The D.C. Council will consider a bill that would require the city’s emergency call and dispatch agency to release more information about its own errors.

The bill would mandate that the Office of Unified Communications regularly publicize information about 911 mistakes, 911 response times, dispatcher and call-taker staffing levels, and wait times. It’s an effort to bring more accountability to the embattled agency, which has been under scrutiny in recent years over a series of 911 errors.

Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto introduced the bill on Thursday; it was co-introduced by At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson and Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker.

For years, advocates — including families who have lost loved ones in emergencies where 911 was delayed — have pointed out troubling patterns in D.C.’s 911 response, including a number of cases where call-takers or dispatchers misjudged the severity of a call or sent emergency responders to the wrong address.

“The breakdown in this process can often start with a call-taker who is having a tough time figuring out where this person is located,” Dave Statter, a reporter and advocate who has followed D.C.’s 911 mistakes for years and documented them on his website, told DCist/WAMU last year. “Because in my experience, there [can be a lack of knowledge about] geography and landmarks in the city. They don’t know the city as well as they should. There are a lot of mistakes that happen when they choose the wrong address.”

One such mistake occurred in 2020, when a woman named Sheila Sheppard collapsed in her home. OUC sent first responders to the wrong quadrant of the city, and Sheppard died. The agency eventually apologized for the error. Last year, the agency also said it would investigate a case where a 3-month-boy died in a hot car after a 911 dispatching mistake. An OUC error caused a delay, and it took paramedics 13 minutes to arrive to the scene. In total, Statter tracked nine 911 mistakes over a three-year period where someone died – though he acknowledges it’s impossible to know whether anyone would have survived had the 911 errors not occurred.

A 2021 report from the Office of the D.C. Auditor found that the agency fell short of national standards for answering 911 calls in a timely manner and notifying first responders about emergencies. A year later, in 2022, the D.C. Auditor found that the agency had yet to implement most of its recommendations — and still struggled to accurately pinpoint the locations of callers.

Pinto said in a press release that she hopes the bill will help restore public trust in the agency.

“In recent years, significant errors at OUC, including inaccurate dispatches and delays in responses, have had disastrous consequences and have undermined the health and safety of District residents. While OUC has committed to addressing the underlying issues that led to these unacceptable errors, public trust remains low and the agency still struggles with ensuring accuracy and timeliness,” Pinto’s office wrote in the release. “This legislation is aimed to address both of these issues by first, increasing information available to the public and second, requiring that OUC track and analyze the causes and frequency of errors so that systems can be remedied.”

The bill would require OUC to publicly post a host of data and information on its website monthly, including:

• Descriptions of each error OUC’s call-takers and dispatchers make — including descriptions of why the error happened and what the agency did in response to the error
• The number of shifts where OUC did not have enough employees to meet minimum staffing levels
• The average and maximum time it takes for a call-taker to answer 911 calls
• The average and maximum time it takes for OUC staff to dispatch the appropriate responder to a call
• The number of calls that wait in the queue for more than 15 seconds
• The number of calls dropped after more than 15 seconds in the queue
• The number of times people misuse 911
• How many calls OUC is diverting to the Department of Behavioral Health’s Access Help Line, the city’s Department of Transportation for car crashes that don’t involve injuries, the Department of Public Works for parking enforcement, and the D.C. Fire and EMS Nurse Triage Line

Leadership of the Office of Unified Communications has changed hands several times in recent years. Karima Holmes led the agency from 2016 to 2020, when she resigned as the agency faced the audit over the way it had allegedly mishandled some dispatches.

After Holmes’ departure, Cleo Subido assumed the role of interim director of OUC in 2021 – but was transferred to a role at D.C. Fire and EMS and later fired.

Then, a year after Holmes initially left the job, Bowser once again tapped her for the OUC Director position — but was forced to withdraw her nomination after it became clear she did not have the support of the D.C. Council. Bowser insisted that Holmes had done an admirable job leading the agency, improving staff morale and shepherding important technology upgrades. But councilmembers expressed concern over the spate of high-profile 911 mistakes under Holmes’ tenure.

Then, this spring, Subido filed a lawsuit against Bowser, alleging that the administration retaliated against her after she spoke up about “dangerous inefficiencies” at OUC. Subido claims that when she assumed the role of interim director of OUC in 2021, she “was astonished to discover problems at OUC that were worse than previously publicized, and which exceeded any she had seen in her previous 31 years of experience as a public safety professional.” Subido said the agency struggled with understaffing, a lack of adequate supervision and training, a need for better technology, a chronic failure to answer calls in a timely manner, a failure to properly track complaints, and a refusal to release the audio of 911 calls. These problems, she says, contribute to failures that could be costing District residents their lives.

Subido also described a culture of retaliation.

“I think that that is dangerous for any government agency,” Subido told DCist/WAMU in March. “It makes people not want to speak up. And when you don’t speak up, and you don’t identify and acknowledge the issues that you have, you can’t possibly fix them.”

Bowser appointed the agency’s new director, Heather McGaffin, in February. So far, McGaffin has appeared to focus efforts on addressing the agency’s severe understaffing; the agency recently held a “prospect day” where it reportedly met with more than 190 applicants. Additionally, McGaffin has promised more transparency around 911 calls and potential mistakes.

However, in at least one case, the agency has not delivered on its promises yet. Following a deadly April car crash where first responders were sent to the wrong D.C. bridge, the agency told DCist/WAMU it would publicly release an after-action report explaining the failure. As of May 19, a spokesperson said the report was “going through the final leg of approval and will be released soon.” But as of Friday, the OUC spokesperson said the report was still in its final leg of approval.

In response to a request for comment on Pinto’s bill, an OUC spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement that “OUC is committed to transparency about how we critically evaluate performance to understand root causes, integrate best practices, and quickly implement changes in order to provide equitable access to 311 and 911 services for every resident of the District of Columbia.”

Pinto’s bill also expands the kinds of requests residents can make of 311 – the city’s system for handling questions about city services and non-emergency requests. If the bill passes, residents would be able to use 311 to ask for maintenance of flexible pavement sidewalks, electrical wires, utility poles, and fire hydrants. Residents would also be able to call 311 for leaf collection, graffiti removal, and concerns related to alcohol sales – including noise, overcrowding, operating without a license, and improperly selling alcohol after hours.