Sunday, August 4 | 2:30 – 3:30 p.m.
Alison Venable, Government Relations Counsel, APCO International; Jeff Cohen, Chief Counsel and Director of Government Relations, APCO International
APCO’s Government Relations team led an interactive session which included an overview of some of APCO’s top advocacy priorities and an opportunity to hear feedback from the membership on those priorities. The presentation featured updates on the progress of important legislative issues, such as securing federal funding for Next Generation 9-1-1, establishing health and wellness resources for 9-1-1 professionals, and reclassifying public safety telecommunicators at the federal level, as well as updates on APCO’s efforts at the Federal Communications Commission to improve 9-1-1 location accuracy, network outage reporting, and protect public safety spectrum from harmful interference.
During the discussion portion of the session, attendees discussed the type of information they’d like to receive in a 9-1-1 outage notification and the utility of having maps depicting the scope and impact of the outage. Attendees also raised the importance of receiving accurate location information for 9-1-1 calls made from inside buildings and discussed ways to utilize vertical location information.
Submitted by Alison Venable
