Klobuchar Receives Answering the Call Award from National 9-1-1 Association

National Emergency Number Association (NENA) CEO John Provenzano and Senator Klobuchar with the Answering the Call Award.

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, co-chair of the NextGen 9-1-1 Caucus, was honored with this year's Answering the Call Award from the National Emergency Number Association. Senator Marsha Blackburn was honored as the other recipient of the award for this year.

"Our 9-1-1 professionals answer the call of duty every single day and it's our duty to give them the tools they need to do their jobs," said Klobuchar. "In a crisis, no one should be put in danger because of outdated 9-1-1 systems, and first responders, public safety officials, and law enforcement must be able to communicate seamlessly. I will never stop fighting to make sure that all our public safety workers- including 9-1-1 operators-have the support they need to keep us safe."

Klobuchar has long championed efforts to support first responders and modernize our 9-1-1 system.

In September, Klobuchar and Blackburn's bipartisan Enhancing First Response Act passed the Senate. The bill would make important updates to our 9-1-1 emergency reporting system to improve Americans' ability to reach help when they dial 9-1-1, including during natural disasters.

The bill will also reclassify 9-1-1 dispatchers as protective service workers, ensuring their job classification appropriately recognizes the lifesaving nature of their work.

Specifically, theEnhancing First Response Actwould:

• Require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to issue a report after major natural disasters on the extent to which people were unable to reach 9-1-1 during the disaster and subsequent recovery efforts, and make recommendations to improve the resiliency of 9-1-1 systems to prevent future service disruptions;

• Require the FCC to study the unreported 9-1-1 outages and develop recommendations to improve outage reporting and communication between mobile carriers experiencing network outages and 9-1-1 centers;

• Update the classification of 9-1-1 dispatchers from clerical workers to protective service workers in the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) to better reflect the life-saving work they perform each day. The SOC is a tool used by federal agencies to classify the workforce into useful, occupational categories; and

• Require the FCC to report on the extent to which multi-line telephone system manufacturers and vendors have complied with Kari's Law, which Senator Klobuchar worked to pass into law in 2018 to require the manufacturers of multi-line telephone systems to create systems that allow callers to reach 9-1-1 without dialing a prefix or postfix.

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