If it’s not available in your community already, chances are it soon will be.
All of the major wireless carriers now provide text-to-911 services to their subscribers, and more than 1,400 PSAPs (Public Safety Answering Points) across the U.S. are now able to receive them, up from just over 100 PSAPs three years ago.
Last year NICE conducted a survey of thousands of people nationwide to ask if, given the choice, they would prefer to call or text 9-1-1 in an emergency.
To be expected, some 16 percent of millennials said they would text 9-1-1 instead of call if either option was appropriate in the situation, according to a recent Harris Poll.
As text messages and multimedia become part of the emergency communication stream, 9-1-1 centers not only need to consider how they’ll receive and process them, but also how they’ll record and manage them as well.
Emergency communications centers record 9-1-1 calls as a matter of practice, for liability protection, Quality Assurance, and for use in incident reconstructions and investigations.
As momentum builds around text-to-911, they need to gear up to record 9-1-1 texts as well.
“Text recording shouldn’t be an afterthought,” says NICE Public Safety Marketing Director Patrick Botz.
“Text recordings should be managed the same way as other multimedia recordings, and through the same system.”
NICE Inform, the Platinum Award Winner for Best 911 Recording & Analytics Solution in the 2017 ‘ASTORS’ Homeland Security Awards Program, and a strong competitor in the 2018 ‘ASTORS’ Awards, enables 9-1-1 centers to do exactly that.
“They can capture and combine all of their multimedia – SMS texts, 9-1-1 and radio calls, screen recordings, GIS and CAD incident data – into one incident timeline to get the complete context of an incident,” added Botz.
One of the early adopters of text-to-911, Anita Pitt, the 9-1-1 Program Manager for the Brazos Valley Council of Governments (BVCOG), agrees with Botz.
BVCOG uses NICE Inform to record and manage all of their multimedia communications.
“Public Safety agencies would never think twice about recording every 9-1-1 call, even though they may only need to retrieve one call out of a thousand for legal documentation,” said Pitt.
“Agencies need to put the same emphasis on recording 9-1-1 Texts. NICE Inform provides our 9-1-1 centers with complete legal documentation of SMS 9-1-1 Texts, should they need it. It captures exactly what we need in exactly the right format.”
“My counterparts across the state are definitely interested in doing this too and I recommend the NICE solution,” added Pitt.
“They see it as a step toward Next Generation recording – capturing the SIP message through the i3 logging event interface. I think this is how we are going to be recording in the future.”
NICE Inform goes beyond simply capturing 9-1-1 Texts to enable BVCOG to easily search for, retrieve, export, save and share text conversations and associated metadata for investigations.
(Hear from Anita Pitt, 9-1-1 Program Manager for the Brazos Valley Council of Governments (BVCOG), discusses BVCOG’s text-to-911 initiative. BVCOG’s seven 9-1-1 centers have deployed NICE Inform to record and manage reproduction requests for all emergency calls, including text-to-911 communications. Courtesy of NICE and YouTube)
BVCOG 9-1-1 supervisors and records custodians can export and save complete text conversations in various formats (.pdf, .csv) along with complete metadata (e.g. the caller ID, location, date/time stamps, etc.), for comprehensive insight into who texted, from where and when, and what was said.
BVCOG uses Motorola Solutions’ (formerly Airbus DS Communications’) VESTA® call handling solution which enables native handling of text messages and voice in a single application.
NICE has direct integrations with VESTA and other text-to-911 capable platforms as well, including West Corporation’s VIPER.
Leading the way in Next Gen solutions for managing multimedia, NICE also recently announced that it’s offering the first cloud-ready text-to-911 recording solution for AGENT511’s TEXTBLUE multimedia messaging platform.
This will enable agencies using the AGENT511 TEXTBLUE platform to tap into NICE’s state-of-the-art technology for recording 9-1-1 texts and other multimedia communications – an increasing necessity as they move toward shared Next Generation 9-1-1 ESInet environments.
“As agencies move toward shared ESInet environments and full NG9-1-1, the ability to record multimedia communications in the cloud will become absolutely essential,” explains Chris Wooten, Executive Vice President, NICE.
