DeKalb committee hears E‑911 NextGen progress as commissioners press for interpreter and callback data

Miss Wang, the presenter for DeKalb County's 911 center, told the county committee that the center has filled 116 of 137 funded positions and achieved a series of recognitions after the county launched a NextGen 911 system on Nov. 19, 2025.

"About 51% of our calls are 911," Miss Wang said, and she reported that the center answered roughly 80.8% of 911 calls within 20 seconds in the Jan. 1'Apr. 30, 2026 reporting window, an improvement she attributed in part to the new phone platform. She also said the center was named the Georgia Emergency Communications 2026 team of the year and had achieved ACE accreditation across police, fire and EMS dispatch.

The presentation covered operational details: Miss Wang said the NextGen platform accepts photos and video attached to an "event," provides improved GPS-based location accuracy, performs automatic Spanish transcription, and flags caller language among more than 60 detected languages so operators can route to third-party interpreters. She described administrative triage (virtual-agent handling of routine, nonemergency calls), emergency-call triage to reduce duplicate reports from a single incident, and an Event Assist transcription tool designed to let operators copy text into the CAD system more quickly.

Commissioners pressed for clarifications about metrics and service continuity. Chair Ladina Bolton asked whether abandoned calls are included in the reported ring-time percentages; Miss Wang replied that analytics are auto-generated by the system and that abandoned calls are tracked separately and then reflected in overall call-volume totals. Miss Wang reported 46,892 abandoned calls from Jan. 1 to Apr. 30 and about 40,937 manual callbacks completed in that period.

Commissioner Long Spears recounted a same-day experience in which abandoned-call callbacks came from nonlocal numbers and said the incident did not appear to follow the process described in the presentation. "When you abandon the call... it's not necessarily a local number," Commissioner Long Spears said, and asked whether callbacks appear as local numbers on caller ID and whether interpreter transfers delay emergency response. Miss Wang acknowledged callbacks can come from out-of-area numbers and said the system does not currently leave voicemail (a vendor enhancement is underway); she also said interpreters stay on the line during transfers and that the center can still dispatch units once a location is obtained.

Commissioners asked Miss Wang to pull language-by-language data on interpreter transfer times and to investigate the specific local incident that raised concerns; she agreed to follow up with monthly analytics and suggested an offline discussion about the individual case. The committee also discussed hiring: Miss Wang said the center is reviewing about 400 applicants and plans to recruit roughly 20 new hires for an academy in August.

The committee's next steps: Miss Wang said she would provide the requested data on interpreter response times and callback workflows and report back; commissioners requested an offline meeting to review the specific incident flagged by Commissioner Long Spears. The committee did not take formal action on the 911 presentation during the meeting.