The National 911 Program has selected consulting firm Mission Critical Partners to pilot and evaluate the first subset of the 911 DataPath data exchange model.
The National 911 Program, housed within the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Emergency Medical Services, is responsible for improving coordination and communication among Federal, state, and local 911 centers and their personnel, and telecommunications carriers and vendors.
In a press release, the National 911 Program said the pilot project is the “next step in building a national 911 data system as envisioned by the 911 DataPath Initiative.” The first step was the publication of a strategic plan for the “universe” of 911 data, and the second was the release of Administrative Data for 911 Decision-Making, which features the first subset of the 911 data.
The National 911 Program awarded Mission Critical Partners the contract following an open and competitive procurement process.
The press release explains that the data exchange model will be owner-agnostic, scalable, expandable, and agile. The National 911 Program further noted that it is designed to enable the routine sharing of 911 data, creating actionable knowledge that enhances public safety as well as emergency response outcomes.
“The repository represents the future of data use and the power of fully leveraging available data such as images, text and video in the public safety community,” said Darrin Reilly, president and CEO of MCP. “It will enable agencies to cut across traditional boundaries to derive benefit from large datasets. It also will help foster cooperation among agencies that historically have operated in silos by demonstrating the value of coordinating efforts.”
The goal of the project is to help inform everything required to build, maintain and utilize the data exchange model in emergency communications centers (ECCs) across the country. The National 911 Program anticipates that lessons learned related to governance, data-sharing agreements, technical considerations and requirements, and data elements and definitions will yield best practices that all ECCs can use.
