Aug. 15 -- MISHAWAKA, IN -- Leaders of the St. Joseph County 911 center near here know thousands of dispatches have been delayed this year because of computer problems that are being fixed. But they still don’t know how long delays lasted, or if they might have affected responses to emergencies such as fires and heart attacks.
Officials say that to investigate those delays, data needs to be provided by Tyler Technologies, the Plano, Texas-based software company whose New World computer-aided dispatch system has been riddled with problems since the center started using it in June 2017.
During a phone interview Tuesday, Ray Schultz, the center’s executive director, said he hadn’t yet requested data needed from Tyler Technologies. But in reaction to The Tribune’s questions, Schultz sent an email to a company representative to request the data.
Schultz suspects it will difficult to get the data from Tyler Technologies, which has come under fire because of problems. Under its five-year contract, which expires in July 2020, the company is paid $311,000 per year.
“One of the things in their contract is that they basically own the data that’s on the server,” he said, “so getting that data from them is going to be impossible.”
Officials have largely blamed Tyler Technologies for ongoing problems with the CAD system that have caused delayed dispatches. Some also suspect flaws with the county’s Geographic Information System data might be to blame, and studies are being planned to determine if that’s the case.
Schultz said the CAD system sometimes can’t “validate” addresses of 911 callers in cases where the same street name and number exists in multiple municipalities. As a result, other solutions must be found to dispatch responders.
Those solutions take more time. Sometimes it can take dispatchers a matter of seconds to work around problems, Schultz said, but in other cases, it could take minutes.
One method to fix the problem involves using “overrides” that force the system to use correct addresses, he said. Dispatchers use the system’s map to figure out how to manually dispatch responders, such as police officers and firefighters.
From Jan. 1 to July 11, there were 117,000 dispatches. Of those, 9,500, or 8 percent, involved overrides, according to data provided to the center by Tyler Technologies.
And those 9,500 dispatches don’t account for cases in which dispatchers looked up the closest intersection or address to work around problems, Schultz said. Those instances aren’t tracked by the center, but he said they “likely” happened “thousands of times” this year.
To determine how long the 9,500 dispatches with overrides were delayed, Schultz said, the center would need Tyler Technologies to provide “call service numbers” to identify when dispatches were made.
Each of the 9,500 recorded calls would need to be listened to, he said, and it could take two to three months to do that research.
“You’re talking about a lot of manhours, and right now, during budget season, I just don’t have the staff to research those calls. We’re trying to make sure future calls don’t have the same issues,” he said, but added that the calls would eventually be investigated if Tyler Technologies provides data needed to do so.
Deputy county attorney Pete Agostino said that such an investigation would help the county determine if overrides caused “material delays” that affected responses.
When asked if findings could spur the county to sue Tyler Technologies, Agostino said, “I can’t answer that at this time because that decision is not ultimately mine to make.”
County Commissioner Dave Thomas said he remains “very concerned” about problems.
“I’m sure there’s a way to figure out what happened (with past dispatches), but hopefully they’re spending more time figuring out how to reduce the number of errors,” he said. “They should make sure things are done right and then later, when there’s some time, go back and identify those other issues.”
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