DC 911 system had 18 disruptions since December and computer system too old to handle volume, officials say

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser says officials want to make sure that there was no nefarious reason that the 911 computer system was taken offline on Aug. 2.

"MPD should question the employees involved. Whether it was a single person or whether there were people who observed that activity because I want to make sure - human error happens, let's just face it - and quite frankly I think that's what we think it was, it was an error. But we have to be able, the director of OUC, of our technology office and MPD to tell me it was human error," Bowser told News4's Mark Segraves.

The Aug. 2 incident is one of 18 times the 911 system was disrupted since Dec. 2023 and is the most scrutinized because a 5-month-old baby died during the outage.

City officials said a contractor pushed a computer update to the entire system instead of a few computers. MPD later opened a probe into that person's actions. They are no longer employed by the city.

The District is putting a 22 point plan in place to address what City Administrator Kevin Donahue called root causes of problems with the city's 911 system.

Some of the issues center around the CAD system — the computer-aided dispatch system — while others were related to telecommunications and staffing.

Donahue said the plan will be made publicly available so that the city can be held accountable against it.

OUC director Heather McGaffin said the Aug. 2 outage was "chaotic" for the 911 call center staff despite the fact that they have a pen and paper system in place to record calls and dispatch police, fire and EMS resources while the system is offline.

"Our call takers did everything that they could in those moments to reassure and offer guidance during that time," McGaffin said after offering condolences to the family of the 5-month-old who died during the outage.

News4's Mark Segraves shares the key points that stood out to him from today's briefing on the 911 center woes:

DC government officials released updated information on the Aug. 2 call to reporters.

In the updated timeline, the city acknowledged for the first time that the family first called 911 at 12:39 p.m. The call was never picked up.

The family eventually got through at 12:51 p.m.

The city says the family was working in other ways to get help in that interim period insisting there were no other unanswered calls.

Staffing at the District's Office of Unified Communications remains a major issue, but recently enacted $800 bonuses have been "wildly successful" in getting people to work all of their scheduled shifts and boost morale, a government official tells News4.

Call takers are supposed to be trained quarterly on the 911 center's policies and procedures. Some have had their training postponed because of staffing problems.

In July 2023, 33% of all 911 shifts didn't have enough people working to meet the minimum staffing levels, according to OUC records. Last month, 88% of all shifts were understaffed.

The District has already started making upgrades to the troubled 911 computer dispatch system.

A third party review of the 18 outages over the past nine months identified different "root causes," City Administrator Kevin Donahue said. Some of those root causes were tied to old computer equipment that has been unable to keep up with the complex needs of the 911 center.

The District had money set aside in next year's budget to significantly upgrade the computer system, but started the project early in light of the recent troubles.

"Right now we're seeing work done to procure and replace some equipment that we slated to replace in October." Donahue said.

Heather McGaffin, the director of the D.C. Office of Unified Communications, said during Monday morning's news conference that the OUC is set to fill 22 open 911 call taker positions by the end of the month.

"We have 22 openings right now for call takers. We have 63 people going through background checks. So, 22 people will start at the end of this month, and then, from that, we will fill the 19 vacant dispatcher positions from a promotional process," she said.

McGaffin said the biggest obstacle in hiring more employees to fill open 911 call taker positions is the time it takes to do background checks and the psychological process to make sure prospective employees are a good fit for the often "traumatizing and tough job."

She said since May 2023, the OUC has been able to implement different initiatives to reduce the hiring process from nine months to about three months.

McGaffin also spoke about employees' long shifts, saying there are more human errors when employees work past their 12-hour shifts to make up for staffing shortages.

Since December 2023, the District's 911 system had disruptions 18 times, DC City Administrator Kevin Donahue said.

Of those 18 incidents, eight were widespread. Six of the incidents affected dispatching.

Donahue said typically the computer dispatch system has one or two outages a year.

The District handles the most calls for police, fire and emergency medical services per capita in the U.S., DC City Administrator Kevin Donahue says.

