California NG911 Platform / Project Timeline
Project record · 2019 – 2025From the August 2019 contract award to the current state of readiness — California's NG911 deployment, the Tiger Team and Premigration Readiness Testing programs, the 2024 deployment pause, and the 2025 disclosure record across the Senate Budget Subcommittee and three 9-1-1 Advisory Board meetings.
A factual inventory of the work completed across all 449 PSAPs in California — from site surveys and circuit installations through full NENA i3 deployment, geospatial routing, and PSAP credentialing.
Six years of foundation building, carrier engagement, PSAP readiness, and operational testing — the path that brought California's NG911 system to its current readiness state.
The contract is awarded. The start of a multi-year, multi-carrier transformation across California's 449 PSAPs.
The ground truth between contract award and live traffic.
Direct NG911 call delivery achieved, with live transfers to five additional PSAPs. Extended soak period followed; lessons learned were shared to reduce risk for future agencies.
Cal OES requests Legacy ALI Link replacement by RNSP — work that was out of original contract scope, requiring new design, build-out, and deployment planning.
Cal OES re-engages to move forward. ALI service deployment completed. PSAP operational readiness testing conducted. The program is positioned for the next go-live.
Following Tiger Team's success, Premigration Readiness Testing (PMT) launches as the last step before moving 9-1-1 call traffic from legacy Selective Routers to California's ESInet and NGCS. The first joint testing — with Cal OES, Promethean One, and NGA — begins in February.
Premigration Testing yielded substantial results across all stakeholders, including Cal OES, Atos, NGA, Synergem, Lumen, CHP, and other PSAPs. PMT also revealed new use cases, new functionality required by PSAPs, software bugs, and knowledge gaps.
PMT was ultimately left open-ended. No communication was distributed to stakeholders regarding the path forward; meetings were inexplicably canceled. Cal OES introduced a "replacement" agenda. The state entered, in CISA-defined terms, a peak-risk security posture.
NGA is allowed by Cal OES to deploy a patch handling the outstanding issues identified in PMT — including adjustments to Policy Routing Rules and the ESRP Conference Bridge. All NGA issues identified in PMT are handled. There are no outstanding NGA core issues in California.
From NGA's perspective, NG911 in the Los Angeles and Central regions is very close to the finish line, with PMT and carrier turn-up as the final hurdles.
Cal OES messages the NG911 project to the Senate Budget Subcommittee in May. Three 9-1-1 Advisory Board meetings follow — in May, August, and November — with material disclosures emerging in the latter two that were not present in the Senate testimony. See the disclosure record below.
After Tiger Team, the last step before moving 9-1-1 call traffic from legacy selective routers to California's ESInet and NGCS was Premigration Readiness Testing. Both NGA service regions yielded substantial readiness — and at the close of PMT, 62 PSAPs across the Los Angeles and Central regions were validated and ready for cutover.
Tiger Team validated PSAPs first; PMT then verified end-to-end readiness for live cutover.
By the close of PMT, NGA had validated 62 PSAPs across the Los Angeles and Central regions as ready for NG911 cutover — 22 from LA, 30 from Central call-through testing, and an additional 10 Central PSAPs requiring only minor NGA SIP trunk configuration adjustments. Combined with the 62 Tiger Team graduates already validated before PMT began, the regions were well past the threshold for phased cutover to begin. The system was ready. The delays that followed were not technical.
In the Central Region, 67 of 76 targeted AT&T PSAPs passed Call-Through Testing as documented in Tiger Team. In the Los Angeles Region, 68 of 81 passed. Eight PSAPs with legacy CPE systems were not connected due to issues with the CPE maintenance provider.
NGA considered an additional 26 remotes successful after testing their corresponding host systems. Six PSAPs required NGA configuration corrections, which were completed during the Tiger Team period.
On September 20, 2024, NGA submitted a Change Request to Cal OES for ESRP patch 1.7.1 — a fix addressing five outstanding PSAP operational issues affecting live 9-1-1 service. Cal OES approved the request the same day. What followed was a four-month sequence of shifting requirements, expanded scope, canceled tests, and unrelated lab demands that prevented the patch from reaching production until January 13, 2025.
Cal OES repeatedly expanded testing requirements after the patch had already been approved — moving the goalposts from patch validation to full PMT in the Cal OES lab.
Persistent Atos-managed lab problems unrelated to the patch — Viper bugs, Vesta misconfigurations, AT&T firewall updates — were used to delay testing of the NGA patch itself.
NGA was directed to stand up an entirely new ESInet and NGCS in a STAGE environment, then forced to roll back its proven P4 testing posture and revert to P5 — adding weeks of unnecessary work.
When testing was finally scheduled, Cal OES canceled it three days before the test date, citing unspecified considerations — and immediately introduced yet another set of new requirements.
NGA performs internal testing in its production-like P4-state environment and requests joint testing with Cal OES.
NGA deploys the patch in CA-West and completes internal validation. NGA requests Cal OES participation for joint testing. Three days after submission, the patch is technically ready for joint review.
Cal OES shifts attention to AT&T firewall updates, Atos scheduling problems, and Viper not sending HELD requests — none of which are related to the ESRP 1.7.1 patch under review. Despite NGA helping resolve these unrelated lab issues, on September 30 Cal OES expands the testing requirement from validating the patch to performing a full PMT in the Cal OES lab.
Cal OES requires full Premigration Testing in its own lab before deployment can proceed — a requirement that did not exist when the patch was approved twelve days earlier.
