Then the proletariat start complaining about the extra fees on their phone bill, taxes being too high, and then the Channel 9 exposé on 911 operators who sit around playing Minesweeper all day because nobody calls and government inefficiency hurr durr privatize it.
There’s tradeoffs to be made. If we wanted to eliminate a large public safety hazard, automobile crashes, we’d lower speed limits to 15mph everywhere and have strict enforcement of all traffic laws punishable by crushing your car into a cube. But just look at how difficult it is to install a bike lane, speed camera, or a little pedestrian island and it’s pretty clear that there’s other things most people would prefer those resources go to.
Yes, there always are. But the “other things most people would prefer those resources go to” aren’t always well-informed choices. The natural tendency, in the absence of good information about government programs and budgets, is that the main place many people want to direct resources is their own pockets, by paying lower taxes. When this “low-tax” crowd gets control of government spending, then priorities can get seriously skewed and essential services can be put in jeopardy. Which sounds just peachy until someone is dying and 911 doesn’t answer and even if they did, ambulance services are so underfunded and overwhelmed that they’re practically useless.
ETA: That’s about as far as I want to go down this road, lest the argument become too political for FQ.
I don’t know. Presumably, you have many calls from people who think they need assistance. You want to send scarce resources to those most in need that can be helped given limitations. You want to dissuade less urgent calls, understanding that the caller might think a problem is urgent but on a relative basis it may or may not be.
The situation is not unlike any emergency except for volume. You ask some quick questions to assess the acuity and find out whether a situation is life-threatening or less so. You ask less serious things to call back later. There is likely a way of ranking higher priority cases. There might be a prerecorded message asking people to call back or write down their problem online. There’s probably some back-up system to get more manpower during a crisis. Probably a percentage of calls go unanswered if there are an overwhelming number.
Shortening wait times during a mass emergency is one of the big plusses for a consolidated dispatch center - where multiple communities in a county get together to fund and staff one center. You have about the same number of dispatchers per resident (maybe even fewer!) but the call volume evens out, and when one community has an emergency (say, a large fire) there’s a much larger total pool of dispatchers to handle the call volume at that particular time. Also it does save money on equipment.
The downside to these sorts of consolidated centers, and the reason our city hasn’t joined one, is the disconnect between the dispatchers and the local fire and police departments. And the disconnect between the dispatchers and knowledge of the community. In our city the dispatchers know the police and fire staff personally, and they quickly get to know the names and locations of the limited area within city limits. It’s a different thing when you’re a dispatcher for 5 different cities, it’s almost impossible to be familiar with the personnel and locations.
In our area the different 911 call centers have fail over protocols with each other. If one center gets overwhelmed the phone company automatically rolls the call to a backup center. There are obvious limitations, primarily that the outside center personnel won’t understand the geography. Where the different places are. When a caller says the Walmart, that may make sense to the local center, but not to personnel outside the area. But it is better than being put on hold.
That story came up in my Google search with the keywords that @Didi44 posted. I found it surprising and shocking. I stand by what I said about my own experience, however. I suppose that sort of thing can happen when 911 facilities don’t keep pace with a rapidly growing mega-city, but that’s absolutely no excuse and must be fixed.
The central problem of government at all levels is that there is no inherent connection between the size of their tasks and the size of the resources available to do those tasks.
A business with a significant mismatch in either direction will fail soon enough and be replaced by one that better matches needs and resources.
A government can operate for years or decades with far fewer resources than doing their job adequately, much less well, would require. Just because.
I know you know the reasons. Whether you consider that to be excuse enough is another matter.