Public Safety Community Divided on Lift America Act's NG-911 Proposals

HR-1848 is “a once-in-a-generation opportunity” to update 911, said APCO Chief Counsel Jeff Cohen. “This is going to finally enable 911 centers across the country to fully modernize their equipment to meet the needs of the 21st century and for 911 professionals to get the training needed to prepare for next-generation 911.” Much of the bill’s NG-911 language mirrors recommendations from APCO and the Public Safety NG-911 Coalition. It would create a new NG-911 Advisory Board within NTIA to make recommendations to the 911 Implementation Coordination Office (ICO) for managing the additional grants.

NASNA wants “additional discussion" between the “broad 911 community” and other public safety stakeholders before House Commerce acts on HR-1848, Executive Director Harriet Rennie-Brown said. “That means all the organizations with leadership roles and deployment roles in” NG-911, since the measure will affect their rollout of the technology. NASNA was involved in the NG-911 Coalition’s recommendations work but “left the table because we felt that there were some recommendations coming out of it that the states did not believe were in the best interest of moving to” NG-911, she said.

NENA’s concerns about HR-1848 “have been solidified” particularly since APCO’s webinar, said Government Affairs Director Dan Henry. The group’s disagreement with APCO on the bill “basically boils down to a difference in the vision for standards-based” NG-911 “going forward.” NENA and NASNA contend that HR-1848’s proposed advisory board is unnecessary but said if Congress decides to keep it, it should be limited to an advisory role.

Cohen said the advisory board would only make recommendations and be in place during the NG-911 grant program. “It’s odd to see these concerns about the board,” he said.

Standards Concerns

NASNA and NENA said they have far larger concerns about HR-1848’s interoperability requirement and language on “commonly accepted standards.” Its definition of “commonly accepted standards” mentions ones approved by the American National Standards Institute and developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, ATIS, IEEE, Internet Engineering Task Force and ITU.

NENA and NASNA are concerned the language doesn’t account for NENA’s i3 standard for NG-911 systems, which is awaiting ANSI approval. They argue the standard is too widely used to be excluded. “We're just asking for language that allows a little bit of broader but accountable and transparent standards development,” Rennie-Brown said. The groups want lawmakers to clarify what constitutes interoperability for grant eligibility to either explicitly apply to only NG-911 systems or modify the definition in a way that ensures those systems are interoperable with legacy 911 systems.

“It was made abundantly clear” during the webinar “that the standards language that we've always had issues with is biased, it's ambiguous and really creates significant doubt as to whether or not really crucial NG-911 standards will be ultimately deemed eligible for” HR-1848’s proposed grants, Henry said. “We think anybody who relies on or who has spent money on” standards-based engineering “should be concerned about that, too.”

Cohen referred us to the APCO webinar, in which he countered the NENA/NASNA concerns and cited what he called “misinformation” about HR-1848. The measure’s interoperability requirements would be “the strongest ever imposed” for NG-911, he said: Problems today stem from proprietary systems. NENA’s i3 specification isn’t a “complete NG-911 solution,” Cohen said: “It addresses the call-handling only and, unfortunately, has been deployed in a proprietary, non-interoperable manner.”

Cybersecurity

NENA and NASNA also have concerns about HR-1848’s cybersecurity language, including its proposal to create a Nationwide NG-911 Security Operations Center within ICO to support local entities. A national SOC would undermine state and local control of 911 systems, the groups said. They contended that it would also create additional complex privacy, technical and legal challenges to NG-911 implementation. The groups want lawmakers explicitly to allow the NG-911 grants to be used in cybersecurity expenses and require recipients to certify annually they’re using security resources to protect systems.

“Any lack of clarity” about what the proposed SOC’s role will be “after this bill is passed is going to slow down NG-911” in states like California that “have invested in this already,” Henry said. “This would potentially slow it down with uncertainty.” NASNA “will be happy to work on developing” alternative language that emphasizes the role of regional and state-based SOCs, Rennie-Brown said. “We had actually proposed alternative language” before that makes “cybersecurity a higher priority than it even is” in the existing HR-1848 text.

HR-1848’s cybersecurity provisions are based on recommendations from the FCC Task Force on Optimal Public Safety Answering Point Architecture, which was active during the Barack Obama administration (see 1612020041), Cohen said. NTIA would ensure implementation and be a “layer” on top of solutions already in place. “No one wants to create a federalized system that requires all 911 traffic to flow through a federally controlled chokepoint,” he said: “We do not see how the current bill language could be read to require that.”

House Commerce’s timeline for marking up HR-1848 or a combined infrastructure measure is unclear. A committee vote on the measure is unlikely during the April work period set to begin Monday, since its schedule is already full with hearings, lobbyists said. A May markup is more likely, as Democratic leaders want to advance all infrastructure legislation needed to produce a combined bill out of relevant committees by Memorial Day, they said. House Commerce didn’t comment.

“I’m expecting to be fielding more questions about” how NASNA would like to see the NG-911 language revised once Congress returns Monday, Rennie-Brown said. “We assume” that marking up HR-1848 “is a big priority” for House Commerce, Henry said. “We’re working on the assumption that all of this is going to happen on the order of weeks and not months.”

“We’ve been working with a number of offices” to communicate the NASNA/NENA concerns, Henry said. “We’re still hopeful” House Commerce leaders will make “corrections” that address those issues before the committee’s part of an infrastructure package advances. They would be “equally” pleased “no matter what office the amendment comes from,” he said. Some lobbyists suggested Communications Subcommittee ranking member Bob Latta of Ohio would be a likely lead GOP player in pressing for changes to HR-1848’s NG-911 language. He criticized it during a March hearing on the measure (see 2103220063). Latta’s office didn’t comment.