
My hell as a 911 operator - DavidChouinard
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/my_hell_as_operator_HYlg05QYm291rqIakgY24J
======
josh2600
Ok, I have something to add here for the following reasons:

* I build big call centers for a living

* I'm a really big Telecom Nerd

You might be wondering why something as important as 911 is not automated or
accessible via any other mechanism; why is it that the most critical service
in the country runs on a system that hasn't materially changed since 1984?

For one, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is extremely reliable,
authentic because it's logically addressed, and ubiquitous. The only real flaw
is the addressing, which, because of Caller ID, can be faked, but that's
another story (See Wikipedia on Swatting).

So, there's a huge movement to reshape 911 service to take advantage of modern
things like the internet, SMS, GPS and all different kinds of connectivity.
The way 911 works right now is sort of a hodgepodge all over the place
depending on which vendor the municipality has selected for the Public Service
Access Point. There is not one standardized 911 system across the country,
which may or may not be a good thing depending on your perspective.

So everyone can agree fixing 911 is a great idea, BUT why hasn't it happened
already? I can point to a couple potential reasons:

1) It's a really big contract; supposing PSAPs get standardized across the
board, we're talking about many millions, potentially billions of dollars.
That means lobbying and negotiation and time (oh by the way Sprint is
currently leading the charge but I find it unlikely that the US will let a
foreign-owned conglomerate manage their backbone emergency services).

2) The current vendors see nothing wrong with the existing solution, and have
projects like what has happened in New York to stand against the tide of
change. Their service contracts provide a big incentive to keep those boxes in
those cities.

So I think there's a lot of reasons why 911 is as bad as it is, most of it
isn't technical, but political, as with most old ridiculous infrastructures.

It's amazing how __not __planning for obsolescence almost automatically
results in political conflict down the road.

~~~
dkarl
The supposed advantage of a hodgepodge is that somewhere the right approach
has been tried and is working well, and pressure will mount on cities with
inferior systems to either match or adopt the better systems. Where, if
anywhere, is 911 being done well, and how slowly or quickly will the
successful approaches spread? Do you think this dynamic will lead to places
like New York having faster and more reliable 911 systems, or should they
concentrate on their own efforts?

~~~
josh2600
911 isn't being done well anywhere IMHO.

If you look at the way 911 works, there's no location information unless you
use the cellular radio (and this assumes your carrier is using the cell tower
to anchor your location). If you use IP to call, let's say via an application
like RingCentral, how does the 911 service know whether you're in San
Francisco or New York? It doesn't.

This isn't pie in the sky fantasy, this is actually how all over the top VoIP
connections work. You pick a location and that's where your 911 calls
originate. It doesn't matter whether you're using your SIP client in New York,
your 911 call will still go to a San Francisco 911 center because your office
address is in SF. That's not good.

So IMHO the right approach is a top-down rewrite and rolling that sucker out
nationwide. Normally, we'd see one vendor start to dominate over other
vendors, and while there has definitely been some consolidation in the 911
market, the fact that these services are federally mandated (Read: Allocated
budget automatically) there's not a huge incentive for municipalities to shop
around. These systems are essentially free as far as they're concerned.

Part of the reason we're not on IP is because the federal dollars can't be
legally spent on IP in many places (gotta love lobbying). In short, the
correct approach, IMHO, is IP-enabled PSAPs with GPS information for location
combined with reform efforts in congress. The logically addressed world of the
phone network is a fantasy and our emergency services should model reality
instead of our dreams.

~~~
jimbokun
"So IMHO the right approach is a top-down rewrite..."

This is almost always an extremely bad idea:

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html)

I have no inside knowledge, but wouldn't be surprised at all if many of the
problems of the new NYC 911 system is due to a decision to rewrite the code
from scratch, losing much of the knowledge and bug fixes embedded in the old
system's source code.

~~~
josh2600
I know but you have to understand, Joel makes excellent points, but if most of
the systems are written in COBOL it makes them hard to extend over time.

We're talking about software from 1984 in some cases although it's all
littered with security holes, bad interfaces and slow response times.

In the case of NY, I could agree with you, but I would say that the problem
was significantly overcomplicated. There are better systems that could be used
to deliver something like this. I think that, yes, sometimes you do need to do
a top-down rewrite, especially when everything is wrong.

I do agree with your point that the NY incident is likely attributable to poor
software design, but I disagree with the conclusion that any rewrite would
suffer from the same malady.

------
jowiar
I am tired of HN (and the rest of the country) taking shots at government
employees. They're talented. They work hard. They take pride in their work.
They do a damn good job. If you look at any good technology product that's
come out of government, it's almost always been a creation of federal
employees: CFPB. Data.gov. Healthcare.gov. Some neat things coming out of the
OPM. Accumulo.

There are Github repositories:

    
    
      https://github.com/GSA
    
      https://github.com/GSA-OCSIT
    
      https://github.com/cfpb
    
      https://github.com/opengovplatform
    

To quote Deputy CIO of CFPB Matthew Burton:

    
    
        Got two out-of-the-blue emails today asking 
        "who is behind http://CFPB.gov's great graphic design."
        I'm proud to say: civil servants" [1]
        

On the other hand, feel free to tear apart the contracting system all you
want. The system of "who can check all the boxes for the lowest price" is an
unmitigated train wreck. It basically mandates a waterfall-designed usability
disaster. The sooner we can tear apart that system, the better (and I say that
as someone who has spent a majority of my career as a government contractor).

