Latest / The Wilmac Wire / Mark “Fletch” Fletcher | 911 Innovation, Kari’s Law, and Workforce Challenges in the ECC

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Mark “Fletch” Fletcher | 911 Innovation, Kari’s Law, and Workforce Challenges in the ECC · The Wilmac Wire

• Emily Miller: All right, we'll get started today by introducing our guest. He's joining us from Ringland, New Jersey. He's a 40 plus year telecom and public safety veteran who took a more unconventional path to becoming a 911 industry influencer with stops at Bell, UBS, Nortel and Avaya along the way. He holds 14 US patents and NG911 call handling. He's credited with helping shape two landmark pieces of federal legislation, Carey's Law and Ray Baum's Act. He's the founding principal of Fletch 911 Consulting, one of the most recognized independent voices in NG911 and public safety communications. Host of the 911 tips today in public safety podcasts and active blogger at Fletch.TV. Welcome to the Will MacWire, Mark Fletch Fletcher. Fletch, thanks for joining us. Fletch, ENP: Wow, I gotta meet this guy. I don't know who that is, but man, I gotta meet that dude. Steve McDonnell: Ha ha. Emily Miller: Yeah, pretty impressive, right? Every time I read through someone's intro, like, man, this just keeps going and going. I'm impressed. Yeah. Steve McDonnell: That was a long one, Fletch. Fletch, ENP: Thank you for chatting with Emily Miller: Wow. Don't share my secrets. Steve McDonnell: you Yeah Emily Miller: Yeah, thanks for joining us, Fletch. We appreciate you joining us on the podcast today. We're going to start things off with a really quick icebreaker called This or That. So I've got three questions for you. We're going to start with number one, mountains or the city? Fletch, ENP: ⁓ mountains. Emily Miller: Okay, I thought you might say that when I was doing my geographic research in Ringwood, New Jersey. I did not realize it was close to mountains. Yeah, but I know you're not too far from New York City, right? Do you ever go into the city that often? Fletch, ENP: Yeah, I could open the blinds and show you. Steve McDonnell: Hahaha Fletch, ENP: No, I used to go in the city all the time. That's the one nice thing about mass transit. It's only like seven miles from my house. Emily Miller: ⁓ wow. Okay. But prefers mountains. That's fair. Steve McDonnell: What commuter rail are you on? Fletch, ENP: ⁓ I'm on the New Jersey Transit, I think it's the Northern branch. I jump out in my walk. Steve McDonnell: Okay, so you, yeah, okay, so you can get in easy. Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. Fletch, ENP: Yeah, actually, Mawa is only three miles out my back door, but ⁓ it's a 12 mile drive because I got to go around the mountain. Steve McDonnell: Hahaha! Emily Miller: Okay, that makes sense. All right, next one. Speaking at a conference or hosting your podcast. Fletch, ENP: wow. Speaking of the conference, love that live dynamic feel. Emily Miller: Yeah. Live does make a difference for sure. We'll have to find ⁓ a time where we can all get together in person and do a formal podcast sit down for sure. All right, wonderful. And last one, earning a patent or passing legislation. Fletch, ENP: I'm up for it. Emily Miller: hard ones. Fletch, ENP: You know what? Patents are easy compared to legislation. So I'll take the legislation though, because it's more impactful. Emily Miller: I can imagine. Yeah, completely makes sense. we'll get for our listeners, we'll get into what Fletch has been involved in in terms of legislation. And we're excited to touch on that. All right, Fletch, thanks for humoring me and doing our fun icebreaker that we like to call this or that. We're going to start things off with your career journey today. So I like to start things off with having you tell us a little bit about your background. Like I called out in your intro, you've got a little bit more of an unconventional path to becoming a public safety voice. How did you get to where you are now? Fletch, ENP: Well, you know, it actually started in my formative years in the 70s, watching ⁓ Adam 12 and Emergency. I wanted to be a paramedic so bad when I grew up, but paramedics didn't exist in New Jersey. Actually, 911 didn't even exist in the town that I grew up in at that time. It existed nationally, but just in pockets. ⁓ The high school principal and vice principal were both on the voluntary ambulance squad. And apparently, if you became an EMT in high school, you got to get called out of class during the week. Steve McDonnell: where this is going. Fletch, ENP: Yeah, baby. Sign me up. Right. So so I was that guy. And that got me in tune with the dispatchers in the local police department. When I graduated high school, I became a special officer part time and very quickly a job as a dispatcher opened up. So I did that for five years. I sat on the desk. I was out in the road as a special officer. And then that was just The town was stagnant at that point. They weren't going to really be expanding. It wasn't going to be a career. So I got into telecommunications. But when I started working telecom, they were like, ⁓ you know, public safety. Yeah, I did it for five years. ⁓ well, you're going to go fix the public safety stuff. So I never really got away from it. And I became that translator guy in between public safety speak and communications technology speak. and just stayed with that over the years. Emily Miller: Very cool, very cool. That's interesting and I will touch on it I think more later in our conversation, but that's very similar to kind of Will Max track in terms of the contact center space and the public safety space and where those two overlap. Like you said, it comes to those communications. ⁓ But I wanna chat a little bit about what you just mentioned with patents. So you hold 14 US patents in NG911 call handling. So can you give us a sense of what that work involved, what spurred it and then what... the impact has been reflecting