PlainBillCongress, translated.Legislation. Context. Public interest.Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
Congressional Research Service
Version 00 · Introduced in Senate · Dec 18, 2023
Enhancing First Response Act
This bill requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to report on certain activations of the Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS). DIRS is a reporting system, activated during severe weather and other events impacting communications service, through which communications providers report outages and other degradations to service.
If the system was activated for at least seven days, the FCC must issue a preliminary report that includes information about the number, duration, and nature of all associated outages. The FCC must also hold at least one public field hearing in the area affected by the event, and it must issue a final report that includes recommendations on how to improve the resiliency of affected networks.
Showing the opening paragraphs of the official summary.
Separately, the FCC must publish a general report on (1) the volume and nature of 9-1-1 outages that are not required to be reported under current outage notification rules, and (2) the value to public safety agencies of the inclusion of visual information in outage notifications from communications providers.
The bill also requires the Office of Management and Budget, by 30 days after the bill's enactment, to categorize public safety telecommunicators as a protective service occupation under the Standard Occupational Classification System.
Finally, the Office of the Inspector General of the FCC is directed to publish a report on the implementation of Kari’s Law, which requires multiline telephone systems to be preconfigured to allow users to dial 9-1-1 directly from any phone without dialing any additional code or prefix.
People & committees
Sen. Klobuchar, Amy [D-MN] · D–MN
Legislative record
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Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
Introduced in Senate
Primary sources
Text links open the official source. We currently store references to these documents.
Source last updated: Sep 8, 2026. Consult Congress.gov for the current record.
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