D.C. Auditor Sees More Work Left for 911 Center

The District of Columbia still fails to meet national 911 standards, D.C. Auditor Kathleen Patterson said Thursday. The auditor released a second update to an October 2021 report on the D.C. Office of Unified Communications (OUC). In 99,000 priority medical calls from September 2021 through August 2022, OUC failed to comply with national standards for time to answer “for roughly half the time and was not in compliance with the 60-second answer-to-notification requirement at any time,” wrote Patterson in a cover letter to Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) and D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D). "Even more serious than failure to meet these national standards is the agency’s failure to be accurate and transparent in describing after-action reviews of the July 3 and Aug. 9 incidents when young District residents Sevyn Schatzman-Chase and Aaron Boyd, Jr., respectively, lost their lives. In one case OUC failed to acknowledge that the call taker recorded the wrong address after the correct address had been displayed on a locator map.” Thursday’s report said OUC completed seven of 31 recommendations in the October 2021 audit, made partial headway on 17 and “minimal progress” on seven. In a March 10 response to a draft report, acting Director Heather McGaffin said OUC "made great strides to implement the recommendations" since the auditor's September update: “I simultaneously acknowledge there is still work to be done.” OUC believes it completed 23 recommendations and expects to finish the remaining eight by summer's end, she said. McGaffin noted 911 call volume keeps increasing. Patterson wrote Thursday she's “concerned that the most recent accounting by the agency appears to significantly overstate actions taken” since the September status report. McGaffin, Bower’s nominee to be OUC’s permanent director, pledged at a confirmation hearing last week to improve processes and be more transparent (see 2303150071).