[1]:
[https://twitter.com/matthewburton/status/359747466339418113](https://twitter.com/matthewburton/status/359747466339418113)

~~~
quanticle
How is this a shot at government employees? If anything, this is a tale of how
government employees are bearing up under pressure that would have caused any
of us to quit in under a week. The government employees didn't design the
craptacular computer system that's causing these problems. That was designed
by Intergraph, a private company.

~~~
jowiar
I wasn't replying to the article. I saw a handful of posts in the discussion
blaming lazy, incompetent, or malicious government employees, and didn't want
to post the same thing multiple times within the thread.

------
gregd
Having been involved in long, arduous government procurement processes, I can
assure you that it will leave you shaking your head and wondering how ANYTHING
in government gets done.

The trip from RFP to signed contract is maddening and has probably driven more
than one government worker to an alcoholic stupor, wishing for the sweet
embrace of death.

On a side note, I'm no longer a government employee. My name is Greg and I'm
an alcoholic....

~~~
greghinch
When I was freelancing, I did some government work. I was flabbergasted by the
slow pace at which things moved, and that I had to create accounts in 3
separate systems to submit and get paid for even very basic invoices.

Government is a place that is ripe for disruption, but the walls around it are
so high, I don't know how to really breach them. There is a huge machine in
place of contractors and lobbyists which essentially maintain a strict control
over all IT contracts that come out of the public sector. Massive corporate
entities with an entrenched web of influencers at every level of government,
ensuring that only a select few even have an opportunity to realistically
compete for the jobs. The amount of overspending that could be eliminated with
the disruption of those entities probably represents a significant portion of
local, state, and national budgets, not to mention the likely better solutions
that could be presented by folks more accustomed to working efficiently.

I'm not necessarily saying the 20 somethings who were going to make "Snapchat
for dogs" could do a better job as government contractors. But certainly
someone who designed infrastructure for Twitter might have some interesting
perspective on how to manage 911 traffic.

~~~
milhous
Large scale disruption is impossible because the government and its employees
are protected by guns and the force of law, permitting special interests,
cronyism, and incompetence to flourish. We in the marketplace (minus
Industrial Military Complex) have no such protections, and actually have to
produce value to make a living in a fair exchange of goods and services.

Most government employees are unemployable in the marketplace, so it's in
their interest to follow orders, at whatever cost, to keep their jobs.

The best thing for young professionals is to fight the system intelligently
for those that have the resources to do so, or avoid it entirely.

Edit: As is with NYC's 911 boondoggle, a SF startup could've built out an
amazing system at a fraction of the price. But that wouldn't be the government
thing to do. It has nothing to do with building a quality product.

~~~
lemmsjid
Responding to your edit about "a SF startup could've built out an amazing
system at a fraction of the price"\-- I hear that kind of attitude a lot, I'm
not so sure it holds to scrutiny.

Tackling the problem of a system that must be 100% reliable, synchronous, with
complete uptime from day 1 is very very difficult, and not many startup
environments will prepare you for it. A lot of systems that are scaling
decently now (twitter was used as an example early on) had extreme early
growing pains.

In fact, I think it is impossible to build such a system without significant
upfront cost, because a lot of the cost should go into the testing phase. It's
almost as though you'd want to create a testing call center that receives
realistic calls and needs to route them correctly, and have it running for
months while the software is iterated on. A lot of effort should go into
making the testing center as realistic as possible, and a lot of time should
go into teasing out the inevitable bugs.

~~~
pcl
Sounds like it doesn't need to be 100% reliable, though -- they have a painful
backup system in place.

Also, replaying traffic from the old system into the new seems like a viable
way to test out this sort of system. Or, they could have run both systems in
parallel, and just sent a percentage of the traffic to the new system and
slowly ramped up. I wonder why they chose to just cut over rather than doing a
full and seemingly irreversible cutover.

Not that many startups would have done things that way, since the nature of
startups tends towards the green field. But plenty of more-established tech
companies would have, I imagine.

------
DanielBMarkham
Pre-9-11, I spent some time doing some high-level analysis, talking to users
and administrators, of a nation-wide EMS system for an entire country (Sorry,
can't say which) It was a U.S. firm interested in figuring out exactly how
much it would cost to create a national system so they could bid on it.

This does not have to be a very complicated system at all. It's basically a
real-time workflow system. Information comes in, is assigned a type and other
data, and depending on the values is routed to various other people, which
also tag and update it. In a way, it's almost like a bug-tracking system.
Tickets get made. Tickets get worked on. Tickets get resolved.

Now combine that 10K problem with a large rollout, lots of administrative BS,
and $2 Billion? It's wonder the damn thing works at all. A group of hackers
could cobble together something over a week with better uptime and more
reliability than I'm inferring from this article.

