Bill > AB1805

This bill, an urgency statute, makes several changes to the State 911 Advisory Board, renaming it the State 911 Advisory and Oversight Board and expanding its membership to include a representative from the Department of Technology, while making the Chief of the Public Safety Communications Division a nonvoting member. The board is granted new oversight authority over the California 911 Emergency Communications Office (CalOES) and can hire independent experts to assist with its advisory and oversight duties. Additionally, CalOES is now required to submit quarterly reports to the Legislature detailing the progress and challenges of implementing the Next Generation 911 system, a critical upgrade to the current emergency communication infrastructure, and cannot award contracts for this system until an audit is completed and its findings are addressed. The California State Auditor is mandated to conduct a comprehensive audit of CalOES's Next Generation 911 implementation by September 1, 2026, evaluating various aspects of the project, including vendor qualifications, cost-benefit analyses of different implementation models, and cybersecurity measures, and may contract with technical experts to assist in this audit.