WASHINGTON—The Federal Highway Administration late Monday released the “presoliciation notice” for the next-generation 911 system, which would overhaul the current nationwide emergency-response system that relies on 6,000 public-safety answering points with divergent ways of handling calls.
“This follow-on project will require the 911 system to transition from analog to digital and from landline to Internet-based protocols. In short, in this follow-on project a fundamental re-examination of the technological approach to 911 is required for the public-safety emergency network adaptations to accommodate the challenges of wireless communications,” reads the presoliciation. “The contractor for this follow-on project will evaluate the system to determine how it supports emergency-call initiation, routing and processing that will ultimately fulfill public-safety emergency response information needs. In parallel to the engineering and test phases, the contract for this follow-on project will develop an operationally and institutionally feasible transition plan for migrating today’s 911 system to a nationwide internetwork capable of managing emergency calls from most types of communications devices.”
FHA, a unit of the Department of Transportation, expects to post the complete request for proposals in May with an estimated due date of June 20.
“The contractor will create an open systems design for transmitting enhanced 911 calls from most types of communications devices, will demonstrate a working proof of concept showing coordinated performance among the system’s components, and will prepare a plan for transitioning from disparate 911 systems to an Internet-protocol environment in a national next-generation system or system of systems,” reads the notice.
Jenny Hansen, project coordinator and a DoT consultant on the Next Generation 911 Initiative, announced the NG-911 project at a February luncheon briefing for the Congressional Enhanced 911 Caucus. Hansen is expected to provide additional details next week at a briefing for the caucus.
The NG-911 Initiative has a snappy slogan: “It’s not just telephones anymore,” which reflects Americans’ move away from wired telephones.
The snappy slogan is nowhere to be found in the presolicitation notice, which is a legalistic document that explains how many hours each employee is expected to work on the project and the level of education and experience for each employee.
Since the project is expected to be technical, a high degree of engineering and understanding of the 911 is necessary for many of the project’s employees.The presoliciation is for the follow-on contract awarded to the National Emergency Number Association in October 2001, but FHA cautioned against applicants thinking of this project as a continuation of the NENA project and instead as a distinct, unique proposal.
To prevent applicants from using NENA’s contract as a guide, FHA said the contract would not be available in a usable format prior to the deadline.
“It is unlikely that even an extensively redacted and probably useless copy of NENA’s incumbent contract document could be made available to any Freedom of Information Act requester before the due date for submitting proposals under this follow-on procurement,” reads the document.
