Standardized 911 service is welcomed by local officials

Standards to increase public safety across Alta.

Amove to standardize 911 service across the province is good news, says the manager of the local emergency communications centre. New provincial standards are aimed at increasing public safety by making 911 service more consistent across the province.

The standards will apply to Public Safety Answering Points, who are the first people on the line when a call to 911 comes through. PSAPs are responsible for dispatching calls to the necessary emergency service.

“It was a big consultative process that’s taken several years,” said Chris Kearns, Lethbridge Public Safety Communications Centre manager. “We’re really happy to see the standards out, finally.”

The new standards have been developed in conjunction with the 911 centres across the province.

Some of the changes include the establishment of an agreed upon terminology; the setting of performance targets requiring calls be answered within 15 seconds and transferred within 60 seconds after answering, 95 per cent of the time; requiring centres to have a quality assurance plan and annual internal audit processes; and mandating that centres have backup procedures to ensure 24/7 service continuity in the event of an outage or disruption.

“Albertans should receive quality 911 service and know the emergency response system is there for them when they need it — no matter where in the province they live,” said Shaye Anderson, Minister of Municipal Affairs, in a recent news release.

The standards were developed in collaboration with members of the Alberta 911 Association, including PSAPs and other 911 stakeholders, such as policing organizations, Alberta Health Services and Telus.

Kearns said the City of Lethbridge 911 Centre is mostly compliant with the standards already, but there will still be some minor adjustments and the implementation of new policies in order to be fully compliant.

“We don’t currently have a policy for how we handle vexatious 911 calls,” he said. “We’re going to have to develop a new policy for that.

“We (also) currently don’t have an internal audit process. We’re going to have to develop a new internal audit process.”

There are new reporting procedures which were not previously in place in Lethbridge, however, Kearns said that will be coming.

“The province has been really great to work with on this,” he said.

“They were really very forthright and helpful. And very open-minded.

Taber has a dispatch centre to handle local emergency calls, and representatives from that call centre also contributed to the work that went into development of the standards.

Taber Police Chief Graham Abela said while Taber currently operates at more than 95 per cent compliance with the new standards, there will be some small changes coming.

Abela said there is some policy and procedural work around emergency response needed in Taber still.

“We are in the process of building those and submitting them to the 911 standards group for approval,” he said. “Once that’s done. we’re compliant.”

The Emergency 911 Act, which supports the local delivery of 911, came into force in 2014 and empowers the Minister of Municipal Affairs to create provincial 911 standards.

There are 21 regional 911 centres, which receive an average of 4.3 million calls a year. A large 911 centre, such as Calgary, may take about 30,000 calls in one month.

“All of these things are put in place to ensure the provision of 911 service in the province is seamless, and that Albertans can trust when they call 911 that they are going to get a standardized response, and the service levels at the 911 centres are really the same across the province.

“From my perspective, as a police chief, is that this is a good thing.”

“Somebody in northern Alberta should have a similar experience when they dial 911 as someone in the southern part of Alberta,” said Kearns.

“In the past, that may or may not have been the same.”

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