Eleven months after an initial audit, The D.C. Auditor’s office says little progress has been made on most of the recommendations made to improve the city’s emergency call system, which has received intense criticism in recent years over alleged mishandling of dispatches. 

The audit, conducted by Federal Engineering, Inc. on behalf of the D.C. Auditor, found that only one of the 31 recommendations proposed nearly a year ago has been implemented at the Office of Unified Communications, which handles the city’s 911 and 311 call lines. Twenty four of the recommendations, or 77%, have seen “minimal progress”; two have not seen any progress at all.

The sole recommendation with which the OUC was found to comply involves the geographic information systems and geolocation software employed by the 911 call centers. 

Among the areas where “minimal” or zero progress has been made include call-taking processes, data acquisition and entry, address and information verification, service dispatch, staffing, staff supervision, translation services, and quality assurance.

The 2021 report found that dispatch times for high-priority calls in wards 7 and 8 were roughly 20% longer than in other wards between May and October, and peaked in the summer every year, due to “elevated call volumes from these wards in the summer months,” and that the office in other ways fell short of national standards.

On Friday’s episode of WAMU’s The Politics Hour with Kojo Nnamdi, D.C. Auditor Kathy Patterson called the new report “not a pretty picture.” She said the OUC has not been able to give an explicit answer as to why 30 out of 31 of the recommendations have not been fully addressed

“Some of the recommendations have been assigned to staff to work on, and some of them, [there is] just simply no action,” Patterson said. 

Call screeners continue to struggle with accurately tracking the locations of incidents, according to the report, and there are consistent breakdowns in communication as call center employees do not trust the technology they have to track the calls.

Among the most “significant” areas lacking improvement, Patterson said Friday, is the need for more supervision in call centers. The audit released last October called for the addition of four supervisors. The new report shows zero have been hired.

“To have gone through a full budget cycle without acting on that is just not appropriate,” Patterson said.

Karima Holmes, the Acting Director of the Office of Unified Communications, responded to the audit in the report, writing that she has hired “subject matter experts” to take on the list and provided a road map to the audit team during its visit in May.

On The Politics Hour, Holmes said she agrees with the “majority of the recommendations,” but the primary reason most have not been completed is a lack of time.

Holmes resumed her role as head of the OUC in March, after leaving that position in January 2021. At the time, the agency was facing another round of criticism over allegedly bungling emergency response calls, and the audit had just been announced. 

During a press conference hosted by Mayor Muriel Bowser on Thursday, she defended Holmes’ role leading OUC, saying she brings “a level of experience that’s unparalleled in my experience in D.C. government… and understanding all aspects of the job.” She also pushed back on questions about problems at the agency. 

“OUC gets thousands upon thousands upon thousands of calls, all with people calling in various stages of distress,” Bowser said Thursday. “If there are things that need to be changed or things that need to be done better, we learn from all of our calls. But what we won’t do, is really focus on information that’s being cherry-picked by one or two people when we have vast examples of the type of stressful work that they do every day.”

In recent years, the OUC has been criticized by advocates and lawmakers alike, after several incidents in which emergency responders were delayed or sent to the wrong location. Among the most recent incidents were the deaths of two infants: Aaron Boyd Jr. of Northwest D.C. was three months old when he died in July after it took 13 minutes for paramedics to arrive at the scene. Sevyn Schatzman-Chase of Southeast D.C. was two days old when she died in August after paramedics went to the wrong address. A second part to the follow-up audit released today will be published later this year that will, in part, explore the circumstances surrounding their deaths.

Local journalist Dave Statter, who’s been following the OUC for years, told DCist/WAMU last month that by his estimation, Aaron’s death was the ninth time in three years that errors at D.C. 911 led to a delayed emergency response and someone died. 

“There’s always going to be mistakes at 911 centers, but you can’t keep making the same mistakes,” Statter told DCist/WAMU. “That’s what happens here.”

Previously: 

This Journalist Has Been Tracking DC’s Troubled 911 System

D.C.’s 911 System Struggles To Pinpoint Where Emergencies Are Happening, Audit Says