‘Friends’ helped North Carolina 911’s call centers withstand Hurricane Helene

It was thanks to “friends” that North Carolina’s 911 system managed to keep the state’s emergency call centers open during last year’s Hurricane Helene. Pokey Harris, executive director of the North Carolina 911 Board, says that the state’s next-generation 911 system relies on a system in which 911 centers are paired with partner call centers, or “friends,” that can take their calls in case they’re knocked offline. In the case of Helene, 19 emergency call centers were knocked offline, proving the wisdom of that arrangement. “As the weather forecasts began to intensify, we began encouraging the 911 centers to have a broader outreach. And they did,” Harris says.

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The nonprofit Center for Civic Futures on Tuesday announced it will award $8.5 million to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence projects designed to improve public benefits programs over the next two years. The group has named eight projects it will support, including a multi-state cohort to improve AI tools that can verify work requirements for SNAP and Medicaid benefits and a project with Maryland’s labor department and the Harvard Kennedy School to improve the state’s unemployment insurance system.

New Jersey officials have announced the creation of the New Jersey Civilian Cyber Resilience Corps, a volunteer group of cybersecurity experts who will assist with not only incident response, but hardening the security postures of those organizations throughout the state that need it most. :It’s easier to keep Humpty Dumpty on the wall than to put him back together again,” said Michael Geraghty, New Jersey’s chief information security officer.

On Sunday, federal lawmakers shared the bill text of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2026, which did not feature the contentious state artificial intelligence law moratorium it had been rumored to include. However, federal efforts to rein in state and local authority over the technology aren’t dead just yet.

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