Avaya's Public Safety Release: 911 as Contact CenterAvaya's Public Safety Release: 911 as Contact Center

In the early years of IP telephony, E-911 was a major worry for enterprises, because of the portability issue: IP endpoints didn't necessarily register their physical location, so 911 calls from those endpoints could go to a public safety answering point (PSAP) other than the one serving that physical location. These problems aren't necessarily solved within the enterprise, but location solutions have emerged, and the industry is turning its attention to the new capabilities that IP can bring to 911. Among other things, the U.S. Department of Transportation has launched a Next-Generation 911 project.

In the early years of IP telephony, E-911 was a major worry for enterprises, because of the portability issue: IP endpoints didn't necessarily register their physical location, so 911 calls from those endpoints could go to a public safety answering point (PSAP) other than the one serving that physical location. These problems aren't necessarily solved within the enterprise, but location solutions have emerged, and the industry is turning its attention to the new capabilities that IP can bring to 911. Among other things, the U.S. Department of Transportation has launched a Next-Generation 911 project.Another example of forward thinking on 911 is an announcement that Avaya made on Monday, of a new suite of technologies and set of partnerships intended to enhance E-911. This week's D'Ambrosio news kind of overwhelmed everything else, so I held off on writing about this until I could give it a bit more attention, because it's pretty cool.

Avaya announced it's partnering with NICE Systems, for call recording; PlantCML (whose Intelligent Work Station CTI application integrates with Avaya's Communication Manager and automatically retrieves information from the Automatic Location Identification or ALI database; and Raytheon, which makes a gateway that allows multiple types of emergency-responder radio systems to interoperate--potentially alleviating the problems that we saw on September 11 and in other disasters, where various agencies couldn't talk directly to each other. Avaya is also working with IBM as its services partner.

The first two partnerships take care of basics like identification and call recording. The really groundbreaking stuff happens with the linkage of the Raytheon gateway to Avaya communications gear, including contact center systems. To understand why this is groundbreaking, you have to understand that, in IT terms, most 911 PSAPs are far behind where you might expect or hope they'd be. Guy Clinch, Avaya's senior director for state and local government markets, went so far as to call PSAPs "dangerously outdated" in terms of the IT infrastructure.

For example, Guy noted, many PSAPs still haven't replaced analog trunks with digital T1s. Just making this replacement in Washington, DC's main PSAP brought increased capacity that reduced average speed of answer from more than 10 seconds to less than five seconds, with the "overwhelming majority" of calls answered in 1 second, according to Clinch.

For many PSAPs, that's going to be a great first step, and given state and local budgets, just getting to that point will be a challenge. But adding Unified Communications technology can bring PSAPs to a whole new level.

For example, Clinch noted that most PSAP phone answering is handled in the old-fashioned "square-key environment": a line rings, and the first person who can jump on it does so. Automatic call distribution would be a new concept in many PSAPs, he said. Clearly, if ACDs could do for PSAP performance what they did in corporate contact centers, you'd save some lives.

The Raytheon integration takes this a step further. Right now, when someone calls 911, they tell the operator why they're calling and answer the operator's questions--the operator must take this information down and then relay it either via radio or electronically to the appropriate agency. Looping the Raytheon gateway and the Avaya system into the process gives the option of conferencing police or fire responders into the communication directly while the caller is still on the line.

Guy Clinch says the benefits go deeper than even the immediate life-saving potential. He insists that better communications systems will mitigate at least somewhat against the highly stressful nature of these emergency-communications jobs, and at least slow down the traditionally-high burnout rates.

"We want to bring workforce management techniques into the system," he said.

The complete solution announced this week will be GA in August, according to Clinch.