Cal OES requires NGA to provide architectural education to its consultant, Promethean One. When NGA presents its standard, Cal-OES-approved P4 testing approach — CA-West reserved for patch testing while CA-East continued processing live 9-1-1 calls in active-active production — Cal OES directs NGA to roll back the 1.7.1 patch in CA-West and revert to a P5 posture.
This forced NGA to abandon its proven, efficient testing process. NGA complied, despite the additional weeks of delay this introduced.
Six weeks after the new requirement was introduced, NGA completes the STAGE environment setup and formally hands it over for Cal OES testing.
A test date is finally set after the prolonged approval and provisioning sequence.
The cancellation is attributed to unspecified considerations. No alternative date is provided at the time of cancellation.
NGA requests a maintenance window for deployment. Cal OES responds by introducing additional requirements: install ALI links to the Cal OES lab to support ALI lookups on the Viper, and conduct PMT testing on LPG lab PSAPs (Viper and Vesta) — none of which were part of the original patch deployment scope.
The patch is subsequently deployed. All NGA issues identified in PMT are handled. There are no outstanding NGA core issues in California. From NGA's perspective, NG911 in the Los Angeles and Central regions is very close to the finish line.
For four months, the PSAP community continued to experience the operational issues the patch was designed to fix — Ring Busy errors, broken policy routing, race conditions on abandoned calls — in live 9-1-1 environments. NGA delivered a tested, validated patch in three days. Cal OES took 115 more days to allow it through.
Continual delays addressing unresolved issues eroded trust in the NG911 project. Delayed deployment undermined confidence in the approval and validation process. Resources were diverted to address evolving requirements, further extending timelines.
In May, Cal OES told the Senate Budget Subcommittee the NG911 transition was steady, controlled, and progressing. In August, Cal OES admitted to the 9-1-1 Advisory Board that decisions had already been made, redundancy would be reduced, and cost savings drove the change. In November, those admissions disappeared from the discussion. Three sets of messages, none reconciled with the others.
Material program conditions disclosed to the Advisory Board in August were never presented to the Senate Budget Subcommittee in May — when funding decisions were under consideration.
Architectural alternatives, redundancy reduction, and cost-driven design tradeoffs were presented as ongoing planning to the Senate, then revealed as already-made decisions to the Advisory Board.
The cost-savings rationale and circuit turn-down acknowledgments that appeared in August were absent from the November Advisory Board narrative — replaced by generalized stability framing.
The Senate budget narrative was never publicly corrected. The August admissions did not reappear in November. The Legislature's foundational understanding remains unchallenged on the record.
Each meeting characterized the same NG911 program differently — calibrated to its audience and its moment in the program timeline.
Cal OES frames NG911 activities as operational updates and ongoing program work. Status-oriented, descriptive, procedural. No discussion of architectural pivots, no risk framing, no commitment language.
"We'll be updating the Board on key activities related to support of the 9-1-1 system."
"There is a national effort to modernize legacy systems."
Background and coordination context. No signal of strategic instability.
One week later, Cal OES adopts a stronger assurance framing emphasizing control, continuity, and responsible stewardship — precisely when funding decisions were under consideration.
"We continue to move forward with the NG911 transition."
"Continuity of 9-1-1 service remains the highest priority."
"All transition activities are designed around service stability."
Stability of strategy. Continuity protections. Controlled execution. Risks managed.
Cal OES makes a set of admissions that contradict key assumptions in its Senate testimony three months earlier. Decisions had already been made. Cost savings justified architectural change. Network redundancy would be reduced.
"We should have spent time with you folks on the 'here's what we think the problem is and here are some alternatives that we're considering.'" — Lisa Mangat
"There's an effective cost savings that we can take advantage of if we turn those down." — Paul Troxel, on circuit redundancy
Decisions already made. Advisory Board not consulted early enough. Redundancy will be reduced. Cost savings drove the change.
A narrative shift to "lessons learned and forward adjustment." The August fiscal and redundancy admissions vanish entirely. Architectural finality is implied. No reconciliation with prior testimony.
"We've taken a lot of lessons learned from the challenges we've experienced."
"This is the direction we are moving."
"This is not something that happens overnight … a multi-year effort."
No discussion of cost-containment drivers. No reference to redundancy reduction. No acknowledgment of prior governance issues. No legislative reconciliation.
Reading across the table, the messaging on each topic changed at every meeting. By November, the August admissions had disappeared from the record entirely.
| Topic | May · Senate Budget | August · Advisory Board | November · Advisory Board |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decision status | Still planning and evaluating. | Decisions already made. | "This is the direction we are moving." Architectural finality implied. |
| Governance engagement | Cooperation with advisory bodies implied. | Advisory Board "should have been engaged earlier." Process gap admitted. | No reference to prior governance issues. Normalized engagement. |
| Operational redundancy | Not discussed. | "Those two circuits are no longer going to be used." | No direct reference to redundancy reduction. Generalized reliability framing. |
| Cost considerations | Not highlighted as a driver. | "Effective cost savings" cited as justification. | Cost-containment drivers vanish from the discussion. |
| Timeline signals | Not emphasized as extended. | Implied reorientation underway. | "Multi-year effort." Timeline expansion now stated openly. |
Cal OES did not make a false statement to the Senate. However — material program conditions and decision drivers later disclosed to the Advisory Board were not presented to the Senate Budget Subcommittee when funding and oversight were under consideration. Three months later, those same admissions disappeared from the November Advisory Board record without correction.
— California NG911 Timeline · Page 18 & Page 31The platform is built, tested, and ready. Read the platform brief for what NEXiSCore and the ESInet deliver to California's Central and Los Angeles regions today.