File pic Photo: 123rf
An agency with nearly $2 billion to spend upgrading emergency communications says it has not been funded to upgrade the 111 system.
Accident investigators this month asked the Next Generation Critical Communications (NGCC) agency to review 111 after risks and delays in a fatal boat capsize where five people died in 2022.
They also asked the NGCC to set up a common communication platform for emergency services.
However, the NGCC's director Steve Ferguson told RNZ: "Today, neither of those technologies are in NGCC's scope nor funded for us to deliver."
It was now considering the recommendations from the Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC).
TAIC wants NGCC to review and improve 111 along with the system's operator, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE).
However, MBIE told RNZ this week it had just received the recommendation.
"We have not done any work to this effect," the ministry said.
This was despite the government and emergency responders knowing for several years the 111 system, and a second underlying dispatch system called CARD, were limited in power - for instance, they could only take voice calls, not text or video - and were fragmented between police/fire and ambulance.
A 2023 police business case laid out a series of life-threatening situations the shortcomings had caused.
Police and Police Minister Mark Mitchell declined to talk to RNZ about 111. Police said they were "looking at options" to upgrade CARD; they said something similar a year ago.
NGCC was in charge of a $1.84 billion project to build a Public Safety Network to help police, ambulance and firefighters talk to each other. Last year one of two companies in the joint venture building it, Kordia, had to pull out and instead become a subcontractor to project runner Tait Systems.
This introduced a new national Land Mobile Radio network expected to start up next year, cellphone roaming and priority services, and personal alerting for emergency services. It did not address the 111 and CARD shortcomings.
TAIC said: "It is important that recommendations are implemented without delay to help prevent similar accidents or incidents occurring."
MBIE ran 111 through telco Spark, which said it remained committed to providing the service.
TAIC found it took a minute and eight seconds for the skipper in the 2022 capsize to get through to police on 111, when the target is 10 seconds - and noted the two-stage call system could confuse people who did not know which emergency service they needed.
At the time, the police emergency comms centres "were experiencing high call volume with low staff numbers, where some callers experienced a nine-minute connection time", its report said.
Spark said the delay was at the police end, while its records showed the skipper's call was answered immediately by its call-taker and put in the police queue.
It had replaced a 30-year old tech platform in 2022, with a new one that allowed a caller waiting for a call-taker during periods of high demand to choose their own emergency service and be routed to it directly.
