GEMA urges Legislature to fund NextGen 911 buildout and statewide school-safety database

Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security officials told the Senate appropriations panel that the state is behind on Next Generation 911 capabilities and asked for amended-year funds to begin a statewide network build-out. The agency also outlined a far larger, multi-year proposal to establish a statewide school- and student-safety information system and to scale up behavioral threat assessment teams.

GEMA’s amended-budget request includes $5,750,000 to start network and core-service work needed for NextGen 911 at public-safety answering points that currently lack the physical and application infrastructure to route text and data as well as voice calls. The agency said third‑party procurement analyses place the state-wide range between about $3.9 million and $12 million and that a resulting average estimate is roughly $8.03 million — leaving the governor’s $5.75 million recommendation below that average by about $2.3 million.

Separately, GEMA briefed the committee on a proposed statewide school and student safety database and an expansion of behavioral threat assessment teams. The agency described two pieces: (1) annual recurring funding to scale statewide behavioral threat-assessment teams and training — estimated around $2 million per year for a robust program — and (2) a longer-term software and implementation program the agency estimated at $37 million across two years with a $20 million annual recurring cost afterward to host, secure and operate a CJIS-level, statewide data-sharing system for safety and threat information. GEMA staff said the $37 million two-year estimate and the $20 million recurring estimate are conceptual numbers derived from marketplace comparisons and that federal grant funding pursued last year was not awarded.

Why it matters: NextGen 911 upgrades enable PSAPs to accept texts, photos and richer location data, which public-safety officials say improve response. The school-safety database proposal would create a statewide repository of behavioral threat information that can be shared, with role-based access, across school systems and certain public-safety and juvenile-justice partners to prevent information loss when students move between districts.

Agency details and committee discussion - NextGen 911: GEMA said Mission Critical Partners reviewed procurement data from neighboring states and regional efforts. The review returned a range of $3.9M–$12M for Georgia; GEMA’s internal estimate averaged to about $8.03M for the build-out. The governor’s recommendation is $5.75M for the amended year, which GEMA described as a necessary start but short of the midpoint-average estimate. - School-safety database: GEMA described a separate, CJIS‑level system concept designed to exchange threat and behavioral information across Infinite Campus/PowerSchool and other state systems via APIs. The agency emphasized that integrating sensitive student threat and mental-health data directly into educational records is problematic because many student-information systems have been breached; they proposed a separate, statewide clearinghouse that could communicate with existing student information systems while restricting access to a narrow set of authorized professionals. - Costs and grants: GEMA said Homeland Security federal funding has decreased in recent years, that a “COVID bubble” of carry-forward funds ended and that two federal competitive grants applied for in partnership with the state were not awarded last year.

Ending: Committee members asked GEMA to refine location lists and mileage estimates for fiber build-out and to return with more precise out-year costs; appropriators signaled appetite to continue the discussion but asked for narrowed cost estimates before committing larger sums.