The technical complexity of the problem has nothing at all to do with the
political and legal maneuvering required to get and execute a large government
contract.

~~~
mjn
_The technical complexity of the problem has nothing at all to do with the
political and legal maneuvering required to get and execute a large government
contract._

Or a large contract with any organization, as far as I can tell. In
universities, the whole education-ware thing is a mess, with huge piles of
contractor dollars going to junk like Blackboard, who manage to sell things to
high-level administrators. By far the best education-ware software I've used
is stuff that was developed for almost nothing by comparison: 1) a course-
specific tool a student made as a senior project; and 2) a wiki. In industry,
I have some third-hand knowledge of a large procurement project at a
petrochemical company that spent somewhere in the 9 or 10 figures on document
digitization and didn't deliver any document digitization.

~~~
hga
If petrochemical company project was mostly a document imaging project, when
did that happen?

I ask because I started playing that game when it was cutting edge, and
finished about the time it was "very easy" (early to mid-90s).

~~~
mjn
I'm not sure when it started, but I was hearing about it from around 1990 I
think, and the project got axed around '95\. I assume eventually they did get
something done, either with a new contractor or in-house.

I actually had a part-time job scanning large technical diagrams through a
sheet-fed scanner in the late '90s, for a different company (a NASA
contractor). It was technically not what I was hired for; the main reason they
needed to bring in someone part-time is that they needed additional staff to
help "debug" a space toilet. So my main job was using it, and recording some
basic data (pH, etc.) in a logbook whenever I did. Since I was sitting around
for a few hours a day in between toilet debugging, scanning technical diagrams
seemed to be the main other thing that needed doing. Seemed like a pretty ad-
hoc process, but I don't know what that one was like on the backend.

------
ck2
Lowest bidder? No one loses their job for someone dying?

Sounds like a perfect storm.

I'd love to see an itemization for $88 Million and how many vacation homes
were bought.

~~~
draugadrotten
> _Lowest bidder? No one loses their job for someone dying?_

Government is not as bad as you think. It's worse.

Lowest bidder really causes a lot of problems. My company recently bid for a
contract for an EU agency.

We were not chosen, because the winning bid offered senior staff at a rate of
0.1 euro per hour.

The bloody idiots at Government procurement calculated the average as
(senior+junior)/2 and awarded the contract to these crooks with the flawed bid
as their average was the lowest.

It's not unreasonable to assume they will debit enough extra junior hours to
offset the senior time.

I am not even allowed to tell media about this, by contract. I don't think
it's a rare event.

Just my €0.02.

~~~
VMG
Please find a way to wikileak it.

------
jjindev
Large organizations have a tendency to demand custom solutions, and then they
want to throw the switch all at once. That is pretty much opposite the bottom
up, self-organization, of HN themes.

If you could "bubble up" a "good enough" 911 system, it probably would be
reliable and probably would scale. But the contract will be given to the
company which will say they can provide a big custom solution on a deadline.
It's almost worse if they believe it themselves. A dishonest vendor would at
least understand the scale of the problem(s).

------
joyeuse6701
A lot of posts here talk about open source projects or the relative simplicity
of implementing something like this at it's core: I agree with the idea though
I understand that emergency systems require a high level of reliability
similar to mil-spec hardware I imagine. If there was any justification for
that price of 88+ mil, that would be it. Looks like that went right out the
damn window. All systems have bugs, I think we can all agree on that, but I'd
like to know that they followed the most sensical procedure to rolling this
out. Did they test it prior to release? How did they test it. Did they bother
with unit tests at the lowest level? Did they perform thorough integration
tests? Did they consider rolling out incrementally (if possible) the new
system so that they wouldn't be completely left out in the rain when it
failed? What contingency plans if any did they build into the system upon
failure? What was wrong with the old system, and what did the new system
promise to deliver?

It's a lot of questions I wish more journalism would answer. On another note.
It's interesting to think about open source. As some have mentioned, it's
difficult to imagine the feasibility of actually doing an open source version
and getting it adopted (though that may be because I don't know how EMS stuff
is structured). Though I think all would benefit from a source code release of
this system so we could actually crowdsource a better friggin' version because
this one clearly isn't doing its job...since May.

~~~
doorhammer
I work in the call center branch of a fairly large corporation. Obviously
we're not saving lives and dispatching fire trucks, but for some reason it
seems like we're dead set against doing incremental rollouts and user testing
in any meaningful way.

Don't get me wrong, I see things get to user testing phases and we have
reasonable ways of logging bugs and problems, but almost every project I've
seen had kept on trucking to meet an arbitrary deadline regardless of how
poorly any of the testing goes, then the system hits the floor, chaos ensues
and everyone runs around in a panic until someone managers to staple together
a solution.

Kind of depressing that it looks to be the same in the government with calls
that are a little more important than ecommerce sales.

I want to say that the guy that is in charge of the 911 phone network spoke a
few times at a call center conference I recently went to.

~~~
gregd
"but almost every project I've seen had kept on trucking to meet an arbitrary
deadline regardless of how poorly any of the testing goes, then the system
hits the floor"

And the reason for this is simple..the one person who can pull the plug on a
project of this magnitude, won't. Simply because s/he doesn't want to have to
answer to having already dropped 88 million with _nothing_ to show for it.
There becomes a single person to blame at this point, whereas a failed system
that gets implemented, suddenly allows for MANY people to be thrown under the
bus.

~~~
doorhammer
Totally agree. Even in projects at work, the worst possible thing people think
they could do is admit that something they're working on doesn't work the
right the first time.

