Enhancing First Response Act
Current understanding
Proposed legislation that would layer new reporting, hearing, and audit duties onto existing FCC emergency-communications frameworks. Key provisions: mandatory FCC preliminary and final reports plus field hearings after multi-day DIRS activations; published findings on unreported 9-1-1 outages and on visual outage notifications; OMB reclassification of public safety telecommunicators as a protective-service occupation (SOC); and an FCC Inspector General report on Kari’s Law implementation. Status: introduced.
Evidence log
- 2026-04-21 — Emergency Reporting Act: cross-connection with emergency-reporting-act-911-outages: Both bills target unreported 9-1-1 outages and visual outage notifications; the Emergency Reporting Act appears to be a parallel or companion vehicle to the Enhancing First Response Act’s DIRS reporting mandates. (novelty: 3)