Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company The New York Times View Related Topics December 6, 1999, Monday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section B; Page 1; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk LENGTH: 1183 words HEADLINE: As 2000 Closes In, Newark Readies New 911 Center BYLINE: By BARNABY J. FEDER DATELINE: NEWARK BODY: Newark's 911 emergency operations center was "a Cadillac" when it was installed on the fourth floor of the city's Police Headquarters more than a decade ago, according to John D. Dough, deputy chief of police. Now he cannot wait to get rid of it. The system is rife with known or suspected Year 2000 computer flaws. The call-management software that counts incoming calls and their duration will fail. The database that tracks not just 911 activity and responses, but all police work by date, time and location was not set up to handle dates beyond 1999 -- so no one, including the vendor, knows what it will do with them. And no one is sure whether the data that operators fill in on the 911 screens will move smoothly to the computer-aided dispatch system, because vendors will not allow the city to tamper with the system dates to test it. No wonder Mr. Dough is pleased that the city is putting the finishing touches on a new $11 million 911 and police operations center a few blocks west of the imposing but fraying building that now serves as its nerve center. Operators began training on the new system in late November with an eye toward switching over no later than Dec. 20. Has Newark cut its preparations for the year 2000 too close for comfort? Apparently so, in the eyes of the federal government. A November report by the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion said that 911 readiness was one of its major remaining worries, because research suggested that 50 percent of the nation's 911 centers had not completed work before Oct. 1. "This clearly is an area where people need to be testing their contingency and backup plans," warned John Koskinen, chairman of the council. But Newark officials and experts with the National Emergency Number Association say fears about the transition are overblown and based largely on misunderstandings of how 911 systems work. "Virtually every 911 center will be able to handle a call if the public phone system is working," said Mark Adams, executive director of the association, which is based in Columbus, Ohio. Any malfunctions are likely to be in equipment that many centers have added in the last decade to process calls more quickly, to dispatch help more efficiently or to gather and analyze records for trends that might offer clues for how to improve service, Mr. Adams said. Such aids are valuable, of course. Getting the right help to the right place within minutes of a 911 call is sometimes a matter of life or death. Making sure that scarce police, fire and medical resources are not diverted to places where they are not vital is also important, especially in distressed communities like Newark. But like all computer systems, the systems that enhance 911 service fail periodically. As a visit here highlights, uninterrupted basic service can readily be provided without them. Newark's most recent test came when Tropical Storm Floyd battered the city in September. One of the many power failures that disrupted the city knocked out computers in the cramped, dimly lighted room where 911 operators field calls. The 911 operation shifted to its precomputer system of filling in cards, colored white, blue, yellow or red to reflect how immediate a response was needed. The cards were then handed to extra police officers on injury leaves and other emergency staff members who shuttled them to the dispatchers in the next room. More than 3,000 calls were handled without a hitch in the three days until the computer system was fully restored, said Derrick Glenn, a police spokesman. Mr. Dough said that response times were unaffected, although Mr. Glenn conceded that no one knows for certain because it would have been so time-consuming to calculate the data from the handwritten cards that the department decided to do without it. Although 911 systems differ from place to place, they have elements in common. Service begins with the call going to a telephone company switch where it is automatically grabbed no matter how overloaded the switch is and transferred to a dedicated 911 computer switch. New Jersey has four dedicated switches linking every phone company central office in the state to every local 911 center. New Jersey's system has more flexibility than most. Many areas, for example, lose service for hours at a time each month when construction or utility workers accidentally cut phone lines, according to filings with the Federal Communications Commission. But when a worker outside City Hall chopped the fiber optic phone cable to the switch that carries all of Newark's 911 calls two years ago, the phone company's switches automatically rerouted calls to the center here through a link to a 911 center in Jersey City. About 80 percent of the 911 centers around the country, including the one in Newark, have enhanced services like the ability to pinpoint the origin of all land-line calls. Vendors and phone companies around the nation say that all of these computer systems on the incoming side of 911 are ready and tested for the Year 2000 problem. The issue is whether every community has the equipment to make full use of that information once the calls are received. Newark's current system clearly falls in the category that has Mr. Koskinen worried, although it is not clear just how many Year 2000 problems it really has. Vendors have discouraged the city from testing it to find out, according to Mr. Dough. For example, EDS Corporation, the company that integrated the pieces of the aging dispatch system used to deploy the police and monitor their activity, said it would no longer support maintenance of the system if Newark tampered with the dates. Mr. Dough said that the city recently signed a contract with EDS to keep the current system running for the first three months of next year as a backup in case unexpected problems occur with the new operations. But Mr. Dough said he was confident that such contingencies would not be needed. "This system has been on the drawing boards for three years," Mr. Dough said. "Y2K pushed us to get it done. It came in very handy." The new features will enable operators to see when calls arriving from different addresses relate to the same incident. They will also be able to retrieve information quickly about previous calls from the same address or neighborhood, a process that now requires scrolling through several screens. The improvements are part of a broader program that will also put computers in police cars to reduce the time spent on paperwork in precinct station houses and give officers in the field quicker access to much of the data available at the 911 center. Like emergency managers everywhere, those in Newark expect to be on heightened alert for both Year 2000 problems and out-of-control celebrations over the New Year's holiday. The city will have 16 operators on duty, double the normal contingent, on New Year's Eve. And just in case, it will have plenty of the old color-coded cards on hand. "After Floyd, I had extras printed up," said Joseph J. Santiago, director of police. http://www.nytimes.com LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: December 6, 1999