I will say, though, that in the case of most projects I've worked on that are
failing at some point, we _do_ have something to show for it. We just have
things that need to be fixed. Even a totally failed try is something you know
doesn't work.

It seems like people equate admitting any failure as admitting total failure.

It's one of the only reasons I like my job. My boss is comfortable saying
"this didn't work, that's fine, let's figure out why it didn't work and make
something that does."

I recently had a project to reduce a certain call-type to our call centers. We
implemented a new system in one part of the company after doing some research
into the call drivers, and did a follow up a few months later. My followup
showed nothing had changed. I don't have any problem saying that. It just
means we need to look into which part of the plan failed, why, and how we can
fix it. Either way we'll have a better understanding of the problem. I'd
rather do that than fudge the followup, keep the problem, and pretend
everything was fixed.

~~~
gregd
"My boss is comfortable saying "this didn't work, that's fine, let's figure
out why it didn't work and make something that does.""

The taxpayer is much less forgiving about "failures" and tend to trot out
pitchforks and torches at the drop of a hat. They're much more guided by
perception than actual facts. So for them, there's very little room for a
distinction to be made between utter failure, failure, almost failure, not
quite a failure, maybe a failure, no failure...

~~~
doorhammer
I don't actually know the answer to this question, as I'm not an overtly
politically savvy person, but, are they really that much less forgiving?

Maybe I shouldn't say my boss is 'comfortable' with failure. He's just got the
fortitude to deal with the realities of most situations and the track record
to back it up.

Most of the managers and bosses I know of deal with projects in exactly the
same way as this 911 project looks like it was handled. They push push push
and don't accept any hint of failure because they think the perception others
have of them would be unfavorable if they admitted some failure and tried to
fix it. Of course, in this case it's the perception of the management and
upper management members, and not a voting public. I have to say, though,
their opinions don't seem much less fickle at times than the voting public.

In an anecdotal way, it doesn't seem like public works/government projects are
immune to delays and push-backs. Seems like it might depend on the type of
project as to whether there was public backlash?

I'm really just spitballing about something I'm not well-informed of at this
point.

The main idea being that there's not a whole lot of forgiveness in the
corporate environment I work in, but I stick with the boss I have because he's
got the reputation and fortitude to own problems, when necessary, instead of
trying to underbus everyone.

------
300bps
Holy hyperbole. Definitely seems like this worker is frustrated beyond sense
or has an agenda with saying things like:

 _They give rookie operators two months training, and after that just throw
’em in. They’re not ready._

Two months training is not enough training? This is implausible. At its core,
they're answering the phone, determining the reason for a call and typing
information from the call into a computer. They're not driving out to a site
and performing cardiac bypass on people having a heart attack.

The whole thing seemed targeted toward eliciting an emotional response rather
than a rational one.

~~~
eksith

      >Two months training is not enough training?
    

You've never answered the phone, have you?

I've worked in customer service and (while that's not exactly any way on par
with what these operators go through) there's an entire volume of stuff to
keep in mind before going in. Being an operator involves engaging in a
fundamentally unnatural mindset that's often completely antithetical to what
your normal responses would be. No matter who's screaming, shooting, dying,
it's still your job to remain calm, clear and transfer as much information as
possible to emergency workers.

Try listening to a few 911 calls. There are tons on the interwebs (LiveLeak
has a whole lot). Be prepared to lose sleep for a day or two.

~~~
EvanAnderson
I can't agree w/ this assessment more.

I did some contract work on network gear in a rural Ohio county's 911 center a
couple of years ago and spent a few days around the dispatch center. I have a
ton of respect for the work that the dispatchers do. I listened to them stay
calm, cool, and collected while taking calls from people who were completely
freaked-out (angry, injured, scared, etc).

The job is certainly a lot more than just answering the phone.

~~~
eksith
Obviously there's a whole heap of details, systems and other areas to be
thoroughly familiar with. My criticism was of OP suggesting that somehow 2
months not being good enough was a stretch and the story was hyperbole.
Although I haven't dealt with 1/100th of the stress a 911 operator has to go
through, I can say that sentiment is quite silly.

~~~
scott_s
EvanAnderson is agreeing with you. Perhaps you misread his comment?

------
nostromo
What if we made 911 into a voucher program.

When signing up for a phone, you must pick a 911 provider. The cost is fixed,
so you're not choosing based on saving money, but based on quality of service.
Each provider would be audited and would publish response times, etc.

You could choose the government program described in this article, or go with
someone more technologically advanced.

~~~
dotBen
Because the beneficiary of the 911 provider isn't likely to be you, it's the
person who needs the emergency who probably can't come to the phone.

If someone needs to call 911 for me, I want to know it's regulated and up to
quality - not based on whether the person who happened to pick their provider
actually bothered to research a good one, etc

~~~
nostromo
Did the system described in the article sound like a good one to you?

