Ottawa 911 falls short of target response time in 2023

A report for Ottawa's emergency preparedness committee shows the city's 911 service fell short of the target time the city sets for an operator to connect with a caller.

A report for Ottawa's emergency preparedness and protective services committee shows the city's 911 service fell short of the target time for an operator to connect with a caller.

According to the 911 annual report for 2023, calls to the emergency system were answered by an operator within six seconds 89 per cent of the time.

The Service Level Agreement between the City of Ottawa and the Ottawa Police Services Board requires that 97 per cent of 911 calls be answered within six seconds from the time a call is received.

It's the third year in a row the call response standard was not reached, but an improvement from 2022 when calls were answered within six seconds 81 per cent of the time.

The report notes the industry national standard for 911 response time is for 90 per cent of calls be answered within 15 seconds and 95 per cent to be answered within 20 seconds.

If the city was to adopt these standards for this performance indicator, it would be meeting it with 100 per cent compliance, the report said.

"A contributing factor in 2023 was that call volume was higher than normal partly due to technological and software application updates on cell phones and other devices that resulted in erroneous calls to 9-1-1, across North America," the report said.