Calling 911 and not getting an answer

Staffing shortages and worsening performance at another key agency

There’s been a lot of media attention on DC’s struggling 911 system recently, including stories in most local media outlets and even CNN. The current wave of coverage was triggered by the August 14th flooding that killed 10 dogs at a dog daycare; where an apparent mistake by a 911 dispatcher (may have) delayed rescuers from arriving in time to save the dogs. Many people have correctly pointed out that past 911 mistakes that may have contributed to human deaths did not receive similar media coverage. To their credit, the deceased dogs’ owners (who in no way wanted to be in this situation) tend to acknowledge this point and have laudably used the spotlight to raise questions about how DC’s 911 system is failing in general like ANC Colleen Costello did here:

”It is not at all lost on me—or probably any of us—the absurdity that our dogs’ deaths seem to have finally drawn attn. to longstanding problems at OUC. Many people have also died or been harmed by OUC’s errors. To those families: I’m sorry. You deserved change YEARS ago.”

The acronym OUC refers to the Office of Unified Communications which handles 911 calls in DC. OUC has had a run of bad press for operational problems, leadership turmoil and conflicts between the Mayor and Council:

• “Audit finds minimal progress made in improving D.C.'s 911 system”

• “Follow-up audit of DC's 911 system shows transparency still lacking”

• “Ex-Head Of DC 911 Agency Sues Bowser For Retaliation”

• “DC emergency legislation calls for more transparency, accountability in 911 call center”

OUC’s own data confirms the general narrative of an agency with significant problems. While OUC does not share performance data with the public in a timely manner (like most DC agencies) they do have to provide responses to Council oversight questions. These massive documents give us a peek at how OUC operates and they show worsening performance since 2021 through February 2023 (the most recent data). One of the most important metrics is how quickly OUC staff answer 911 calls. OUC measures this in 5 second increments:

• OUC’s internal goal is for 90% of calls to be answered within 10 seconds

• The National Emergency Number Association (NENA) standards are that 90% of calls should be answered within 15 seconds and 95% of calls should be answered within 20 seconds

• OUC is not meeting any of these goals/standards consistently and performance has generally been getting worse since early 2022:

  • The dashed lines reflect the NENA standards. When the solid gray line is lower than the dashed gray line at 95% it reflects OUC failing the NENA standard

Unfortunately the current media focus on OUC does not (to my knowledge) have the benefit of any data more recent than February 2023 due to OUC’s lack of transparency. Unsurprisingly, when it takes longer to get an answer from 911 more people just hang up or “abandon” the call. As OUC performance has gone down over this timeframe the abandonment rate has gone up:

The increased delays in answering 911 calls correlate with the increase in abandonment rate. This suggests abandonment is rising because of OUC’s performance and not simply a case of people calling in with less-serious issues.

There has also been slippage on OUC’s target for “Percent of 911 calls in which call to queue is 90 seconds or less.” Here OUC breaks out performance for calls to the police (MPD) vs. calls to fire/emergency medical services (FEMS) and while there is an overall downward trend there is also a persistent gap between the two agencies. It’s unclear if OUC, MPD or FEMS staffing or practices are causing this gap:

Lastly, OUC has consistently failed to meet its target for “Percent of 911 calls which move from queue to dispatch in 60 seconds or less” though here performance has been more steady (rather than decreasing like the other metrics):

It’s important to look at these broader performance metrics because so much of the administration’s pushback to any criticism has been to portray any criticism of specific OUC mistakes as “information that’s being cherry picked.” It is true that no agency will be perfect 100% of the time and so long as the focus is on specific incidents the administration is always able to deflect to the “big picture.” However, the fact that the “big picture” is clearly worsening at OUC across multiple key metrics will hopefully spur some real changes and improvements at an agency that is too important to fail.

Any discussion of the problems at OUC has to include its leadership. OUC was led from 2016-2020 and again from March 2022-February 2023 by Karima Holmes. In between those two stints OUC was led by Cleo Subido who has now filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Mayor Bowser. Subido’s allegations in the lawsuit present a pretty shocking view of the situation she inherited from Director Holmes and retaliation by Mayor Bowser’s administration for being honest about OUC’s problems:

• “OUC was understaffed and that staff lacked adequate supervision, that absenteeism was extreme, and that staff lacked adequate training”

• “issues related to OUC’s chronic failures in timely answering calls, its failure to track complaints accurately, and its refusal to release 911 audio.”