Mandated monopolies have a way of discouraging innovation and depressing
quality.

~~~
Udo
Monopolies? 911 dispatch centers should really not be a battleground for
competing commercial entities. They're a public service. You may disagree with
the general idea of a public service, but it's really one of the very few
areas where government can do (and frequently does) things for the good of
everyone.

Call centers might be bad sometimes regionally, but that doesn't mean they
can't work in principle. For example, in my home country (Germany), there is a
public dispatch system for all emergency services and after having had to use
it repeatedly for a range of things from routine to disaster response, I have
to say it works really well. And I wouldn't say Germany is exactly the paragon
of efficiency when it comes to public services either. So with a little bit of
political will, it's achievable - as it should be.

------
peter_tonoli
It seems to be that previous massive failures by companies such as Intergraph
are quickly forgotten about. In Victoria, Australia, there ended up being a
Royal Commission - and Intergraph didn't seek an extension to their contract
as a result due to the massive fallout
<[http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/s181316.htm>](http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/s181316.htm>),
and
<[http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/stories/s427907.htm>](http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/stories/s427907.htm>)

~~~
emmelaich
Yep, I expected to hear that Intergraph were responsible. 12 plus years after
disasters in NZ and Australia, (the latter resulting in a Royal Commission)
they are still at it.

Some links: (Australian) Victorian Police Corruption
[http://www.smuggled.com/Inte1.htm](http://www.smuggled.com/Inte1.htm)

NZ Parliamentary Record:
[http://www.vdig.net/hansard/content.jsp?id=76345](http://www.vdig.net/hansard/content.jsp?id=76345)

"This year [2000] we see the very two people who were involved in the police
force who were making all the recommendations about Intergraph, go to work for
Intergraph."

------
snitko
Now imagine for a moment 911 line was a private company. People subscribe to
it, pay a monthly fee, call it, wait to get through and don't receive help in
time. What do you think people would do then? Stop paying and likely file a
lawsuit. Good luck doing this with a government.

~~~
loopdoend
This would of course tie in with the private police force and private fire
service, right? And when the customers stop paying and sue the company into
oblivion, who handles the calls? Do you prevent monopolies from forming so no
one company becomes responsible for all 911 call traffic? That doesn't sound
very libertarian to me.

Let's presume we're interfacing with public services here, just for shits and
giggles. What happens when grandma Jean forgets to pay the bill one month?
Does she lose access to those public services when she needs them most because
her 911 is redirecting to a busy tone?

~~~
snitko
1\. When people say "but what about monopolies?" they seem to forget that we
do currently have a giant monopoly, which is government, that prohibits others
from entering the market by force, not just by market instruments such as
predatory pricing (although that's the case too, since it is claimed the price
of government services is zero). Even if you disagree with me that monopolies
historically never remained monopolies for long without government support,
wouldn't you at least agree that a private monopoly is still better than
government, because I can still stop paying immediately and not expect men in
suits from IRS on my doorstep?

2\. Proponents of government services always bring up cases where grandmas or
disabled or poor people somehow suffer because they don't have enough
money/physical abilities/brains to handle things. I agree those cases exists,
but it very often is presented as if half of the society is in someway
dysfunctional and requires government help (even if that's indeed the case, we
should rightly see this situation as abnormal and fix it, not feed it). But
the truth is, in a society there's indeed always a % of people who are
dysfunctional. My guess is, it should be no more than 5-10%. Those people can
be helped by voluntary donations and charities. Beyond that, we got people who
made their choices in life (not buying insurance, eating unhealthy, drunk
driving etc.). While I'm not necessarily claiming those people should not be
helped when they need it, but the decision to help or not should lie with the
body that actually does the job: that is, if a drunk uninsured driver is
brought to a hospital, it is up to the charity that sponsors it and the
hospital managers or doctors to decide whether to help him or not. By leaving
this decision up to the government we simply incentivize all sorts of bad
behaviors at the expense of people who have no intention of supporting it.

~~~
loopdoend
1\. The government monopoly, as broken as it is, should not discriminate in
matters of health and safety, whereas a corporate system that you're proposing
would. I am Canadian and am not interested in defending the American system.
We have free healthcare (so long as you're a resident paying taxes, and others
of course are billed after receiving care).

2\. So, in your world, the guy who seemed to have alcohol on his breath can be
left to die at a hospital. Sure. I think that's poor example, you'd be hard
pressed to find doctors who would refuse to save a life in such a case. The
reason I trot out grandma is because it is the poorest and weakest in our
society that need protection the most, and your system would leave all that in
the hands of some charity... hand-waving away all the issues that creates.

~~~
snitko
1\. I respect the fact you don't want to discriminate when it comes to matters
of health and safety. I, on the other hand, would like to discriminate. If a
person who led unhealthy lifestyle knowingly requires medical attention, I
want to have a default option of not paying for this out of my own pocket,
because I don't know that person at all. Now, say I'm a Canadian citizen too:
would you give me the same amount of respect and not require me to pay tax
money for the things I have no intention of supporting and allow me to only
pay to my insurance company?

2\. In my world what's most likely to happen is that this guy would be helped
immediately, but the hospital stuff later will report the incident, the guy
will lose his driving licence forever, will be unable to buy alcohol and will
be required to pay to the hospital over time. I'm not gonna go into detail of
how it is achieved without a government, but it's quite very possible and
would even be enforced more effectively.

