The county operates a 911 Enhanced System with dual PSAPs utilizing the County Communications Center and the City of Harrisburg to function as back up for each other. When a person dials 911, it is routed to the correct ECC regardless of telephone service areas of political boundaries. When the dispatcher picks up the call, the calling party's telephone number and address will automatically be displayed on the dispatchers screen. 911 Enhanced services have been documented as contributing to the saving of lives of our most vulnerable of populations, the elderly, small children and persons with special needs.

Cases have shown that these persons whom may not be able to communicate or remember valuable information required to summons help can rapidly be interfaced into the Emergency Dispatch System and appropriate life saving assistance provided.
Another significant benefit of the 911 Enhanced service is the more rapid interface of the deaf and hearing impaired. These persons can interface both in Baudot and ASCII format and will have a series of programmed messages to further speed up the establishment of the nature of the emergency.

Today's Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) systems interface with the enhanced 911 system. The county's Computer Aided Dispatch System was the first GIS map based NT Windows system in the world. This has reduced dispatch time from two and one half minutes to 30 seconds. This valuable time can make a major difference in saving lives. The CAD system will allow the dispatcher to access a Geographic Information System which will provide maps, resources, histories of previous emergencies, the storage of Hazardous Materials and special needs of persons at a specific address. In 1998 the ECC dispatched 100,000 emergency calls.

The county has currently started a $1.7 million short term upgrade and maintenance project for it's 25 year old Public Safety Radio System. There is a serious need to replace this antiquated system at an infrastructure cost of approximately $12 million. This does not include field units.