Enhancing First Response Act
Enhancing First Response Act
Plain Language Summary
# Enhancing First Response Act Summary **What the bill does:** This bill requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to provide better reporting and oversight when major communication outages occur during emergencies. Specifically, if the Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS)—a tool used to track service disruptions during severe weather and other disasters—is activated for at least a week, the FCC must publish a preliminary report detailing what went wrong, hold a public hearing in the affected area, and issue a final report with recommendations for preventing similar problems in the future.
The bill also requires the FCC to study 911 outages that aren't currently tracked under existing rules. **Who it affects:** This bill primarily affects telecommunications companies, first responders, and the general public. Communications providers must report outages through the DIRS system, while emergency services and communities impacted by major service disruptions will have more transparency about what happened and how to improve response efforts in the future. **Current status:** The bill has passed the Senate and is moving through the legislative process.
CRS Official Summary
Enhancing First Response ActThis bill requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to report on certain activations of the Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS). DIRS is a reporting system that is activated during severe weather and other events impacting communications service and enables communications providers to report outages and other degradations to service.If the system was activated for at least seven days, the FCC must issue a preliminary report that includes information about the number, duration, and nature of all associated outages. The FCC must also hold at least one public field hearing in the area affected by the event, and it must issue a final report that includes recommendations for improving the resiliency of affected networks or recovery efforts.Separately, the FCC must publish a general report on (1) the volume and nature of 9-1-1 outages that are not required to be reported under current outage notification rules, and (2) the value to public safety agencies of the inclusion of visual information in outage notifications from communications providers.The bill also requires the Office of Management and Budget, by 30 days after the bill's enactment, to categorize public safety telecommunicators as a protective service occupation under the Standard Occupational Classification System.Finally, the Office of the Inspector General of the FCC is directed to publish a report on the implementation of Kari’s Law, which requires multiline telephone systems to be preconfigured to allow users to dial 9-1-1 directly from any phone without dialing any additional code or prefix.
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