911 SAVES Act: Why Telecommunicator Reclassification Can’t Wait

The person who answered your last 911 call is federally classified as an administrative and clerical worker.

Not a first responder. Not a protective service professional. Clerical, the same occupational category as an administrative assistant or a data entry clerk.

Most people have no idea.

The 911 SAVES Act is trying to change that. It’s a piece of legislation that’s been fought for, introduced, reintroduced, and stalled more times than the public safety community deserves. And as we recognize National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week in April every year, this is a conversation that needs to go beyond the industry.

At Wilmac Technologies, we’ve spent over 30 years supporting the technology for the people who work in these centers, and, more recently, building the technology.

We know what it means to support the people inside these centers. Call takers, dispatchers, supervisors, and directors. We know what they carry. And we believe the classification gap isn’t just a policy problem.

It’s a workforce problem, a wellness problem, and frankly, a public awareness problem.

What is the 911 SAVES Act?

The 911 SAVES Act, short for the Supporting Accurate Views of Emergency Services Act, would reclassify public safety telecommunicators as Protective Service Occupations under the federal Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. That puts them in the same category as the police officers, firefighters, and paramedics they dispatch every single day. 

Reclassification is really just the starting point. 

The SOC classification is how the federal government determines who gets studied, who gets funded, and who gets protected, and right now, telecommunicators fall outside that umbrella. 

Passing the 911 SAVES Act opens the door to dedicated occupational health research, PTSD protections, workers’ compensation coverage that many telecommunicators still don’t have. It gives 911 telecommunicators greater protection and recognition that many other public safety professionals already have. 

Where Does the 911 SAVES Act Stand Today?

The Senate passed the companion Enhancing First Response Act (S.725), the farthest this effort has ever gotten. Two House bills, H.R. 540 and H.R. 637, are currently sitting in the House Committee on Education and Workforce. The legislation is bipartisan, it has support from NENA, APCO International, and advocates across the country, and it still isn’t finished.

The 911 Telecommunicator Classification Gap is a Wellness Gap 

For 911 telecommunicators, this isn’t just about a title. The way public safety telecommunicators are classified at the federal level has a direct impact on their access to mental health resources, occupational protections, and the kind of research that could actually quantify what this work does to a person over time. 

We’ve had the privilege of sitting down with some of the most respected leaders in emergency communications industry on our podcast, The Wilmac Wire, and this theme of telecommunicator wellness comes up every single time.  

Roxanne Van Gundy is the First Vice President of NENA, the director of Lyon County Emergency Communications Center in Kansas, and co-chair of NENA’s wellness committee, where she helped publish the first ANSI-accredited wellness standard in 911. When we spoke with her about the 911 SAVES Act, she was direct about why it matters to her:

Why We Don’t Have the Telecommunicator Mental Health Data We Need

That absence of data is a consequence of classification. When your profession isn’t recognized as protective service work at the federal level, the infrastructure to study and support that profession doesn’t get built. 

Ivan Whitaker, CEO and Executive Director of Salt Lake Valley Emergency Communications Center and a 30-plus year public safety veteran, put the human stakes plainly when he appeared on The Wilmac Wire. He referenced a statistic that more than 50% of people working in EMS and 911 will experience a mental health diagnosis at some point in their career. 

Those are not numbers that belong in the “administrative and clerical” category of anything. 

What 911 Leaders Are Saying About Telecommunicator Reclassification

The push for reclassification isn’t happening in the background. The leaders across NENA and APCO who are driving it are vocal and continue bringing it up in Washington. 

Captain Jack Varnado is the president of APCO International, the largest public safety communications organization in the world, and the 911 director at Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana. In December 2025, he testified before the U.S. House of Representatives on the future of emergency communications. When he joined us on The Wilmac Wire, he didn’t mince words about where the 911 dispatcher first responder classification fight stands today: 

Van Gundy has spent years building the case at the state level, leading the effort that got dispatchers reclassified as emergency responders in Kansas before taking that fight to the national stage through her work at NENA. Whitaker is expanding peer support programs at SLVECC and investing in resiliency training because waiting on legislation to catch up doesn’t mean you stop taking care of your people in the meantime. 

What they’re describing isn’t a niche policy debate. It’s a workforce crisis that deserves a much bigger audience than it’s currently getting.

The Link Between Reclassification and PSAP Workforce Retention

Passing the 911 SAVES Act matters for recognition. It also matters for retention. 

Burnout drives turnover. Turnover drives coverage gaps. And coverage gaps put more pressure on the people who are already carrying a lot. It’s a cycle that every 911 director we’ve spoken with knows intimately, and it’s one that gets harder to break when the people doing this work don’t have access to the occupational health protections and mental health resources they’ve earned. 

Van Gundy told us that when she first started, the average retention of a dispatcher was seven to ten years. Now it’s three to five. The trajectory isn’t moving in the right direction. 

That’s the context in which we build our products. Wilmac Continuity WFM and our agentic AI, Mac, are designed to reduce the administrative burden on 911 centers, automate scheduling, forecast demand, and give supervisors real-time visibility into staffing. Not because workforce management software or AI solves a classification problem (it doesn’t), but because the people working in these centers deserve tools that make the operational side of this job easier while the policy side catches up. 

It’s the lens we bring to building Wilmac Continuity WFM and Mac. If we can take complexity off a supervisor’s plate and give them clearer visibility into their staffing, that has a real impact on the people working those shifts. 

The 911 SAVES Act Needs a Bigger Audience

The public safety community has been fighting for public safety telecommunicator reclassification for a long time. NENA and APCO are fighting for it. 911 Directors like Captain Jack Varnado, Roxy Van Gundy, and Ivan Whitaker are fighting for it from their centers, committees, and even in the halls of Congress. 

What’s missing is the conversation happening outside of those rooms. 

Most people who have called 911 would be shocked to learn that the person who answered isn’t classified as a first responder. That shock is useful. It’s the kind of thing that moves legislation when it reaches enough people. 

If this surprises you, please share it! And if you want to do more, reach out to your U.S. House Representative. No policy background or talking point needed; you just need to tell them what you didn’t know and why it matters. NENA and APCO have been making this case in Washington for years. The more voices they have behind them, the harder it is to ignore. 

In the meantime, explore how Wilmac is supporting the people and the centers behind every 911 call through Wilmac Continuity WFM and Mac.