Carbon County is looking to partner with neighboring counties to build a stronger emergency communications system.

Gary Williams, director of the 911 Communications Center, said the county is working with Lackawanna County, as well as the city of Bethlehem to work on a regional project to update the dispatching software used by dispatchers during emergency calls. Lehigh and Northampton have also expressed some interest in possibly regionalizing their systems."We're looking to improve emergency services," he said, adding that Carbon County dispatchers handle approximately 400-450 emergency calls a day.The two counties and city all use the New World Systems software at this time, but the program is becoming obsolete.Williams said the county has been using the system since 1995 and has seen in recent years that some of the computer technicians he dealt with are leaving."Eventually it is going to go away," he said. "It's not user friendly with involving emergency responders."Lackawanna and Carbon officials began looking into a regional upgrade to New World Enterprise about two years ago. The entities have been in discussions with the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, who seem interested in the project.The counties are looking for funding through the Act 12 funds, the new funding stream based on user fees collected from all phones. Of those funds, 15 percent collected goes toward regional projects such as this.If the project is successful, Williams said the upgrades may begin as early as 2016.Upgrades include the software utilized by the dispatchers, as well as the purchase of a centralized server at one of the locations.This would provide a redundancy in service, meaning that if one site goes down, the county will still be able to provide emergency services through the dispatchers by bouncing it through another site."The 911 system can't go down," Williams said. "We're trying to be smart about this and looking to build a redundancy between us, Lackawanna and Bethlehem so we should never go down. We're making sure we have an endless network."In addition to building a stronger network, the benefits of a regional project are many.The regional upgrades would help police, fire and EMS on-scene at an emergency."We can deal with them directly in the field," Williams said.As long as emergency responders have mobile data terminals in their vehicles, police could receive information and photos on wanted individuals and run their own license and registration checks during vehicle stops; Fire and EMS could receive mapping of an area, locations of hydrants and ponds and available landing zones.Costs would also decrease, saving taxpayers money in the long run.In 2015, Carbon County paid $60,000 for software maintenance. That number, through a regional project, would drop."That $60,000 may become $50,000 and if more entities come in to the regional project, it would go down further," Williams said, noting that if Carbon County would try to do this itself, the project would probably not be approved by the state."You have counties who are looking outside the box and trying to save the taxpayers money," he said."We are going to prove this can be done. We want to work for the taxpayers to try and keep costs down while improving emergency services for responders by giving them tools in the field that they need."