"We want to make sure we maintain confidence with residents that they can call 911 and get a timely, high quality response," Donahue says.

Eleven minutes passed between the time the family of an unresponsive 5-month-old child first called 911 and had a subsequent call answered on Aug. 2, DC officials said.

The delay came as the DC 911 computer dispatch system was offline. It was one of six unplanned outages in 2024 for the system.

The baby was pronounced dead at a hospital. The child's family told News4 that they had trouble getting through to 911. The District previously said all 911 calls were taken while the computer system was offline.

The police department has launched an investigation into this specific incident.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this post misstated the time the family had to wait.

A police investigation is underway into the District's 911 computer system outage at the beginning of this month that coincided with the death of a 5-month-old child in medical distress.

DC police are working to determine whether the system was taken down intentionally or through human error, multiple government sources tell News4.

Three days after Aug. 2 outage, D.C. officials said a technology contractor incorrectly rolled out a software update.

“The software update was not done in compliance with protocol and resulted in a disruption that limited agencies’ access to the system,” the D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Officer said in a statement.

The contractor is no longer employed by the D.C. government.

According to their own record keeping, in July 2023, 33% of all 911 shifts didn’t have enough people working to meet minimum staffing levels. Last month, that jumped to 88% of all shifts.

The staffing crisis has gotten so bad that the agency is offering bonuses to staff members simply for showing up for every scheduled shift.

McGaffin made the offer to staff members in an email Tuesday morning.

“Good morning 911 Team- Starting immediately all 911 employees who show up for all of their scheduled shifts will receive an $800 incentive for the month,” the email obtained by News4 says.

During the 911 computer system outage on Aug. 2, a 5-month-old baby in a Northwest D.C. apartment wouldn't wake up from a nap.

Two family members said they tried calling 911 for help, but according to an internal D.C. police report, neither of them could get anyone to pick up.

Someone instead went to get help outside apartment building in the 3000 block of Connecticut Ave. NW and found a nearby federal police officer, who assisted with CPR in the moments before DC Fire and EMS arrived, that report said.

Eventually, the family got through to 911, and the call center dispatched the call, according to a timeline shared by the deputy mayor for public safety.

Firefighters arrived and started calling for an ambulance. Frustration could be heard in the voices of the first responders.

A spokesperson for D.C.’s deputy mayor for public safety confirmed D.C.’s 911 system has had seven outages this year, when answering questions posed by the News4 I-Team via email.

One outage was planned for a system upgrade. Two outages were related to software update glitches — the CrowdStrike outage on July 19 and one caused by an “improper” software update in D.C. on Aug. 2.

In a confusing answer sent last Monday, the spokesperson suggested the four other outages were due to "connectivity disruptions" that are "related to the performance of hardware which hosts the Computer Assisted Dispatch software," with no explanation of what precisely that hardware is or what the performance issue is.

The spokesperson added in the same answer that "the District is working to implement the necessary monitoring and possible system upgrades.”

When the system goes down, dispatch teams rely on paper and pencil to keep track of hundreds of calls, public safety officials told News4.

Insiders in D.C.’s public safety departments say that means call takers and dispatchers sometimes walk slips of paper from one place to another inside the dispatch center. They use radio communications to make sure fire crews knew where to go.

D.C. often points out its 911 call center is the fourth-busiest in the nation. Last year, it took an average of one emergency call every three seconds.

On Aug. 2, the 911 computer system went down for more than two hours.

After a series of issues with the District's 911 center and requests for interviews stretching back months, top public safety officials are finally speaking to the media. News4's Mark Segraves and Ted Oberg are in the room for the closed door discussion. A public, on-camera Q&A will take place following the meeting.

Speaking to reporters today are:

• Heather McGaffin, Director of the Office of Unified Communications
• Pamela Smith, Chief of Metropolitan Police Department
• John Donnelly, Chief DC Fire and EMS Department
• Lindsey Appiaha, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety
• Kevin Donahue, City Administrator

Mayor Muriel Bowser will speak to reporters at a public event later Monday. We're sharing live updates here as they come in to our newsroom.