“With the integration of our NICE Inform solution and AGENT511’s TEXTBLUE multimedia messaging, we are able to offer this capability to 9-1-1 centers today.”
NICE Inform logs text messages in compliance with NENA’s i3 standards, supporting both MSRP (Message Session Recording Protocol) and ATIS J-STD-110 standards.
Text logging captures SMS and the text portion of an MMS.
The NICE Next Generation 9-1-1 SMS text-to-911 system logs message content, as well as the texter’s phone number and location information, along with a timestamp for each message.
This metadata is incorporated into a central repository and can be used, along with keywords contained in the text, to search for and retrieve text interactions.
NICE Inform captures, manages, and synchronizes multi-channel interactions between citizens, PSAPs and first responders, to provide a complete, true record of incidents.
It assembles telephony and radio communications into an authentic incident timeline along with SMS 9-1-1 texts, CAD incident data, GIS, screen recordings, video and other multimedia, for comprehensive insight into the ‘who, what, when, where and why’ of incidents.
Improve the Performance of and Future-Proof Your Operations
Next Generation 911, Text-to-911, Public Safety LTE, increasing citizen needs and expectations as well as new Quality Assurance standards are all dramatically changing the Public Safety communications landscape.
That’s why NICE is reinventing recording – to help you improve your PSAP operations today while also preparing for what’s on the horizon.
The revolutionary new NICE Inform captures and analyzes ALL of your communications to put recording to work for you.
Powered by CAD Incident Analytics, NICE Inform lets you use CAD data to instantly find all 911, radio and text calls associated with incidents for investigations and to perform Quality Assurance (QA) evaluations in half the time.
Say goodbye to waiting days or weeks for manual reports and make smarter decisions faster using Inform Elite’s Incident Intelligence Dashboards.
See your performance metrics and identify issues earlier, so you can meet your performance targets and improve your emergency response.
NICE Inform Application Suite
NICE Inform is a suite of modular applications for incident information management that can run over traditional and IP-based networks.
It records multimedia interactions between the public, emergency centers and first responders.
All captured incident information is then synchronized and put it into context to help you improve investigations, policy compliance and employee performance.
Learn More about each of the NICE Inform Application Suite components by clicking below:
- Audio, Screen & Text-to-911 Recording
- CAD Incident Analytics Integration
- Multimedia Incident Reconstruction
- Quality Assurance
- Incident Intelligence Dashboards & Reporting
- Audio Analytics
- Real-Time Decision Support
NICE at a Glance
NICE is the worldwide leading provider of both cloud and on-premises enterprise software solutions that empower organizations to make smarter decisions based on advanced analytics of structured and unstructured data.
NICE helps organizations of all sizes deliver better customer service, ensure compliance, combat fraud and safeguard citizens.
Over 22,000 organizations in more than 150 countries, including over 80 of the Fortune 100 companies, are using NICE solutions.
NICE Inform Competes in 2018 ‘ASTORS’ Homeland Security Awards Program
AST focuses on Homeland Security and Public Safety Breaking News, the Newest Initiatives and Hottest Technologies in Physical & IT Security, essential to meeting today’s growing security challenges.
The 2018 ‘ASTORS’ Homeland Security Awards Program, is organized to recognize the most distinguished vendors of Physical, IT, Port Security, Law Enforcement, Border Security, First Responders, (Fire, EMT, Military, Support Services Vets, SBA, Medical Tech) as well as the Federal, State, County and Municipal Government Agencies – to acknowledge their outstanding efforts to ‘Keep our Nation Secure, One City at a Time.’
As a 2018 ‘ASTORS’ Award Competitor, NICE Inform will be competing against the industry’s leading providers of Innovative 911 Recording & Analytics Solutions.
To Learn More about the ‘ASTORS’ Homeland Security Awards Program, see 2017 ‘ASTORS’ Homeland Security Award Winners Honored at ISC East.
Over 100 distinguished guests from National, State and Local Governments, and Industry Leading Corporate Executives from companies allied to Government, gathered from across North America and the Middle East to be honored from disciplines across the Security Industry in their respective fields which included representatives from:
- The Department of Homeland Security
- The Department of Justice
- The Security Exchange Commission
- State and Municipal Law Enforcement Agencies
- Leaders in Private Security
