). Propeller type imaging? Yes! (But scanner crashes, weird artifacts arise or the utterly crap interface gets in the way). The list goes on for probably another 50 points. Philips and Siemens have faults, sure. But they are more the result of compromises and are stylistic where the system is that way because someone chose to make it like that. Not because someone screwed up, forgot, didn't check, didn't know etc. some places chose quality over price, and this publicly owned MRI scanner will be in this category.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#170

Post by [deleted] »

josh2600 wrote: post #87

Ok, I have something to add here for the following reasons: * I build big call centers for a living * I'm a really big Telecom Nerd You might be wondering why something as important as 911 is not automated or accessible via any other mechanism; why is it that the most critical service in the country runs on a system that hasn't materially changed since 1984? For one, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is ex…

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