My hell as a 911 operator • Hacker News Board

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#31

Post by thezach » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 5:32 PM UTC

siculars wrote: post #17

Twitter can handle north of 4k tweets per second on virtually entirely open source software and these morons can't record phone calls. If this is not a glaring example of government mismanagement and waste I don't know what is. Where are the criminal indictments?

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 strict requirements on what can and can not connect to their systems, and on top of that who can use a terminal that connects to their systems).

Its not an easy task. However comparing it to twitter is just ... wow

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#32

Post by thebiglebrewski » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 5:32 PM UTC

Where can we start the discussion to start building a better version of this?

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#33

Post by thezach » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 5:32 PM UTC

hga wrote: post #26

siculars wrote: post #17

Twitter can handle north of 4k tweets per second on virtually entirely open source software and these morons can't record phone calls. If this is not a glaring example of government mismanagement and waste I don't know what is. Where are the criminal indictments?

Errr, people keep citing Twitter; doesn't anyone remember the Fail Whale?

i just fail whaled last week for 4 hours straight.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#34

Post by mjn » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 5:33 PM UTC

hga wrote: post #23

mjn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technical complexity of the problem has nothing at all to do with the political and legal maneuvering required to get and execute a large government contract. Or a large contract with any organization, as far as I can tell. In universities, the whole education-ware thing is a mess, with huge piles of contractor dollars going to junk like Blackboard, who manage to sell things to high-level administrators. By far t…

If petrochemical company project was mostly a document imaging project, when did that happen? I ask because I started playing that game when it was cutting edge, and finished about the time it was "very easy" (early to mid-90s).

I'm not sure when it started, but I was hearing about it from around 1990 I think, and the project got axed around '95. I assume eventually they did get something done, either with a new contractor or in-house.

I actually had a part-time job scanning large technical diagrams through a sheet-fed scanner in the late '90s, for a different company (a NASA contractor). It was technically not what I was hired for; the main reason they needed to bring in someone part-time is that they needed additional staff to help "debug" a space toilet. So my main job was using it, and recording some basic data (pH, etc.) in a logbook whenever I did. Since I was sitting around for a few hours a day in between toilet debugging, scanning technical diagrams seemed to be the main other thing that needed doing. Seemed like a pretty ad-hoc process, but I don't know what that one was like on the backend.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#35

Post by doorhammer » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 5:37 PM UTC

joyeuse6701 wrote: post #20

A lot of posts here talk about open source projects or the relative simplicity of implementing something like this at it's core: I agree with the idea though I understand that emergency systems require a high level of reliability similar to mil-spec hardware I imagine. If there was any justification for that price of 88+ mil, that would be it. Looks like that went right out the damn window. All systems have bugs, I t…

I work in the call center branch of a fairly large corporation. Obviously we're not saving lives and dispatching fire trucks, but for some reason it seems like we're dead set against doing incremental rollouts and user testing in any meaningful way.

Don't get me wrong, I see things get to user testing phases and we have reasonable ways of logging bugs and problems, but almost every project I've seen had kept on trucking to meet an arbitrary deadline regardless of how poorly any of the testing goes, then the system hits the floor, chaos ensues and everyone runs around in a panic until someone managers to staple together a solution.

Kind of depressing that it looks to be the same in the government with calls that are a little more important than ecommerce sales.

I want to say that the guy that is in charge of the 911 phone network spoke a few times at a call center conference I recently went to.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#36

Post by 300bps » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 5:37 PM UTC

kylec wrote: post #4

This seems like a great opportunity for someone to develop an open source high-availability, fault-tolerant 911 dispatch system. Being able to get first responders where they're needed as fast as possible would provide a tremendous public good.

This seems like a great opportunity for someone to develop an open source high-availability, fault-tolerant 911 dispatch system.

You're right! And then we can make a one-size-fits-all Retail Bank program that every bank will use. And a one-size-fits-all Policy Administration System for insurance companies. Once we've solved those problems we can move on to a one-size-fits-all Dispatch system for every company that has employees in the field.

Then we can wake up and realize that there's a reason why this hasn't happened in the last 50 years. Any system can accommodate maybe 80% of a particular niche's needs. But I'll be damned if you can get business users to agree on that final 20%. One says "black", the other says "white" and then you have some oddball that says, "potato."

And then there's the whole continent of minefields in regard to disparate devices, patents, trademarks, proprietary system interfaces, etc.

If you do take this on, best of luck to you - but don't quit your day job.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#37

Post by snitko » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 5:37 PM UTC

Now imagine for a moment 911 line was a private company. People subscribe to it, pay a monthly fee, call it, wait to get through and don't receive help in time. What do you think people would do then? Stop paying and likely file a lawsuit. Good luck doing this with a government.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#38

Post by samatman » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 5:39 PM UTC

richardv wrote: post #6

kylec wrote: post #4

This seems like a great opportunity for someone to develop an open source high-availability, fault-tolerant 911 dispatch system. Being able to get first responders where they're needed as fast as possible would provide a tremendous public good.

That's not how things work... You can't just create some system and see governments flock to you. There are years of consulting and specification requirements. Linux is open source... Office Libre... Go convince a public office to switch to Ubuntu.. Saving money is often at the bottom of their focus.. and then you have competing interests releasing figures that show it is more costly to switch to free alternatives. P…

On the contrary:

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-03/25/ubuntu-china

As a proof of concept goes, the world's most populous country is pretty good.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#39

Post by GigabyteCoin » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 5:39 PM UTC

The sensationalism is high in this article.

Operators had to record 911 calls with pen and paper

I know I work all day on a computer but I wouldn't consider using pen and paper a hindrance.

Re: My hell as a 911 operator

#40

Post by eksith » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 5:39 PM UTC

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'…

  >Two months training is not enough training?

You've never answered the phone, have you?

I've worked in customer service and (while that's not exactly any way on par with what these operators go through) there's an entire volume of stuff to keep in mind before going in. Being an operator involves engaging in a fundamentally unnatural mindset that's often completely antithetical to what your normal responses would be. No matter who's screaming, shooting, dying, it's still your job to remain calm, clear and transfer as much information as possible to emergency workers.

Try listening to a few 911 calls. There are tons on the interwebs (LiveLeak has a whole lot). Be prepared to lose sleep for a day or two.