APCO’s advocacy is driven by the needs of its members, and APCO’s Annual Conference & Expo provides a great opportunity for our government relations team to connect face-to-face with the membership, provide updates on our advocacy efforts and learn more about the issues facing the 9-1-1 community. This year, there will be several opportunities to engage with APCO’s government relations team during APCO 2024 in Orlando, August 4 through 7. We’re using this article to highlight the opportunities in hopes that you can connect with us, whether at the conference or by contacting us directly.
One of our main roles during conference is sharing updates about the advocacy landscape in D.C. Since last year, there have been several developments at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and on Capitol Hill that have impacted APCO’s advocacy efforts. For example, in the Fall of 2023, Commissioner Anna Gomez was confirmed by the Senate and joined the FCC’s leadership. Commissioner Gomez has been a longtime supporter of public safety communications issues, and she won APCO’s Leadership in Advancing Communications Policy Award in 2012. We’ve been seeing increased activity at the FCC since she joined and expect more action on public safety issues under this dynamic.
In contrast, the landscape in Congress has been made even more complicated due to leadership changes and the fact that it’s an election year. Passing legislation to reclassify public safety telecommunicators, fully fund the transition to Next Generation 9-1-1 and create wellness resources for emergency communications centers (ECCs) has been challenging in the current political climate. Still, we continue to push for these issues and are making progress. APCO’s government relations team will provide several updates on these issues and APCO’s other advocacy priorities throughout APCO 2024. Members of our team will provide brief updates during the first general business session, the Chapter Leaders training and the AFC Advisor meeting. We’re also hosting sessions in the Cutting Edge Developments track.
In past years, we’ve hosted a Cutting Edge session to provide a detailed legislative and regulatory update. This year, we’re taking a slightly different approach and will host an Advocacy Listening Session. In addition to providing information on APCO’s advocacy efforts, our intent is to use this session to hear from the membership. If you have thoughts to share on 9-1-1 location accuracy, fixing the classification of 9-1-1 professionals, NG9-1-1, emergency alerts, outage reporting, the need for wellness resources in ECCs or anything else that’s in (or should be in) our portfolio, we want to hear from you. A separate session in the Cutting Edge Developments track will feature a panel of ECC leaders from across the country to discuss the industry’s biggest challenges and the need for ECCs to achieve advanced emergency communications solutions. This session will be moderated by APCO’s government relations staff and will include an opportunity for audience Q&A.
Understanding the challenges our members face and being able to apply your experiences to APCO’s priorities is extremely helpful. APCO’s policy positions and advocacy efforts are driven by the needs of our public safety membership. In addition to engaging with the membership on the advocacy issues we’re working on, we look forward to the opportunity to hear from speakers and audience members at conference sessions on a variety of interesting issues, such as using artificial intelligence in the ECC, emerging technologies to address language barriers and call processing, using drones in emergency response, and other topics in the Cutting Edge Developments track and other tracks.
We encourage you to connect with us and share your thoughts on these issues at the conference or any time throughout the year. If you’d like to learn more about the issues we’re working on, visit APCO’s advocacy page at apcointl.org/advocacy or follow our Twitter/X account (@GRO_APCO) for timely updates. To suggest topics for the Advocacy Listening Session or contact us for any other reason, send us a message at [email protected].
We hope to connect with you soon!
Jeff Cohen ([email protected]) is Chief Counsel and Director of Government Relations for APCO International.