So, yes, my main point is: _forced_ universal anything is bad and immoral.
Everyone should know exactly how and where their money go and be free to
decide what to do with their money. If I dislike how my charity works and if I
dislike that it doesn't help drunk drivers, I switch to a different one which
does. If everyone in a society agrees to pay for universal healthcare
voluntarily without a threat of IRS or similar agency showing up if they don't
pay, then I have no problem with it.

~~~
potatolicious
> _" If a person who led unhealthy lifestyle knowingly requires medical
> attention"_

It's interesting how, when this particular viewpoint comes up, the
hypothetical individual is _always_ deeply irresponsible, borderline
malicious. But the person making the argument never is.

> _" Now, say I'm a Canadian citizen too: would you give me the same amount of
> respect and not require me to pay tax money for the things I have no
> intention of supporting and allow me to only pay to my insurance company?"_

No, because this is a fundamental philosophical difference that runs to the
core of who we are. I value the collective, and am willing to make sacrifices
to my individual in order to advance the whole.

As a Canadian citizen myself, stay on your side of the border, please.

~~~
snitko
_> It's interesting how, when this particular viewpoint comes up, the
hypothetical individual is always deeply irresponsible, borderline malicious.
But the person making the argument never is._

No, I may be the most irresponsible person in the world. The difference is,
I'm not asking you or anyone else to pay for it.

 _> No, because this is a fundamental philosophical difference that runs to
the core of who we are. I value the collective, and am willing to make
sacrifices to my individual in order to advance the whole._

So would you then personally come to my house with a gun and demand money and
escort me to jail if I politely refuse to pay, explaining my reasons? Will you
do this, knowing my family is going to suffer? Will you look my kids in the
eyes and say "Your daddy is a criminal because he refuses to pay for what I
think is right".

 _> As a Canadian citizen myself, stay on your side of the border, please._

Please do not assume everyone here is from the US. I'm not talking about a
specific country, I'm talking about a principle. US is socialist in many ways
too.

~~~
loopdoend
You're going to have a very hard time owning anything in Canada that isn't
subject to seizure without paying taxes. So this hypothetical property you'd
be trying to protect would cease to be yours.

We don't throw people in jail or point guns at them, and frankly even if you
weren't paying income tax you would be paying tons of sales tax that you can't
avoid. Worst case scenario you'd be forced into bankruptcy, tax debt is
dischargeable up here, unlike in the US.

~~~
snitko
So the question remains: would you personally come to my house to cease it and
explain to my kids that they are now homeless because their daddy simply
disagrees with what you think is right and refuses to pay to people you
believe are good?

~~~
pessimizer
>because their daddy simply disagrees with what you think is right and refuses
to pay to people you believe are good?

I'd leave out this part.

edit: or to be clear, I'd be as likely to say that as I would be to say to the
children of a burglar, "I'm arresting your father because he wanted you to
have nice things."

~~~
snitko
That's an interesting twist. You're basically calling me a burglar, even
though it is you who intends to take my money away from me.

~~~
pessimizer
I'm not calling you a burglar.

------
readme
looks like someone needs 911.io -- replacement emergency 911 system using
mongodb, node.js, and twitter bootstrap.

ultra reliable, super scalable

~~~
ams6110
Fad technologies do not a reliable, scalable system make.

~~~
jrockway
You may want to adjust your sarcasm detector.

~~~
ams6110
Yeah, perhaps.

------
kylec
This seems like a great opportunity for someone to develop an open source
high-availability, fault-tolerant 911 dispatch system. Being able to get first
responders where they're needed as fast as possible would provide a tremendous
public good.

~~~
richardv
That's not how things work... You can't just create some system and see
governments flock to you. There are years of consulting and specification
requirements.

Linux is open source... Office Libre... Go convince a public office to switch
to Ubuntu..

Saving money is often at the bottom of their focus.. and then you have
competing interests releasing figures that show it is more costly to switch to
free alternatives.

Public spending is a corrupt cycle.

~~~
tomsaffell
>There are years of ...

Yes, First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then
you win.

Sorry, I know it's trite, but there's some truth there. Being ignored for
years is not necessarily a reason not to do something. In some cases it's the
very best reason _to do_ it.

[EDIT] - would those people down-voting please explain why?

~~~
doki_pen
I don't see how you could develop such a system without partnership from some
government. How would you test it?

~~~
tomsaffell
Maybe you could partner with just one small government to start. Of all the
municipalities in the world, you'd think at-least one would be open to the
idea, even if in tandem.

Maybe it could be started by a person who works (or worked) at the dispatch
center, and is also a programmer (there must be at-least one of those in the
world too).

The point is that NYC laughing/ignoring/fighting you is not a good enough
reason not to start. (and who's to say that NYC would do any of those things,
given the current state of affairs)

------
rlpb
The London Ambulance Service had similar problems when switching to a
different system back in 1992.

It's actually an incredibly well studied case of an IT project failure. It's
studied as a textbook case in just about every IT project management course in
the UK.

Interesting that NYC is repeating what sounds like exactly the same mistakes.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Ambulance_Service#System...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Ambulance_Service#System_failures)

(or just Google for "london ambulance service case study")

------
thebiglebrewski
Where can we start the discussion to start building a better version of this?

------
EpicEng
This sort of thing doesn't surprise me. Anecdotally, I've heard more than a
few people bemoan a new POS system. Because I write software for a living, I
usually prod them for details.

Even though their old system was some DOS based thing from 1991, it worked. It
was fast and simple. Now they have some new, enterprisey, WPF + EF behemoth
that is buggy and slow.