back on it. Fletch, ENP: Well, what spurred it was the need, right? So I kind of couldn't believe that certain things didn't exist. And, you know, I started my patent work really at the very beginning before NextGen 911 was really a thing, kind of was a thing, but it wasn't really well kicked off yet. And some of my early patents were just out of basic need. Right. So the very, very first patent I had was back at Nortel and it was merely an auxiliary indication device that you could walk into a large room, know, hundreds and thousands of square feet, and there would be an indicator light in the ceiling that would show you the desk that the emergency was located at. You know, and then we started to expand that with the attorneys to be something that the dispatcher could actually trigger on the call. So if they were on the phone and someone was looking to locate people, going back to the problem, people are difficult to locate in large commercial spaces. So every time I would come across a need, I would sit and just throw reality out the window. That's first thing have to do when you're you're trying to invent something. Forget about what exists. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Fletch, ENP: You have to think about what needs to exist and what need that solves. And if you can come up with that, then there's a lot of stuff that can be invented that hasn't been invented yet. Steve McDonnell: Were you doing this on your own time or within the kind of structure where you were working at the time? know Norah's a lot of people. Fletch, ENP: ⁓ I'd love to be able to do it on my own time because then I would own the patent rights. no, was, ⁓ yeah, Nortel was huge on patents. As we moved into Avaya, Avaya was huge, huge on building up their patent war chest and technology war chest. So the bulk amount of patent work is the patent work itself. The idea is this. Steve McDonnell: Yeah! all within. Yeah. Emily Miller: Yeah. Fletch, ENP: right? And it's the paperwork and proving that the idea is novel and unique and not prior art and that side. I'm talking I'm talking a team of 10 lawyers used to work on this stuff. Steve McDonnell: Sure. Yeah. Emily Miller: Right. Yeah. How long did the process take? Like, did it vary per patent? Fletch, ENP: Yeah, yeah, could be years. Typically, typically until you get the official patent document and the plaque, you get to hang on the wall, which you have to pay for, by the way. A volume, they bought them for me, but I'm gonna have to pay for them, right? Yeah. Emily Miller: Yeah. Steve McDonnell: So, so love you guys. Let me ask you this. So those are huge organizations you just rattle off. What if you're just an individual and you decide you have this great idea and you don't have a team of lawyers and you don't have all the resources? do they go about it? Fletch, ENP: So my father, look, I'm a great one for rattles. So I promise not to derail this too far. You're going to come back to me at some point and go, you need to fill that story in. My father invented the hovercraft. OK. Looking up New Jersey Aviation Hall of Fame, it's actually restored and rebuilt down in Teterboro, New Jersey. Steve McDonnell: It's better than that. What? Fletch, ENP: But anyway, back then my father used to do all his own patent work. So today it's a little bit different. There's a lot of research. There's a lot of prior art that you have to investigate. And you have to remember one thing about a patent. A patent is only good if you've got the bankroll to defend it. Right? So I've talked to a lot of people that have great ideas and I'm like, Are you financially stable to defend that? Well, I don't have to. No, you do. Because someone will violate your patent. The patent office doesn't protect you. You got to go hire your own lawyer. You know, they're the documenting agency. So patents have an interesting value prop. You got to protect them or they aren't worth a thing. Steve McDonnell: They're not flagging everything. ⁓ Emily Miller: Interesting. Steve McDonnell: So did you have any hovercrafts growing up? Fletch, ENP: Yes! Steve McDonnell: Yeah Fletch, ENP: So the original hovercraft that my father built in 1959 sat under a dogwood tree in my front yard and I used to fighter pilot in it when I was growing up wearing his old, you know, World War II Navy fighter jacket, you know, because he was a... yeah. Steve McDonnell: That's how to order. Emily Miller: Thank Steve McDonnell: That's unbelievable. Emily Miller: Yeah, I have to bring it up because we're recording on this date, but may the fourth be with you. Like that's dead. There it is right there. ⁓ my gosh. That's unbelievable. Steve McDonnell: Yeah! Fletch, ENP: telling you. I told you, it's a rattle, so I can spend an hour two, but Steve McDonnell: It's unbelievable. Emily Miller: All right, we're gonna go into the legislation that we talked about before, but you've been credited with helping shape Carrie's Law and Ray Baum's Act. But for listeners who aren't familiar, could you explain to them what those laws are and what role you played in helping get them across the finish line? Fletch, ENP: Yeah, sure. So Kerry's law is pretty simple. ⁓ That came out of a tragic event back in 2013 where Kerry Hunt, the 31-year-old mother of three, was in a hotel in Marshall, Texas. ⁓ She was meeting her estranged husband for visitation rights. ⁓ He basically started to attack her and stab her 29 times. Her oldest daughter was nine at the time. ran over to the phone, picked it up, dialed 911, didn't work. Did that four times and the call never went through. Carrie ultimately succumbed to her injuries that day and three kids were orphaned. I read that in the newspaper and I realized immediately what happened. You have to dial nine for an outside line in most PBX or multi-line telephone systems. And that obviously wasn't programmed because 9-1-1 would have worked as it should. So I got a hold of Hank Hunt, Kerry's father, who