KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Mid-America Regional Council (MARC), which coordinates the enhancement of 911 operations in the Kansas City area, and the Public Safety Communications Board (PSCB) has released its plans to change the Kansas City regional 911 system to reduce call wait times.
Efforts to enhance the system comes after a Kansas City, Missouri, Board of Police Commissioners meeting on June 27 when a request to accelerate the implementation of automated functions for 911 calls to the Kansas City, Missouri, police and Kansas City, Missouri, fire departments, according to a MARC press release.
The system takes approximately 1.6 million emergency calls each year across the 11-county bi-state region, according to the release.
When residents call 911, an auto-attendant feature will require the caller to select a pre-assigned number that will direct them to departments such as police, fire, emergency medical services or non-emergency assistance. Once directed, a live call taker will answer.
Testing conducted by MARC to ensure the automated functions work properly will take approximately two weeks, per the release.
MARC will provide an analysis of the functions of the auto-attendant feature at the Public Safety Communications Users Committee at 1 p.m. on July 12.
From there, the Users Committee will take their recommendations to the PCSB, which has authority implement changes to the system.
PCSB plans to meet at 9 a.m. on July 13.
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