Sure, new software will almost always have more bugs than the system it is
replacing; the old system, whatever its flaws (perceived or actual), was
battle-hardened. It was probably written in a time when speed was more
important than the technology stack it used.

These people don't care so much about a nicer looking interface. They need
something that works and stays out of their way so that they can do their job.

------
chestnut-tree
Are there any examples of complex, large-scale government IT projects that
have succeeded, come in on cost and time and worked better than what they
replaced?

I can only think of one example: the UK's Government Digital Service (who
built www.gov.uk). Admittedly not a mission-critical project that saves lives,
but they actually managed to bring the hundreds of different government
websites under one site, re-wrote and re-rorganised the content so it was
easier to find and read, and actually improved considerably on what was in
place before.

It's an exception rather than the rule though to most government or local
council projects in the UK. Any other examples of success? (There must be
some)

------
ErikAugust
"...and Intergraph [the Alabama company that designed the new system]."

[http://www.intergraph.com/](http://www.intergraph.com/) \- Flash header on
company's homepage hangs on Chrome. Not a good start.

~~~
hga
They used to be a really hot hardware and I think software (e.g. CAD) company,
even did a lot of Chipper RISC chip work
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_architecture](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_architecture)
; not to be confused with the Clinton administration cryptographic debacle).
Then they exited the hardware business in 2000 and among other things became a
patent troll:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=intergraph+lawsuit](https://www.google.com/search?q=intergraph+lawsuit)

Which of course is an even worse sign.

~~~
ErikAugust
At least they have been keeping their website's copyright up to date:

" &copy; Copyright <SCRIPT> <!-- var year=new Date(); year=year.getYear(); if
(year<1900) year+=1900; document.write(year); //\--> </SCRIPT> "

~~~
VMG
Why does website quality always seem to correlate so strongly with the company
it's representing?

~~~
briandear
Funny how that works! A company that can't even get a website right probably
has a few things wrong. First it's likely they take their customers for
granted and don't care. However, it's likely the guys at the top actually
think they have a good website. Companies like that make every decision by
committee and as long as the boxes are checked, the 'product' works.

------
slashCJ
It would be fun to have hackathon to design a better 911 system - I'd bet 24
hours worth of work would produce some amazing stuff (probably not super-ultra
reliable production ready, but some cool stuff that could save lives)

------
ballard
Wow. It's a new case study on how process risk equals 1970's-style failures:
Big Design Upfront and failure to manage risk. Gambling with people's lives
instead of ironing the bugs out in a mock environment, going live on a limited
basis (smaller center/group first) and not letting the consultants drive the
product.

The operators should've had final say on production worthiness. The arrogance
of top-down "solutions" that don't work.

Other observation: results are often inversely proportional to budget, up to a
point. Spending instead of thinking is not a solution.

------
rlu
People always say being an ATC is the most stressful job that you can have.
But this sounds worse, even if the system worked properly.

Does anyone know starting salaries for air traffic controllers?

~~~
VLM
$9/hr during training (seriously!), $33K at your first assignment.

Pay follows a "public school teacher" trajectory, or at least like the
trejectory in my district. Such that you'll start your career eating ramen and
living in your car, but by retirement you'll be hauling in $100K or so.

The FAA workforce is gray. No other way to say it. So you tend to see
ridiculous averages like your local TRACON might pay on average $80K. However
as a noob you'd only get $30K or so... you need 30 years in to get rich.

Most pilots get to know ATC people for obvious professional reasons. You can
probably get interesting anecdotes from a private pilot.

Also more than a few ATC personnel ARE private pilots. Helps to understand the
other side of the radio, so to speak.

I am told there is a narrow window where you're "too old" to be an ATC and get
mandatory retirement, yet still young enough to be a CFI, and this is where
gray haired flight instructors come from. I do not know if this is true or
not. In other words mandatory retirement age for CFI > ATC but not by much.

------
umrashrf
There is a similar movie. The Call.
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1911644/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1911644/)

------
znowi
_Our call volume is too high for this system._

 _Starting pay for a 911 operator is about $26,000_

Yea, obviously not as high a priority as stock exchange market where
milliseconds matter!

------
Kilo-byte
_Intergraph keeps telling us, “Shut your computer down and reboot. It’ll just
take a minute._

Glad I don't trust my life on such a broken system.

------
nfriedly
Want to make a difference? Check out
[http://codeforamerica.org/](http://codeforamerica.org/)

------
imonkey
I see Windows blue taskbar on the photo. HOW ITS POSSIBLE TO RUN SUCH
IMPORTANT SYSTEM ON THE F __ __G WINDOWS???????

Answer me please!

~~~
rdouble
I hate to break this to you, but airplane systems, medical systems, banking
systems, fuel pump systems and a lot of other systems all run on Windows.

~~~
realo
Windows should NEVER be used in anything mission critical.

Windows programmers and their 'Just reboot the machine' mindset should NEVER
be allowed anywhere near a mission critical application.

Why? Here is your answer, straight from the original article:

=======

... Intergraph keeps telling us, “Shut your computer down and reboot. It’ll
just take a minute.”

How many lives can you lose in a minute? ...

=======

~~~
ams6110
Nonsense. This has nothing to do with Windows and everything to do with
poorly-implemented software running on it.

