The theme for this year’s National Day of Civic Hacking is Reimagining 911. What if we could transform the way our government provides emergency response services? There is an important opportunity here, but very little is understood about the system as a whole and its levers for change.
We’ve seen over and over again that an armed law enforcement response is not a one-size-fits-all solution. The 911 system facilitates emergency response to hundreds of millions of calls each year-but by design or default, the system initiates an armed law enforcement response whether that’s what a situation calls for or not.
It is one of the most ubiquitous government services and one of the main ways that people interact with the government when they have an urgent need.
Nearly everyone in the US has heard of 911.
