NICE announced that the Brazos Valley Council of Governments’ (BVCOG) seven 9-1-1 centers are deploying NICE Inform to record and manage reproduction requests for all emergency calls, including Text-to-911 communications.

NICE Inform goes beyond capturing 9-1-1 texts to enable PSAPs to search for, retrieve, export, save and share text conversations and associated metadata for investigations. Texts can also be combined with 9-1-1 and radio calls, screen recordings, GIS and CAD incident data, into comprehensive incident timelines.

BVCOG has the distinction of being the first agency in the United States to complete a Text-to-911 call using Airbus DS Communications’ VESTA® 9-1-1 integrated VESTA® SMS system which enables native handling of text and voice in a single application. The BVCOG (TX) Regional 9-1-1 program encompasses seven 9-1-1 centers in six counties: Washington County 9-1-1, Burleson County Sheriff’s Office, Grimes County Sheriff’s Office, Navasota Police Department, and the Leon County, Madison County and Robertson County Sheriff’s Offices.

“As one of the early adopters of Text-to-911, BVCOG is a trailblazer in Next Gen emergency communications,” said Chris Wooten, Executive Vice President, NICE. “BVCOG also recognizes the importance of capturing and preserving Text-to-911 communications for incident reconstruction and investigations, and is committed to doing it the right way, with NICE Inform.”

“Public Safety agencies would never think twice about recording every 9-1-1 call, even though they may only need to retrieve one call out of a thousand for legal documentation,” said Anita Pitt, 9-1-1 Program Manager, Brazos Valley Council of Governments (BVCOG). “Agencies need to put the same emphasis on recording 9-1-1 Texts. NICE Inform provides our 9-1-1 centers with complete legal documentation of SMS 9-1-1 Texts, should they need it. It captures exactly what we need in exactly the right format.”

NICE Inform goes beyond simply capturing 9-1-1 Texts to enable BVCOG to search for, retrieve, export, save and share text conversations, and associated metadata, for investigations. In addition to capturing the 9-1-1 SMS text conversations, NICE Inform also captures all of the metadata that comes in from the text stream. BVCOG 9-1-1 supervisors and records custodians can export and save complete text conversations in various formats (.txt, .pdf, .csv) along with complete metadata (e.g. caller ID, location, date/time stamps, etc.), for comprehensive insight into who texted, from where and when, and what was said.

NICE Inform is currently deployed at the Navasota Police Department, and at the Leon County and Grimes County Sheriff’s Offices, and will soon be rolled out to the remaining four BVCOG 9-1-1 centers. NICE is working with its partner Voice Products Inc. to complete the installation.

​NICE Inform is integrated with and certified to support leading NG9-1-1 call handling and Text-to-911 applications. By investing in NICE Inform, PSAPs can achieve complete multimedia capture and incident reconstruction capabilities today while equipping themselves to capture and manage Text-to-911 and future NG9-1-1 multimedia communications.