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APCO International collaborated with the Center for Social Science Research (CSSR) at George Mason University to study call processing and incident handling times at emergency communications centers (ECCs) in the United States. The aim of the study was to gather data on how long ECCs take to process different incident types, and what factors might affect call processing times.

This operational standard places an emphasis on the need to effectively manage situations with critical decision-making responsibilities. It also offers guidance for emergency communications centers (ECCs) of all sizes on opportunities for employee growth, promotions and development of tomorrow’s leaders.

This standard is intended to equip industry stakeholders, both individuals and agencies, with the tools and perspectives necessary for a proactive approach to detecting and mitigating the stress related challenges of the job of the Public Safety Telecommunicator.

This revision is intended to support every reasonable effort by current ECC Managers to proactively manage public and responder expectations at the local level; support a positive working relationship with the wireless service providers founded on a fundamental understanding of the operational parameters of all wireless E9-1-1 service; along with influencing public policy, including regulatory and legislative action. The ECC Manager should also define, develop, and promulgate performance focused ECC training, maintain active quality assurance efforts, and understand the relationship between these actions and field responder efficiency and safety.

This standard seeks to serve as a guiding document to assist ECC staff in their efforts to prepare for a multitude of events as they create pre-planning and mitigation documents. This document alone is not meant to serve as a substitute to an individual agency’s plans. It is meant to be thought-provoking and should foster discussion and development of agency specific policy and procedure.

Public Safety Telecommunicators (PSTs) are typically the first layer of response to crisis-based calls and can serve as the initial layer of de-escalation attempts. PST’s must manage a wide range of emergency calls, often involving a variety of behavioral health disorders and conditions. Throughout Emergency Communications Centers there is a demand for skills associated with handling such calls in an appropriate, calming, and professional manner. To reflect the requests and needs for such improvement, APCO has published this standard, which provides a fundamental tool for PSTs. In practice, this standard is written to provide fundamental strategies and responsibilities for the agency, a brief understanding of behavioral health, PST responsibilities, and stress management for the PST. This standard provides procedures and techniques for improved responses for PSTs while handling a call involving a person in crisis.

Over the past generation, our industry has seen myriad changes in the way it operates, is structured, and the way personnel are trained. We have evolved out of necessity to keep pace with our technology driven world as our informational highways and capabilities become larger and faster. This constant evolution has placed new and unforeseen stressors of many natures on our public safety telecommunications personnel, and will continue to do so especially with the advent of visual technology arriving at 9-1-1 consoles in real time every day. These changes, along with the critical need of ensuring the mental health and well-being of all our PST personnel, are the touchstone for the creation of this standard.

It is inherent in the document that from agency to agency there may be nuanced differences impacted by State, County, or Local Laws as well as agency specific policies and procedures. Those differences notwithstanding, from a conceptual standpoint the information contained within the document should give any end-user public safety agency a well-defined blueprint for establishing the critical operational need in protecting the overall mental, physical and emotional well-being of our Public Safety Telecommunicators.

This standard addresses the minimum training requirements, in general, necessary to foster levels of consistency for all personnel in an emergency communications environment assigned to answering TTY/TDD calls for service specifically in the public safety environment. This standard responds to the valid needs of the rapidly expanding and ever-changing industry, providing competent training standards while defining training in certain knowledge, skills, and abilities, and recognizing the need to supplement basic competencies with agency-specific information and existing equipment-use parameters.

This cybersecurity training standard addresses training for ECC staff, including public safety telecommunicators (PSTs), supervisors, ECC management and ECC administration. It also addresses training for personnel who are not in professional technical positions, but who are privileged users with administrative privileges allowing them to handle some technical tasks such as application installation, operating system updates, application administration, database management or system administration.

This standard identifies the core competencies and minimum training requirements for the Public Safety Communications Manager/Director. This position is typically tasked with managing and directing all aspects of a public safety communications center, while effectively utilizing leadership skills, resources, and partnerships in order to successfully provide emergency communications service.

This standard identifies the core competencies and minimum training requirements for Public Safety Communications Center Instructor, herein referred to as Instructor. This position is typically tasked with the delivery of training within the communications agency.

