CEO Update
In the first several months of 2016 we’ve welcomed three new partners in public safety to E-Comm—the Fraser Valley Regional District and the Delta and Port Moody police departments.
We became the 9-1-1 Primary Public Safety Answer Point (PSAP) for the Upper Fraser Valley in late January, assuming responsibility for their more than 60,000 emergency calls each year. We are also very proud to have become the call-taking and dispatch partner of Delta and Port Moody police on March 1 and May 10 respectively.
Welcoming a new PSAP or dispatch partner takes months of detailed planning by staff of the various emergency service agencies and E-Comm as well as our partners at TELUS. I would like to acknowledge everyone involved for their dedication and hard work leading up to the successful transitions. We’ve provided updates on both the Upper Fraser Valley and Delta changeovers in this issue of e-communiqué and will report on Port Moody in our next edition. We are proud to be their partners and to work to provide their communities with excellent service.
In keeping with our focus on service excellence, the results of E-Comm’s public and stakeholder satisfaction surveys are once again very positive, demonstrating a high degree of confidence in the services and technology our organization provides. In our stakeholder survey, we asked the senior leadership of our radio and dispatch partners to tell us how well we are meeting their requirements and were very gratified to learn that 95% of those who responded are satisfied with E-Comm services. Respondents also indicated that their agencies have strong and trusting partnerships with us. Equally important were the results of a separate survey of 700 residents of the Lower Mainland, where 89% reported confidence in our 9-1-1 and dispatch services. Having the public’s trust is not something that we take lightly—our goal is continuous improvement. The results from both surveys are an encouraging endorsement of our services and a direct result of the collective effort of all our employees and our partners in public safety.
In other E-Comm news, we were pleased to welcome Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General Mike Morris to our communications centre for a tour and overview of our services. We had the opportunity to discuss the long-term goals of our strategic plan—Vision2020—and provide updates on significant technological advances currently underway such as the planned replacement of the radio system, an initiative we call the Next Generation Radio Program (NGRP). This major technology project remains on track as we continue with the baseline build and planning for agency transitions commencing early next year.
I look forward to continuing to report on E-Comm’s public safety initiatives and longer-term projects—including further updates on the NGRP—in the next issue of our newsletter.
