State relies on BT’s own data to review 999 calls

The Department of Communications relies on BT’s own data to review how well it handles almost three million 999 calls a year.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG)C&AG found annual reviews of the company’s performance have not been carried out since it took over the emergency calls answering service (ECAS) four years ago. The spending watchdog examined the operation of the firm’s contract with the department in light of increases in the call-handling fee paid to the firm by each caller’s phone network.

In the period from July 2010 (when it took over the ECAS from Eircom) to February of this year, BT was paid €30.34m.

The department told the C&AG that meetings at least once a quarter with BT achieve the role of a liaison committee, which was never set up, despite being proposed in the 2009 contract. It was to have overseen annual reviews but the department said it and the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) undertake monthly reviews.

They review reports from BT of how well it performs against standards set out in the contract. Among those standards are answering calls within 1.3 seconds on average, 97.5% of calls being answered within five seconds, and taking an average 36 seconds or less to route calls to the correct emergency service. BT reports for January 2013 to April 2014 reviewed by the C&AG indicated those standards were consistently met.

Asked by the C&AG how it validates BT’s results, the department said it had access at all times to the raw data from BT’s computer system, and it has regularly checked quality and classification . Its inspections have been unannounced and had not identified any inconsistencies in the reports.

“The average speed of answer for a caller to ECAS is 0.6 seconds, which is one of the fastest in Europe, and calls are passed to the appropriate emergency service on average within 6.35 seconds with details of the emergency and the location of the caller,” said the department’s response to the C&AG.

Call-handling fees which fund the ECAS are set by ComReg, based on numbers of calls and operating costs, and rose from €2.23 per call when the contract was agreed in February 2009 to €3.35 two years later. They were reduced to €2.93 in February 2013 and are currently set at €3.08 per call. The original fee was based on handling 4.8 million calls a year, but was over-estimated because faulty lines were generating high numbers of false emergency calls. Since Eircom rectified the problem, it is around 2.8m a year.

The C&AG found that the project board set up to oversee the ECAS meets quarterly but formal minutes of its quarterly meetings are not recorded. The department told the C&AG’s that this was to allow full and open discussion on all aspects of the service.