was starting, had an idea to pass a law about motels and changing the access code. And I reached out to him. said, look, Hank, I understand. You know, you just buried your daughter. You know, you've got all my condolences in the world here. But this is not going to fix the problem. Let me tell you what the problem actually is and what we need to do to fix it. Let me help rewrite your law so it actually does something and you know, it's functional. So we did that and we got involved with Louie Goehmert, his local congressman. And, you know, that went through four and a half years before that was signed ⁓ into law by the president. ⁓ legislation moves slow. you know, that was, you know, I basically wrote the law, I educated everybody I could possibly do. Avaya was great. They basically put me out on a road tour to promote this everywhere we went. ⁓ Now, shortly after Carey's law, one thing that Carey's law did not deal with, and this was by design, was location. people say, Fletch, you got to be kidding me. That's the most important part. It sure is. And it's also the most complex part. And I had been working on best practices and other things around MLTS 911 for years, and it never got traction because cost and complexity. So I said to Hank, look, we're going to leave location out of this. We're making it about access. That's what killed Carrie. the inability to access 911. Location will come and that'll come in a separate effort. And that came in what they call the Ray Bonds Act, which is a large omnibus bill, like thousands of pages long. was basically every public safety bill that was on the docket that didn't make it into that edition of Congress. And Kerry's law was a page and a half out of that document that was this thick. And that's where the definition of, and this was my contribution, the definition of what a dispatchable location was defined as. Because there were very, very different ideas on what that should be. The people that sell the ANI-ALI databases, they wanted as many of those entries as possible. ⁓ sure, that's what they sell. First responders, I just need to know where to go. Me, I'm looking at costs for enterprises. How do I get this inexpensively to public safety to where it works? And that's what dispatchable location came out to be. Steve McDonnell: And that, when you still talk to PC apps today, I talk to PC apps today and one of the most complex issues is in big cities with these huge apartment buildings with different, I mean, it's, in thinking back then, it must've been 10 times more difficult without any special technology geared towards it. Fletch, ENP: action. Well, absolutely. that's the thing, Steve is, is most 911 calls, I think probably 85, 90 % or more in most areas actually come in from cellular devices and everybody thinks, Oh, well the cell phone, if you didn't know where the cell phone is, that's got GPS. Yeah, it does. But location and cell phones is probably a bigger misnomer than my phone system knows where. Emily Miller: Wow. Steve McDonnell: And then going back to Carey's law, obviously you're talking hotels, but it's any multi-line device now. Offices, any big complex that has this type of issue. Fletch, ENP: The It's any multi-line telephone system. I mean, it's Teams, it's Zoom. It's, you know, even it's it's the Genesis call center platforms. There, if you can make an outside call on that device, it has to be compliant with Carey's law. Yeah, started out because of a hotel problem, but it wasn't just for hotels. That was a big misnomer that we had to kind of undo in the very beginning. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Yep. it. Yeah, I bet. Well, that's great. Congrats. Obviously two huge things. Fletch, ENP: Thank you. Emily Miller: Yeah, and we'll continue spreading awareness about them. So that's wonderful. Thanks for sharing, Fletch. ⁓ Last question before we move a little bit more into 911 specific, but you left the corporate world to launch Fletch 911 Consulting. What drove that decision? Fletch, ENP: Unemployment. Emily Miller: I love it. Steve McDonnell: You set him up. You said I knew you. Emily Miller: I know I did. Fletch, ENP: I, come on, you can't, you can't put the ball that high over the net without expecting to get it back in your face. Now, look, I had gotten laid off from Avaya. I was working at a 911 company doing enterprise solutions, 911 inform. I got laid off from that company because of changes in the corporate direction. And everybody had always said to me for 10 years, why don't you just become a consultant? And I'm like, you know what? Steve McDonnell: Yeah Yeah, I saw that coming. Emily Miller: Yeah. Fletch, ENP: Geez, why don't I just give it a try? I had a couple of opportunities to work on some things that were kind of baked into what I was doing. So yeah, okay, great. Let me give it a whirl. Emily Miller: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Steve McDonnell: great. Before we jump further, I want go back. You, I didn't realize Carrie's Law took, did you say four and a half years? Fletch, ENP: So it happened, Carrie was murdered on December 1st, 2013, and it was 2018 in February when that was signed by the President of United States, which was, I got to attend that with the Hunt family. That was pretty cool. Steve McDonnell: And so that. That's awesome. So that speaks to just the legislation process and. Fletch, ENP: Well, yeah, you know what? And this is the thing, and me too, I hadn't remembered either. But when we were growing up, you know, I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill, cool house rock. And it's like, no, you got to go through Congress, you got to go through the Senate, they got to battle that back and forth. That's where all the special interest groups come in and go, well, make it say this, make it say this. And there's a lot of bargaining and bargaining and horse trading going on there. Then you're done with all that. Emily Miller: Yep. Fletch, ENP: And then it goes up to 1600 Pennsylvania. But the only, but the thing is, is again, schoolhouse rock, it's got 10 days after it passes out of Congress for the president to sign it. And on the February 16th of 2018 is when it was signed. Now it moved out of Congress on the eighth. What happened? in 2018 on February 14th, Wednesday of that week. Little history, Parkview school shooting in Florida. Emily Miller: Okay. Steve McDonnell: Cheers. Fletch, ENP: The nation is in an uproar. was one of our first massive, you know, active shooter events. lot of deaths. The president was on his way to Florida Friday to meet with the families. That was the last day we had to get the bill signed. The family, the Hunt family, wanted a signing ceremony at the White House. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Yeah. Emily Miller: Yeah. Fletch, ENP: you know, we're reaching out like crazy, can we, is there any way to this done? Can he sign it on the airplane? Because it's going to expire. And then it's an automatic veto. And then we're back to day one. ⁓ yeah. So we got the phone call Wednesday night that everybody got cleared. Emily Miller: Yeah. Jeez. Fletch, ENP: you don't just walk in, you don't make an appointment to see the president, right? Takes a little bit of work in clearing by Secret Service. And we, you know, there were a lot of people that helped with Kerry's Law and they asked Hank, well, who do you want to be there? And he gave them a list of about 20 names. And they're like, yeah, that's not going to happen. You can pick 10. Because he challenged them. He said, look, I've seen football teams in there. These people helped. You know, if I can't get my group in there, tell the president, thanks very much. Wow. OK. Good for you, So Friday morning, we walked into the White House ⁓ at 10 o'clock with an appointment, and it took until probably one thirty to get into the Oval Office when we were supposed to be there, which was just an amazing, amazing. Steve McDonnell: That's good point. Emily Miller: Yeah. Steve McDonnell: Wow. That's cool. Fletch, ENP: day. It was just incredible. Emily Miller: Well, it's powerful. Steve McDonnell: Um, I think I am. And we talk about 911 saves act a lot on the podcast and you try to find information and it's basically, it's very difficult and now it passed Congress. Everything seems great, but to your point, I'm sure there's bartering and everything going on right now in the Senate and people trying to put God knows what into it. Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. Fletch, ENP: ⁓ yeah, silly me, when we passed the house, I was like, woohoo, Kerry's Law is law. No, it's not. What do you mean? I'm just a bill. ⁓ geez. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. ⁓ Emily Miller: Yeah, wow, that is a powerful story and appreciate you sharing more about your personal experience with it, Fletch. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Fletch, ENP: No, that's okay. I'm full of rat holes. So, you know, I hope you got a lot of. Emily Miller: I like it though. Steve McDonnell: It is interesting to me. These seem so obvious, so bipartisan. Safety reasons for all. still takes forever to get this stuff done. Fletch, ENP: when nine year old couldn't dial 911 while her mommy was being stabbed 29 times by a crazed brother. That needs a law? Yeah, it is. Emily Miller: Right. Yeah, and I mean, we go back to it too all the time. It's awareness and what the media is putting out there right now isn't those types of stories. So it's tough. But like you said, we got to keep talking about it. That's best way. So, all right, I'm going to move us a little bit more into kind of the 911 vendor landscape, Fletch. Motorola acquired Hyper, Axon acquired Prepared. Steve McDonnell: It's crazy. Emily Miller: players like GovWorks are gaining more momentum in the industry. What does the consolidation and the movement that's going on with it all tell you about where the industry is heading, where it's changing? Give us your expert opinion. Fletch, ENP: Well, we talk a lot about technology, right? ⁓ And technology is happening today at just an incredible pace. It has outpaced public safety, right? We've got advances. Public safety was built for legacy analog fixed point telephones. Everybody's walking around with a smartphone. The information is there. We just didn't have the network capability of getting that data into the network itself. And then we've got the problem of getting that from the network in front of the person that makes the biggest difference, the 911 dispatcher. They need to understand it. So then we start opening up the floodgates. And now all of a sudden, bam, they're hit with the fire hose. So it's not just more data that's important, but it's organized data, presentable data. And that's Obviously, that's a trend that people like Motorola and Axon and Carbine and all of these companies coming together, they're putting on their big boy pants now and getting serious about this. And thank goodness, because quite frankly, I don't know how we could sustain much longer. Not only is it not functional, but it's not cost efficient. We're bleeding at the seams because of inefficiency. Emily Miller: Yeah, and you referenced it a little bit how public safety has long been described as a technology laggard and the fire hose component, like AI comes into this mix and they're like, like you said, they're still on legacy systems. They couldn't even support AI if they wanted to. ⁓ Fletch, ENP: That's true, but it's not just AI for the sake of AI, because if you put AI on top of bad data, you're going to get bad data really fast. Emily Miller: Right. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. 100%. 