Justin Chen, president of the biggest EPA employee union, told The Hill that the additional software that’s supposed to handle 9-1-1 geolocation “doesn’t really work, apparently.”
Chen said that this recently came up during an emergency situation in the EPA’s San Francisco office, adding the issue “ended up delaying a response.”
Another EPA employee said that the emergency service software “has not worked since the time it was installed” last year.
“It pops up on your computer and it just says, ‘unable to connect,’ and then we’ve been instructed to just click on the ‘x’ box and close the program,” they said, adding the direction came from managers at the agency.
In the case of the medical emergency, the regular call software worked, but “9-1-1’s response was delayed by the fact that they could not locate where the phone call was coming from,” the staffer said.
Ultimately, the person who had the medical emergency was OK, the employee said, but Chen said the situation puts safety at risk.
An EPA spokesperson described the switch to call software as an improvement and said they were not aware of any broad malfunctions.
“The legacy desk‑phone systems were at end‑of‑life and no longer vendor‑supported, which can create reliability and cybersecurity concerns. The cloud‑based platform improves resilience, security, and continuity of operations,” said the spokesperson, who did not provide their name.
“After review, the EPA did not identify any system-wide malfunctions or issues with the E911 software. EPA’s softphone platform uses Enhanced 911 (E911) capabilities that route emergency calls to the nearest Public Safety Answering Point and transmit the caller’s registered location,” the spokesperson added.
Asked specifically about the San Francisco incident, they said it was “still under investigation, but we have not identified any system‑wide malfunction and Region 9 IT staff have had no reported malfunctions to date.
Read more at TheHill.com.
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