911, What is your emergency?

"Glitch" just as likely in Mat-Su

By SCOTT CHRISTIANSEN-Frontiersman reporter

Eleven days after retired Alaska Commissioner of Public Safety Glenn Godfrey was murdered by a woman who also shot Godfrey's wife Patti then killed herself, the police department in Anchorage chilled Alaskans with a press conference about the failures of the Anchorage 911 system. When Patti Godfrey waited 48 minutes for the police to arrive after being shot with a .44-caliber Magnum, it turned into the 911 call heard, read and talked about around the state.

Anchorage media outlets dutifully carried the police chief's message and the problem was alternately described as a computer "glitch" or "missing" data. Anchorage police dispatchers were relying on data provided by two telephone companies and the Municipality of Anchorage to find the Godfrey house.

It's not clear whether the data was fumbled between the two phone companies or if the municipal database was incomplete or if there was some other technical reason behind the problem. What is clear, is that the Godfrey 911 call and the police department's frank outreach is bringing 911 systems into the public eye. It also seems to be prompting action.

"The people who are in charge have met with all our phone companies," Anchorage police spokesman Ron McGee said. The APD call center has also added auxiliary geographic databases to its system that dispatchers can use if the ALI system doesn't deliver a good address.

"Since this incident, we have two more databases of information," McGee said. " … If there is confusion the dispatcher can check the other two."

The data problem was reported to be limited to five percent of addresses in the Municipality of Anchorage with most of them being in Eagle River, where the Godfrey home is located.

There's no doubt that many Mat-Su residents know that Matanuska Telephone Association (MTA) provides local phone service in Eagle River. So it stands to reason, if Godfrey dialed 911 using an MTA line, then couldn't any Mat-Su address also be listed incorrectly or completely missing in 911 databases?

The answer to that question is yes, and public safety officials say that the 911 system is in constant need of maintenance and upgrades, and, some say, it's never likely to be 100 percent.

"[Anchorage and Mat-Su 911 areas] are just as likely to have a missing street address or another glitch in the system such as having no house number," Lt. John Papasodora of the Alaska State Troopers said. Papasodora is a supervisor at the trooper dispatch center on Fort Richardson. Mat-Su area calls that require troopers are forwarded from the Palmer Police Department, which is the Mat-Su 911 answering point, to Fort Richardson trooper dispatch center.

"If, say, they need help on Blackberry Street and what comes up [on the dispatcher's screen] as lot 3, block 7, XYZ subdivision, then without directions and without actual landmarks it can get difficult," Papasodora said.

In other words, the system isn't just computers. It's computers and people. It takes people to answer calls and people to keep track of street names. And people to label their houses and know where they are on the 911 map. It also takes residents who are willing to check with the phone company and government workers to see if their home can be located by the 911 system (see accompanying article).

If you don't have a visible house number or the location you gave the phone company when you originally called for service isn't an official street address, you've probably thrown your own "glitch" into the system, officials said.

"When I moved up here, I was surprised when I was asked for my electrical pole number when I wanted to get telephone service," MTA spokesperson Sandra Crawford said. "I've been with MTA about 17 years and you can just see this evolve. I think there's a tremendous amount of effort being made to make this evolve at the proper rate. It's a tremendous undertaking."

911 systems rely on phone company records to know where a phone call is coming from and local government street addresses to know where dispatchers should send police, paramedics and fire fighters. The perennial problem with 911 is making sure those two pieces of information can be reconciled.

In Anchorage, three phone companies provide their telephone service location data to the 911 system. ACS is the primary telephone service provider for Anchorage, but in Eagle River, MTA is the sole provider without competitors riding on its phone lines. The Anchorage 911 system is supported by ACS under a contract with the municipality of Anchorage.

ACS public relations did not return messages left Wednesday and Thursday of last week, and none of the information in this article can be attributed directly to ACS. Instead, the information about ACS is taken from a consultant's report to the municipality of Anchorage called the "E-9-1-1 Strategic Plan," dated July 8, 2002.

Every phone call carries with it a code that tells the phone system where it came from. Consumers know this technology as "caller ID" and phone companies call it Automatic Number Identification (ANI). According to Crawford, MTA delivers phone calls with standardized ANI data and supplies a database of service locations to ACS for all of MTA's Eagle River customers.

"We're paid to deliver our data to ACS, and that's what we do," Crawford said.

Every 911 system has a database called the

Automatic Location Indicator (ALI). When a call comes through, the ALI cross-references where the phone number came from with phone company service location records. The service location record must then be matched with a database called the Master Street Address Guide (MSAG), which is a database created in Anchorage by the municipality. The Mat-Su Borough also maintains its own MSAG.

Crawford said she couldn't comment on what happens to MTA's service location data once it's delivered to ACS. She did say that ACS, MTA and the municipality all have frequent discussions about 911 service, as do MTA and the Mat-Su Borough.