100%. And like, I guess what I'm saying is in our conversations at WillMac with PeaceHep leaders, we're seeing, I guess, more of an openness towards that progress. Are you seeing a similar shift? I mean, we still have those conversations with people that are like, I don't want to bite off more than I can chew right now. I'm still trying to get my CAD up to the cloud. Like, how can I even approach that next step? What are you seeing out there? Fletch, ENP: Well, you know, today you've got what they call digital natives, right? Kids have grown up, they've never not known the internet. networking, computers kind of showed up when I was in high school and post high school I kind of watched the computer evolution happen. And I watched the internet be born out of ARPANET, what it was and into what it is today. ⁓ Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. Fletch, ENP: People that are a little bit younger than me, they grew up with the internet. They grew up with the technology. So as, I hate to throw an age thing on this, but as the older folks that say, I just want to get to retirement, are starting to age out, a younger crowd that sees things a little bit differently has grown up with the innovation, says, you know what, there's a better way to fix this if you just give it a try. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Fletch, ENP: and whether it's unfamiliarity with the product, ⁓ feelings of being irrelevant. Look, my father, who was an incredible guy, granted, he had 17 patents. ⁓ He couldn't type. Steve McDonnell: while. Fletch, ENP: computers scared the living crap out of him. Can you imagine? Now this is a guy who ran seven, eight different companies, self-made from the ground up, invented the hovercraft, if I didn't mention that. But know, couldn't, was scared to death of keyboards, wrote an autobiography. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. you Fletch, ENP: But his secretary typed it. You know his autobiography was written out on those yellow legal pads? Handwritten. Steve McDonnell: hyped it up. Yeah, that's wild. What we also see, I think we're seeing that too. Most of the people we speak to are wrapping their heads around it and we're like, yeah, we can use this. Some of the people running the budget aren't really getting, it's all of sudden new budget items, brand new. Do we have to change? Do we have to spend the money on it? Does it make sense? Whereas the ROI, that's where we're seeing more pushback. maybe sometimes, obviously people running the budget are politicians. They're not maybe looking at the real efficiencies of the 911 and kind of what can I broadcast to the public? There's all sorts of that going on as well. Fletch, ENP: Look, you know, just this past weekend, my mother-in-law's TV went out on Friday. Okay, we go down to Best Buy, what's on sale? What can I get out of here the cheapest with? I walked out the door with a 75 inch flat screen for $300. Okay, the remote, you need a college degree to operate it. So the next thing I bought was the little four button. Emily Miller: deal. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Fletch, ENP: remote that just on off channel up volume up and down. But you know, this, I don't even remember where I was going with this point. I dragged myself down rat holes, but look, you know, technology has to be able to be functional and you can't just, you know, it's becoming a part of daily life. So, you know, that was my point, I think. If not, I'll come back to it. Emily Miller: I love it. ⁓ So I think you chatted about this a little bit, Fletch, in terms of the organized data component. But if you step into the shoes of a PSAP director today, like what's one thing that you should be prioritizing that you don't think most are? Fletch, ENP: Employee wellness. Emily Miller: It's been a common topic. Fletch, ENP: You can have all the technology in the world, but again, more data in an unorganized, ⁓ unfiltered format is not helping your person that's already struggling. You're just overloading them, right? Regardless of what this technology is going to bring, at the end of the day, it's going to give us access to more things. But if it's not organized, if it's not usable, to that individual. I go back to my mother-in-law with the remote. Hey, she loves that 75-inch TV because she doesn't have to squint. But boy, the remote needs to be this big and have five buttons on it because that's what's usable to her. So you've got to build technology for the mission at hand. And I think that's what people miss the most in technology. Steve McDonnell: Do you think it's the wellness that is creating the turnover that's happening so frequently in these? Emily Miller: Yeah. Fletch, ENP: ⁓ God, yeah. So ⁓ the incoming president at Roxanne Van Gundy, she just put a post out the other day that said 10 dispatchers have taken their lives this year. Holy crap. So, yeah, that's a problem. Why are they doing that? Because of financial problems? You know, maybe everybody's got financial problems. No, it's this job. It's corrosive. You are sitting there for 10, 8, 12 hours a shift, doubles, and your deal, everybody that calls you is having the absolute worst moment of their entire life. Nobody calls and says, Steve McDonnell: you Fletch, ENP: Hi, everything's peachy. I just want to let you know that everything is great. No, they're calling with the biggest emergency they've ever experienced in their entire life. Everybody's going to do it in their lifetime. Right. And it could be the very last call that you make. And you don't think that that is ⁓ taxing on a call taker, knowing that, you know, hearing hearing babies cry, children screaming because their parents are fighting in the background. ⁓ know, mommy and daddy are having an argument. Bang! That was a gunshot. ⁓ my God. A good friend of mine was on the phone with a friend he went to school with while they committed suicide, holding their infant. And today he's Emily Miller: Yeah. Fletch, ENP: good friends with that infant. You know, small town. You know, think about these things, right? This isn't, that's not in the book. Not in the book I read. Steve McDonnell: Well, and a lot of it goes to the public