This standard identifies the core competencies and minimum training requirements including radio, computer-aided dispatch and GIS systems for Technicians. Technology is critical to the administration of public safety communications. There is a need to provide a consistent foundation for the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to fulfill this critical function.

This standard identifies the core competencies and minimum training requirements for Quality Assurance Evaluators (QAE). The QAE administers the Quality Assurance/Quality Improvement (QA/QI) process by providing compliance oversight, reviewing, and documenting an evaluation of the level of compliance with agency directives and standards in an ongoing effort to ensure the highest levels of service to the public and emergency responders.

This standard identifies the core competencies and minimum training for individuals performing the task of training coordination.  This position is typically tasked with the planning, development, coordination, implementation, and administration of training within an agency.

The standard identifies minimum training requirements for public safety call takers, fire service dispatchers, law enforcement dispatchers, and emergency medical services (EMS) dispatchers. It is one of many public safety communications training standards that has been developed as a result of APCO’s Project 33® initiated in 1995. This standard is based on research compiled from multiple occupational analysis workshops conducted throughout the nation. Over 100 high-performing public safety telecommunicators representing various agencies participated in these workshops. The draft standard was submitted through three different public review and comment periods before the final draft was completed.

Also read Implementation Guide for APCO ANS Recommended Minimum Training Standards for Public Safety Telecommunicators

This standard identifies the core competencies and minimum training requirements for Public Safety Communications Supervisors. This position is typically tasked with managing daily operations, performing administrative duties and maintaining employee relations. This position provides leadership and guidance to employees in order to achieve the agency’s mission, while providing service to the public and emergency responders.

This standard identifies the core competencies and minimum training requirements for Public Safety Communications Training Officers (CTO). This position is typically tasked with on-the-job training of agency employees on the essential duties and tasks of a Public Safety Communications Telecommunicator.

American with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulation requires 9-1-1 and other telephone emergency service providers to provide TTY/TDD users with direct access and an opportunity to benefit from the emergency services that is equal to the opportunity afforded to others. Many of the citizens that are protected by ADA communicate via texting and expect to do the same with a PSCC or PSAP. State and local agencies are being legally directed to identify methods to accept these text messages and must keep up with the citizen’s expectations.

This standard includes information to provide guidance and helpful material regarding the development, maintenance and deployment of a TERT.

The revision of this standard is designed to serve as best practice guidelines and operational models in support of effectively and efficiently processing these calls for service as well as identifying resources available to telecommunicators and law enforcement. This standard presents the response process in a logical progression from initial call intake through comprehensive data and information management.

This standard provides ECC management with key performance indicators (KPIs) as they relate to personnel performance measurements, accuracy, and quality of information logged or provided by ECC personnel. This standard identifies specific areas of personnel performance, which should be measured in order to benchmark individual effectiveness.

The goal of this standard is to provide fundamental key performance indicators (KPIs) inherent in all ECC work, regardless of size, services, or location. It also provides a list of conditions that allow agencies to further refine performance analysis and management, if applicable to its needs. The standard approaches this topic by designating mandatory KPIs applicable to all ECC environments; documenting conditional measures that allow for more detailed root-cause analysis; and identifying data elements necessary to complete the KPI.

This standard provides a standardized list of status codes that can be used by emergency communications and public safety stakeholders when sharing incident related information. Rather than changing their codes internally, each agency should map their internal codes to the standardized list. The agency is responsible for identifying how to map or translate their agency-specific status codes to the common status codes to ensure a clear understanding of the data that is being passed.

Telematics data provides an opportunity for public safety agencies to dispatch more efficiently, based on crash notification elements and specific crash data. Law enforcement agencies, working in correlation with telematics call centers, are able to work together to assist in the location of missing people, recovery of stolen vehicles and vehicle slow down to stop vehicles involved in criminal activity. In emergency situations, effective communication between the telematics call center and the local ECC is critical.

This standard identifies the minimum functional requirements that a computer aided dispatch (CAD) system shall include, broken down by public safety discipline. Also identified are the optional functional requirements that a CAD system should include. Attachment A: the Unified CAD Functional Requirements (UCADFR) provides a comprehensive list of functional requirements for CAD systems that may be used by public safety communications centers to assist with the request for proposal (RFP) process when they need to conduct a solicitation for a new CAD system or an upgrade to an existing CAD system.