On Friday March the 27th, the Owen Sound Emergency Communications Centre completed its first call with Bell Canada on the new Next Generation 911 platform. Years of planning in procurement, procedures and training have gone into the project which will enable the Owen Sound Police Service’s Communications Center to deliver new features not yet seen in Canada.

“While we as a service continue to adapt and plan for the Covid19 pandemic, we also continue to move forward with our day to day operations. The dedication and knowledge of our staff and service providers has allowed us to be well ahead of the curve and complete our first NG911 test call. We are one of only a handful of services across the country to successfully implement this technology and are the only service not located in a major metropolitan city. We provide emergency services dispatch and call answering for a number of communities in Ontario and wanted to be well ahead of the deadline to continue to offer our customers the excellent product that they have come to expect. “Chief Craig Ambrose said.

“It was a long process to get where we are today. What began with a CRTC decision in 2017 prompted us to jump on board early and roll it out as soon as possible. It’s going to provide our staff with enhanced capabilities for all communities that we provide services for.” Director of Corporate Services Suzanne Bell-Matheson said. “We are going to leverage the extra time the voice trials provide to customize delivery to our communications staff and build analytics using the vast amount of information now available.”

The CRTC makes the NextGen 911 platform available later this year for general release with a deadline of 2023 whereby all 911 facilities must be migrated.

“We’ve spent over 2 years preparing this deployment, including several long days and nights.” Director of Information Technology Christopher Hill explained. “We are one of about 10 in all of Canada currently engaged in successful voice trials. The voice trials will be with providers such as the City of Ottawa and Calgary.” Director Hill said.

“This system isn’t tied into anything we currently have, we built everything from the ground up and each system is custom designed. The scale of the infrastructure is drastically different and each of the almost 50 systems had to be designed to work with the other. Months were spent working with engineers to build solutions and connect our facilities and individual dispatch positions.” Hill explained.

Later this year, the Owen Sound Emergency Communications Centre will be able to leverage enhanced call options and real time chat via NG911 to all of Grey and Bruce Counties as well as partnered areas such as Dryden, Port Hope, Cobourg and Huron County. Any municipalities contracted to the communications center would also automatically gain these capabilities.

“NG911 will allow 911 callers to provide voice calls as well as access to an app that will allow real time chat features later this year. In the future the ability download multimedia video and file transfer will be enabled. This will replace the existing older E911 which had basic texting.” Bell-Matheson explained.

More information about the Owen Sound Emergency Communications Centre NG911 system can be found on their website at www.owensoundpolice.com

source: media release, OSPS