kind of perception of this. Why aren't, why isn't everyone working in the 911 centers compared to a police officer or a fireman or an EMS? They don't get bucketed in that even though they're dealing, they're the first line. They're the ones coordinating the entire thing, getting it going. They're just, just because they're physically not there, they're still part of it. Why don't they get that same perception from, from the general public? Fletch, ENP: Do you know why the public's perception is so misguided? It's because of this right here. If I want, I can video conference my daughter down in Atlanta, Georgia, who's making me a freaking grandfather in October. Thank you very much. I had to grow this because of that. Steve McDonnell: Congrats! Yeah. Fletch, ENP: And it's gray. Look at that. Come on. ⁓ man. But you know, because everybody's walking around with that and it's nothing for me to, you know, instant message her any time of the day, video conference her any time of the day, see her interact with her. That's normal day to day communications. You know, this device is not even really that old. Steve McDonnell: I'm with you. Yeah. Fletch, ENP: What do you think about it? Steve McDonnell: But it's almost like, you know, when you walk into one of these centers and I, as you guys both know, I only dove into this a few years ago and I expected going in there, I was going to see like military, DOD type of technology, like the most intense. And I got the complete opposite and was stumped. Fletch, ENP: Yeah, now what's in there is duct tape and shoestring. Steve McDonnell: Yeah, which I don't, I just don't really understand. and also growing up as a kid, you want to be a cop, you want to be a fireman, you want to be an EMS. How, how do we get the percent to change? Emily Miller: Yeah Fletch, ENP: Yeah, think about it Steve. We say that and we've seen it so we say that, but when you think about it, how long has the SAVES Act been going on? How long is federal next generation 911 funding been hanging on the block out there? Now look, you're a technologist. You grew up in the enterprise technology space. I did as well. When I worked at UBS, you know, big trading firm, big bank, I learned about resiliency, reliability, backups, and how to build resilient networks. And then I looked at public safety. Like, what do you guys build it over here? This doesn't work. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Fletch, ENP: We don't have any money to build it. Why? Steve McDonnell: That's the question. Why are we putting more money to it? Public safety, pretty much in every city, is the numero uno issue. Don't know why more money is not going to it. Fletch, ENP: Well, so the fact of the matter is money is going towards it, but money is going to sustain the old technology, I believe, at a fear of change. Don't fix it. It's not broken. OK, but it is broken. I don't get it. don't get it. Steve McDonnell: interesting. Emily Miller: Yeah. Steve McDonnell: ⁓ 100%. You, you just brought up something about coming from the enterprise world and resiliency and backup. And one of the first initial calls we had with you, you brought up Starlink. And I'm going off the, our question, going away from the questions we had. So sorry, but this just reminded me of that. And I thought you had some interesting feedback on what Starlink could possibly do. Fletch, ENP: ⁓ yeah, yeah. Emily Miller: That was good. Steve McDonnell: to 911s if you want to indulge that a little bit. And I don't think people generally know, I don't think a lot of general public knows what the heck Starlink's doing, let alone what it could do. Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. Fletch, ENP: Well, you know, look, I mean, you know, I just read an article the other day. just fact matter of fact, was a tweet that I retweeted. I don't retweet a lot of stuff, especially for people I don't know. But this was fascinating. But Starlink and I think AT &T were partnering on this new technology, which is basically a router that provides instantaneous backhaul. over Starlink if your WAN goes down. So maybe I don't want to use Starlink as my primary link, but it's great for a backup. It's great as a backhaul. And their little router will basically blend multiple data paths together. And they're in the middle of a video call and they yank the network cable. Not only did it fail over to Starlink, you didn't even see a frame drop. Steve McDonnell: That's unreal. Fletch, ENP: You can set up in a matter of five minutes out of a jungle box, pop it open, you're back on the air. Just ask any of the PSAPs that were put out of service last year with the hurricanes down in the Carolinas. And what did Starlink do? They flew a bunch of kits out. God bless them. You know what? Just put the gear out there. We'll worry about the bill later. People's lives are at stake. Those are the kind of companies Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Emily Miller: Yeah. Fletch, ENP: that should be rewarded. Right? You do good, you get good. It's karma. Steve McDonnell: 100%. Not demonized, yeah. Fletch, ENP: Exactly. Emily Miller: No, no, and one of our former guests who on the podcast, Jack Varnado, when he was he was talking about the president, he was talking about ⁓ what should we call it about Hurricane Katrina and how they were down for like two weeks. I mean, you think of the power of something like Starlink backup and how many lives that could have potentially saved. Fletch, ENP: ⁓ that's Yeah. Now I had that conversation with Jack actually last year and it, cause we were talking about star link and lower orbit and you know, it started with God, how many satellites are we going to be able to throw up there without this, you know, being a problem launching other stuff through that big mesh, you know, there, but it's really not as bad as you think it is, but what the value that it provides everywhere, middle of the ocean, middle of the desert, right? Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. I'm going to... Fletch, ENP: Sure, that's great, but it's also in the populated cities as well because the hurricane blew through and the tower is down. Okay. Emily Miller: Right. Yeah, it's a powerful story. mean, this whole conversation today is just, it makes you think, you know. ⁓ I'm going to take us back a little bit, Fletch, to kind of the, we talked about it a little bit, but coming from the enterprise technology side. ⁓ We chatted last week about it a little bit, but workforce management, we've been at standard, it's table stakes in the contact center industry. It has been for decades now. I'm sure on the enterprise side, you've heard of workforce management. You've seen it in action within contact centers like UBS. Why hasn't it taken as much of a hold in 911, especially too, because it plays into the wellness component. Fletch, ENP: Well, the answer to that is easy. It's because I love to have to get into my car, drive 15, 20 minutes down into the police station, walk all the way down the hallway in the back room, get out the handkerchief and erase the grease board. Why would you want this technology? You know, I have no idea why people haven't gone wait a minute. There's got to be something better than a grease pencil to do my scheduling here. Steve McDonnell: I think it's what you just said, Flesch. I think some of the people, not the people doing day-to-day, but the people that control the budget don't want change and don't want new budget line items. Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. Fletch, ENP: I don't understand it because today we have to do so much more with so much less. those are, I remember the guy that did the scheduling, Lieutenant Freddie Gaffkin. And everybody would be Freddie's best friend because Freddie controlled the grease pencil. Freddie got your days off. I'm like, why do I have to go to Freddie to get my days off? Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. Steve McDonnell: Yep. Emily Miller: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, mean, God. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. And I think it affects wellness. mean, when, when it's the same people that are not having to work back to back shifts or they're the ones raising their hand when someone's out and they need to get someone in and it's normally great people, but it affects when, like you said, these calls are difficult, difficult calls. And if you're just doing this nonstop without any breaks, it's going to affect you. Fletch, ENP: know, computers used to be expensive, but and people got to be afraid of automation. The computer is going to take my job. ⁓ my gosh, you know, I can't believe that's still an argument today. And, know, especially when you talk about workforce management, right? Well, you showed me the other day was like, ⁓ my God, yeah, I've seen this a thousand times. Why public safety doesn't do this for dispatch. And I did a little research on it. They do use workforce management in fire departments, police departments or patrol. It's the 911 dispatch specifically that's so much against that automation. Why would that exist? That I don't understand. Is it because of the complexity? I haven't seen complexity that computers couldn't aid with. Ever. Steve McDonnell: Yep. ⁓ think it was probably complexity from vendors not wanting to build it for PSAPs specifically. ⁓ But ⁓ think it's only a matter of time before people, it just makes everyone's life that much easier and technology is coming. Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. Fletch, ENP: Yeah. And when you talk about things, you know, when I started talking to you guys about the products and we started talking about the AI functions you were thinking about in the next release, yeah, you could do so many things. You could do short term weather planning. You know what? I might not be 100 % accurate in my forecast, but I know the percentages of me having a blizzard next Wednesday. And am I going to start staffing up and Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Fletch, ENP: seeing who's available or am I just gonna call an audible 10 minutes before? Right, it doesn't make sense. Emily Miller: All right. Steve McDonnell: Yep. A hundred percent. Big, big events right now. A couple of our pilots are going through FIFA that's about to hit, hit North America. Obviously people looking out for that. Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. Fletch, ENP: You know, perfect example. And I did a blog a couple of months ago now, probably beginning of the year almost. It's been a while now, but about cell phone usage and FIFA. Think about it. You're going to have all of these cell phones coming into the country. Some of them are going to purchase US Sims. A lot of them are going to be on Wi-Fi networks. A lot of them are going to expect to be backhauled to their carrier back in whatever stat, wherever they're coming from, you've got to rely on that network detecting the emergency call and then forwarding it back to the U.S. carriers, getting location right in the process and making all that flow smoothly. Guess what? There's going to be a problem there and people Steve McDonnell: coming from, right? Yeah. Fletch, ENP: aren't thinking ahead enough because I'm sorry. ⁓ I got tons of feedback on that. I got one of the smartest guys in location emailing me and I thought, ⁓ my God, what did I get wrong? And he goes, no, I agree with everything you said. And by the way, here's two more things to think about. I'm like, ⁓ which was texting because that that just Steve McDonnell: Did you get feedback on it? Did you get any feedback on it? Yeah. Emily Miller: You Steve McDonnell: ⁓ yeah. Fletch, ENP: Yeah, that's the 3D chess of all this, right? That just throws in another because it was built haphazardly. Emily Miller: Yeah. Fletch, ENP: when it was built. Steve McDonnell: Yeah, a lot of stuff going on, Fletch. A lot of stuff. Emily Miller: A of stuff. Fletch, ENP: You know, we, we constantly do, here's where I'm to get in trouble, but look, we constantly do things to get it out the door. And that's not always the best, you know, nine at eight, you know, the mental health outline, the very first revision of that, that started getting worked on the day after version one was done was location based routing because they were routing by area code. