California Spent $450 Million on a Failed 911 System. Now, the State Is Restarting the Project.

California spent nearly half a billion dollars on an emergency response system that confused dispatchers and reportedly delayed medical care. Now, lawmakers are pushing for renewed scrutiny of the program after local journalists exposed the system’s life-endangering failures. 

The debacle began in 2019, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed to overhaul the state’s “antiquated” emergency calling system. The state wanted to replace the analog system with Next Generation 911, a modernized system that could transmit more information, including voice, text, and video. 

California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) estimated that the project would be completed by 2021. But the implementation was severely delayed, according to NBC Bay Area News. By 2024, the state had connected only a few dispatchers to the new system, which was riddled with issues. 

It also cost Californians $450 million between 2019 and 2025, according to The Sacramento Bee‘s William Melhado. That $450 million went to four different technology companies building out the Next Generation 911 system. Three of the companies were to cover three regions, while the fourth was supposed to serve as a statewide provider to “prevent a single point of failure from causing a statewide outage,” Melhado wrote. 

“But when the time came to turn that system on, it didn’t work,” he reported. 

After Tuolumne County implemented the new system, dispatchers told NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit they received misrouted calls from other counties, emergency calls were lost, and there was a 12-hour period when callers were unable to call 911. Dispatchers even reported being unable to transfer a 911 call about an “active heart attack.” 

Police also reported having trouble transferring calls in Desert Hot Springs, where one dispatcher reported the issue resulted in “a delay in emergency medical aid.”

Now, after spending hundreds of millions on the project, there is a bipartisan effort to course-correct. In February, California state Sen. Tony Strickland (R–Huntington Beach) introduced the “Fix 911 Act,” which would require Cal OES to submit regular reports to the state Legislature detailing the project’s progress and costs. A press release announcing the bill specifically noted how The Sacramento Bee and NBC News Bay Area revealed the need for more government accountability. And in the state’s house, Assembly member Rhodesia Ransom (D–Tracy) also introduced legislation demanding more oversight of the project. 

Strict auditing and careful oversight will be necessary as Cal OES scraps its original regional plan and attempts to implement the new 911 system statewide by 2030.

“The losers are always the same,” reports City Journal. “The taxpayers and residents who, in this case, have to keep paying a fee on their monthly phone bill for technology that doesn’t work and keep their fingers crossed that the current system won’t fall apart and send their local dispatchers into a total blackout.”

If not for local investigative reporting, Californians would likely have had to pay for a failing and costly system for even longer. Still, the program’s lack of success is not surprising, given California’s long and exhaustive history of financing expensive boondoggles.