"I think everyone that is a stakeholder in this is looking at the system, because they want it to be as strong as it possibly can. Everyone is extremely sincere," Crawford said.

The consultant's report to Anchorage doesn't point the finger at one agency or company within the 911 system. It does recommend replacing the ALI database host computer as soon as possible. The ALI host was "obsolete and will soon lose maintenance support" when the report was delivered in July.

In Mat-Su the system isn't complicated by multiple phone companies. The problem facing 911 administrators in here is often an existing phone service location that predates the new street addressing database at the borough. Papasodora's hypothetical Blackberry Street location is an example of that.

Crawford said MTA has used a variety of ways to designate service locations over the years, from electric pole numbers taken from Matanuska Electric Association, to subdivision lot and block numbers and street addresses, the oldest of which were created by the city of Palmer, the newest of which are being added into the borough's street address guide constantly as new subdivisions are platted.

For years, MTA has provided its service location data to the Palmer Police Department for use in 911, Crawford said, but the data wasn't gathered for that purpose and is not specifically meant to serve that purpose. Still, MTA and local governments do cooperate on the system. In 1991 MTA donated an ALI server to the borough that was installed into the Palmer Police Dispatch Center. In 1993, a state law was passed that allowed local governments to use phone company billing systems to collect a tax, which shows up as 75 cents per month on every MTA bill within the Mat-Su Borough. That tax is spent maintaining the 911 system, including the ALI server and the borough's MSAG server.

"That surcharge is to keep the two databases up to date and talking to each other," borough manager John Duffy said. The borough's MSAG is a nearly complete map of the borough, according to Duffy.

"We're basically 95 percent complete. The problem is you're never, ever, done because you're constantly upgrading the system for new subdivisions and new roads," Duffy said.

The Mat-Su Borough also paid a consultant to look at its 911 system. The report focused on plans to build a new dispatch center in Wasilla using federal grants and outlining a potential governance and technical structure for the dispatch center. The report also points out that many local telephone service locations don't match up with street addresses -- in other words, ALI and MSAG don't always speak the same language.

"The borough has developed the MSAG, but it does not match completely with that of the phone company," the consultant wrote.

That's because many of the phone service locations in MTA's database are actually older than the borough's MSAG database, according to Crawford.

"MTA was supplying their service location information to Palmer Police Department to use in the 911 environment, but we were collecting it to get a dial tone. We were asking people who needed telephone service 'what's you're lot and block number and subdivision?'" Crawford said. "In the 1980s, we used a variety of different ways to determine the service location."

Plans are in the works to try to reconcile the telephone service locations ALI provides with the street addresses generated by MSAG. Duffy said the borough is including a flyer in the next round of property tax bills asking residents to call the borough for help in identifying their official street address. Crawford said residents can always call MTA service numbers to update their address in the ALI database. MTA service representatives won't be able to access ALI and check the address for you, but they can update ALI with information the customer gives them, Crawford said.

Public safety officials also say that even when ANI/ALI technology delivers bad data, your voice will always get through to a 911 dispatcher. Christine Fritz, communications supervisor for the Valley's 911 call center at the Palmer Police Department said it's standard operating procedure for dispatchers there to get verbal driving directions from the caller.

"We routinely ask for directions if it's not in the city limits of Palmer or Wasilla. We pretty much rely on the officer's to know the addresses when the addresses are inside their jurisdictions; however, if it's outside city limits or in the event of a fire or ambulance call we ask how do we get there from a main road," Fritz said.

Check your numbers

911 started in the late 1960s as a simple tool -- dial one number for any emergency and the operator who answers will patch your call through to fire, police or paramedic dispatchers. Since then, public safety officials have tried to make 911 more powerful as telecommunications technology advances.

Locally, an address or range of addresses appears on the dispatcher's screen. Available technology is capable of delivering more, such as digital maps, driving directions and medic alert information about the people at the residence. But whatever technology governments and phone companies decide to add on to 911, one thing is certain -- obsolete or incomplete data going into the system won't help the dispatcher.

In order for 911 to work at its best in the Mat-Su Borough residents need a street address that complies with the borough's Master Street Address Guide (MSAG) and a matching phone service location on a database at MTA.

Local public officials said they are working on a plan to reconcile telephone service locations with official MSAG addresses. Some jurisdictions set so-called "ghost" numbers that residents can call so workers can confirm that the databases are reconciled, but there is no firm plan for Mat-Su yet.

In the meantime, residents who want to confirm their address and update the phone service location can do it with two calls. It's helpful to know the legal description of your property before you call. If you don't, government employees can help you locate your residence on a map.

To verify your

physical address:

In Wasilla city limits call 373-9095

In Palmer city limits call 745-3709

In the rest of the Mat-Su Borough,

call 746-7400

To update MTA's service

location database:

Call 745-3211 or 376-3211