I have seen Java-based systems running on Linux that stall/hang and run
agonizingly slowly under what should not be demanding levels of use. Bloated,
heavyweight software stacks exist on all platforms, and they are favorites in
government contractor architectures.

------
tikwidd
Seems like the US military would be a good candidate for taking care of 911
dispatch.

------
siculars
Twitter can handle north of 4k tweets per second on virtually entirely open
source software and these morons can't record phone calls. If this is not a
glaring example of government mismanagement and waste I don't know what is.
Where are the criminal indictments?

~~~
thezach
Comparing twitter to a 911 call center is like comparing a monochrome display
to a 4k display

911 call centers have to interface with many different computer systems (for
example the National Criminal Information center, department of motor
vehicles, FBI CJIS, in house databases, court records systems, mapping,
computer aided dispatch, weather information, etc.

Many of these systems (the NCIC, and CJIS have very strict requirements on
what can and can not connect to their systems, and on top of that who can use
a terminal that connects to their systems).

Its not an easy task. However comparing it to twitter is just ... wow

~~~
ams6110
While not entirely disagreeing, I would ask whether there's room to question
any of those requirements. WHY does the 911 call center need to interface to
all those systems. WHY do I need an interface to the FBI or court records in
order to respond to a call from a woman whose husband is having a heart attack
in the living room?

Tight coupling of many separate systems is a classic anti-pattern in software.

~~~
thezach
because in most areas of the united states your the same person that is taking
a call from a woman whos husband just beat her

------
Ind007
Any idea on which technology the current system is built upon?

~~~
ams6110
I will go out on a wild limb and say Windows servers and either SQL Server or
Oracle database.

~~~
brokenparser
Hate to break it to you, but that sounds more than adequate. I would choose
differently if given the choice, but it's not a valid excuse for pausing 3
minutes to generate a job number by quite a long shot.

~~~
ams6110
I actually agree, I wasn't making a good/bad comment, just speculating. Very
few government contractors would bid a linux or open-source-software-based
system.

I do agree, a well designed and implemented system running on Oracle and
Windows can certainly handle something like 911 dispatch and do it well.

------
stretchwithme
The miracle of over-centralization at work.

------
z0ol
Guess they're running Windows.

------
e40
The NY Post? Really??

------
crististm
wtf emergency system costs one billion dollars???

~~~
crististm
For those who don't understand my amazement: they build aircraft carriers for
this amount of money! Don't tell me it's the same amount of engineering,
knowledge and effort in building an emergency response system?

------
blackprawn
So let me get this straight:

You (and I) truly believe that the telcos have proof positive location on our
landlines and cells, and this data is collected whole hog by the govt, but BUT
somehow they cant locate a caller having a heart attack on long island.

You know, the govt has the systems it deserves, and I really dont care to hear
whining about pencil and paper.

It takes no longer to write down on pencil and paper a 911 call and theres a
mandatory handoff anyway.

This has nothing to do with the folks working the phones not being up to par.
They are. It has everything to do with big telcos and govt contractors holding
taxpayers hostage.

We dont need them. Use the pencil and paper, make a phone call to the next
dept. That takes the same amount of time as data entry.

Grow up, be a human being and stop pretending that life and death situations
are some variant of farmville.

------
GigabyteCoin
The sensationalism is high in this article.

 _Operators had to record 911 calls with pen and paper_

I know I work all day on a computer but I wouldn't consider using pen and
paper a hindrance.

~~~
gregd
Have you ever been in a 911 call center? Many, many, many things are computer
driven, not the least of which is interfacing with the various agencies one
may have to deal with on a per call basis. Then there's "whose jurisdiction is
this"? Kind of hard to determine with pen and paper. Who's dispatched to what?
Who's covering which stations now? How many calls are in the queue? The list
goes on and on.

Having to record things on pen and paper is hardly sensationalism. It's more
or less a worse case scenario in the 911 dispatching arena...

~~~
GigabyteCoin
I'm just saying that 20 years ago handwriting was the only option, and police
still managed to get the job done.

~~~
gregd
Oh boy. In 1993 handwriting wasn't the only option. And we're talking about
911 dispatching, not just police. Fire, medics, police, dog catchers, tow
trucks etc., are all involved now.

~~~
jessaustin
Successful management of any endeavor requires prioritization. If dog catchers
and tow trucks are in the same bullet list as ambulances, they're doing
something wrong.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
If a car crash needs an ambulance it also needs a tow truck.

~~~
jessaustin
In most cases an ambulance is required much more urgently than a tow truck.
The cops can call the towing company they prefer, once they're at the scene.
There's no need to complicate the 911 system with towing, unless it's
important that kickbacks from towing companies be paid at a high level rather
than directly to individual cops.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
Cops at the scene should not be looking up phone numbers for this week's
roster of towing companies. That is handled by the central police dispatcher.
Who also dispatches SWAT, bomb disposal, fire, hazmat, linemen for downed
electric wires, animal control for welfare checks of sick people who have
pets, etc. 911 is just one part of an integrated emergency response system.

~~~
jessaustin
Even out here in the rural hinterlands, 911 operators and police dispatchers
are different groups. The cops can call the tow truck however the hell they
want. The 911 operators still shouldn't care about the dogcatcher.