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Fletch, ENP: Hi, I have a 201 New Jersey number. I go to California. Don't route my call based on my phone number. Time out. Haven't we learned something here? This is why I say, why isn't there just one network? Why do we need independent disparate networks for this and that? Why can't it all be one? The first thing I got back, well, we don't want to overload it. You're not going to overload it. Again, not understanding the technologies. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Yep. Emily Miller: Yeah. And Fletch, just to kind of recap a little bit of what you said, ⁓ employee wellness, hot topic needs to be addressed. Workforce management is a way to innovate with technology and not overly intrusive, keeping humans in the loop kind of way. There's also opportunity out there for more NG911 funding. We talked about Starlink and that backup resiliency and redundancy and reality like Fletch, ENP: OOF Emily Miller: 911 and public safety has they've been defined as technology laggards, but there's opportunity out them out there for them and for people like you for Steve for Will Mac and flash 911 consulting just continue that conversation and make sure we're bringing those those topics to light. Fletch, ENP: ⁓ absolutely. mean, think about think about my vacation days. So I had to go to Lieutenant Freddie to get my vacation days. If I was a good employee, maybe I got the ability to do that myself on my app. I was just 40 years too early for apps, you know, minor minor thing. Steve McDonnell: Come here. Emily Miller: Mm-hmm. Yep. But like you said, puts the dispatcher, the call taker in the position to have greater control. And then I was on a call with a PC app this morning that they have to mandate overtime for their employees. They don't even have the option to choose it. They have to do it. And that's just if they sign up and they work there, that's it. And I don't know how they can expect, like how can you expect people to want to stay when you have to work 60 hours a week? And that's not what you signed up for. Fletch, ENP: I'm not too. I lost track, but the average staffing level I think was about 80 % around the country ⁓ earlier this year. Emily Miller: Yeah, that's rough. I mean, come on. Steve McDonnell: I mean, I would say it's less from what we hear. I never had the official stat. We should look it up with Nina or ABCO, but everyone has some pretty poor stats and then it's just like a flywheel. Once someone leaves, they got to recruit four to replace one. Then everyone's working with less people and it's just tough to catch up. Fletch, ENP: And you've got a trading curve, right? mean, you know, the thing is, people don't want to get involved in the industry. It's hard to keep people in the industry once you get them. It's just an ongoing problem that that they've lost the battle with. you know, to me, workforce management, modernization, that's an employee benefit that you could use as a stick and carrot type thing. Steve McDonnell: Yeah. Fletch, ENP: to reward your good people with and solve the problem. Emily Miller: Yep, 100%. Absolutely. Wonderful. All right, Steve, you have any more questions for Fletch before we start to wrap up? Steve McDonnell: Absolutely. No, this has been great. Appreciate it, Fletcher. Just looked up and saw 50 minutes. We've cranked through a lot. I know. Fletch, ENP: ⁓ dude. And we didn't even get into half of the hovercraft. It was called the glide mobile back then. anyway, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And my dad's company was named Fletch Air. Emily Miller: say the hovercraft story we're gonna everyone can can look forward to part two or that conversation ⁓ man need some need some branding work Steve McDonnell: That's unreal. The Glide Mobile? Emily Miller: Fletch Air. I like that. That's nice. That's nice. All right, wonderful. Fletch, before I wrap us up, are there any ⁓ initiatives or projects that you're working on through your consulting or any other messages that you'd like to share with our audience today that we did not hit on? Steve McDonnell: Now that's pretty cool. That's a good one. Yeah. Fletch, ENP: That was good. I gotta get that one. Yeah, unfortunately, I can't go into details because of the nature of those projects, but I can tell you that next generation 911 is taking hold and the industry is waking up to that. So the big projects I'm working on right now are focused around IoT from commercial and transit authorities and all of this information that's out there. Getting that, compiling it, putting it together to give public safety. a bigger, brighter picture when things are going on. That is really exciting. next gen can't happen soon enough. Thank goodness it is. Emily Miller: for sure. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Fletch, for joining us on the WillMac Wire today. For our listeners, if you want to follow along with Fletch in his work, you can find his personal LinkedIn at markjfletchfletcher. You can also find Fletch 911 on LinkedIn, Twitter, or X, and Facebook. You can find more too on his website, www.fletch911.com. And I will encourage you to listen to Fletch's podcast. Tips with Fletch, otherwise known as Today in Public Safety, and that can be found at 911tips.com. Fletch, thanks so much for joining us on the Will MacWire. was an absolute pleasure. Fletch, ENP: Thanks, appreciate you having me here. Steve McDonnell: Thanks, Flatch, appreciate it. Fletch, ENP: Okay Steve, thank you.