• “although OUC had reported figures related to OUC’s performance to the Mayor and the Council, the numbers reported were inaccurate and inflated because of the prior administration’s instructions on how to measure speed to answer.”

• “With respect to the abandoned calls, Ms. Subido realized that telecommunicators were not calling back numbers where the call was abandoned or the caller hung up.” (Note this goes against industry standards)

• “Deputy Mayor Geldart warned Ms. Subido to tread carefully and not pursue her concerns as it would upset Mayor Bowser and would likely result in Mayor Bowser firing Ms. Subido”

• “Based on her communications with the Deputy Mayor, Ms. Subido also understood that the Mayor was unhappy that Ms. Subido provided such comprehensive and accurate information to the D.C. Council regarding the failure to adequately staff the communication lines. Following this testimony, the Mayor’s office began to isolate Ms. Subido and refused to engage in meaningful communication with her”

Mayor Bowser did eventually demote and fire Subido and Subido alleges this was “intended to silence her and deter others from raising or addressing similar concerns.” Of course the administration denies these accusations and Mayor Bowser said “I believe the lawsuit is without merit.” One reason we should give some credence to Subido’s accusations is that OUC performed much better under her watch than her predecessor/successor Karima Holmes:

The Bowser administration made a significant but ultimately unsuccessful PR push to confirm Karima Holmes to a full (not interim) Director position in December 2022. When announcing that she was withdrawing Holmes’ nomination, Bowser again praised her leadership: “She improved morale in a high-stress agency that had previously suffered from chronic under-staffing.”

However, OUC’s data tells a different story. When looking at past year’s OUC oversight responses we actually see that OUC staffing is trending down for both 911 Call Takers and 911 Dispatchers. The Mayor’s assertion that OUC “had previously suffered from chronic under-staffing” doesn’t make any sense when staffing appears to be lower (and reported vacancies higher) than when Holmes began her second stint as OUC Director:

It’s also notable that Heather McGaffin, OUC’s current Interim Director, is also saying that OUC is understaffed: “We are short staffed, we have 28 openings in 911 call taking, that’s an entire shift, and those openings have been kind of building.” It’s impossible tell what was the basis for the Mayor’s December 2022 comment that “under-staffing” is something that only applied in the past tense for OUC but it does not seem to have been true at the time or true now.

The oversight data also shows that 911 Call Taker turnover has increased dramatically; from 7 separations in the year leading up to the 2021 oversight responses to 23 in 2022’s responses and 22 in 2023’s responses. Those 22 Call Taker separations represents 31% turnover of the staff in that key position, which may explain why some of these tragic mistakes have happened.

In this year’s budget there was a big difference between the Mayor’s proposed OUC budget and what the Council approved that largely avoided media attention. The Mayor proposed cutting 911 Emergency Operations by $492K. CM Pinto’s committee instead shifted $1.3M and 17 positions (FTEs) from 311 (non-emergency) to 911:

Those 17 shifted FTEs will fill some of the vacancies in 911 but OUC will need to hire to fill its remaining vacancies (and offset attrition). However, like so many other agencies, OUC may have the budget and approved FTEs to increase its staffing but it’s lacking interested, qualified candidates to fill the jobs. In this sense OUC’s recruiting (and retention) problems have some similarities with those of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) though the number of staff at OUC is much smaller:

Getting serious about recruiting more police

Given OUC’s performance data, staff turnover and the allegations in former Director Subido’s lawsuit it also seems like OUC’s problems go far beyond just staffing levels. Hopefully the additional media attention and increased transparency from recent legislation will help get to the roots of OUC’s longstanding problems.

Note: I’m incredibly grateful for Dave Statter’s longstanding reporting on OUC which I’ve linked to throughout this post. I highly encourage you to check out his website or social media if you are interested in this topic.