Waste of the Day: California’s $450 Million 911 Center Doesn’t Work

Topline: When California Gov. Gavin Newsom took office in 2019, he promised to redesign the state’s antiquated emergency call centers. The result was the Next Generation 911 system, which the state paid four technology companies $450 million to build between 2019 and 2025.

The problem: the new 911 system doesn’t work

But during a Nov. 19 meeting, the California Office of Emergency Services (OES) admitted the system doesn’t work and needs to be scrapped entirely, the Sacramento Bee reported. Now it’s back to the drawing board to start from scratch, with nothing to show except a gaping hole in taxpayers’ wallets.

Key facts: Typically, 911 call centers within one state are all connected by the same phone system. That makes it easy for dispatchers to transfer callers to the correct response team, depending on what the emergency is and where the caller is located.

That means if cell phone towers are damaged in one city, the entire state can be affected, as was the case when emergency communications failed during the California wildfires in 2018. 

California’s idea to solve the issue was to make four separate, regional 911 centers. If one center was damaged by extreme weather or another catastrophe, another could step up in the meantime.

It didn’t work, and OES hid the details from the public and other state officials. Emergency calls were being misrouted, and dispatchers said it was delaying life-saving services. The leader of the project, OES Assistant Director Budge Currier, “retired” in May 2024, but NBC Bay Area later reported he had actually been fired over the safety concerns with Next Generation 911. 

Lack of communication

Andrew White, a member of the State 911 Advisory Board overseeing the project, said OES never told him about the safety concerns. He first learned about them by reading NBC Bay Area’s news article. 

OES kept trying to perfect the system before finally admitting this November that the concept was flawed. The state will now build a 911 call center with one central system, like other states have.

Synergem Technologies was one of the companies California already paid to build the broken system. Its Chief Operating Officer, Jeff Schlueter, told the Sacramento Bee it will cost an additional “hundreds of millions” of dollars to design a new system.

In the meantime, California is still using the systems Newsom promised to replace in 2019. They are based on technology from the 1970s and are “literally falling apart,” Brandon Abley, the National Emergency Number Association’s chief technology officer, told the Sacramento Bee.

Summary: Californians may soon be calling 911 to report the money their officials are wasting on failed projects.

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This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.