But even as those efforts build, trends in state and local government technology — especially the public safety space — point to the opposite direction, with artificial intelligence and the upcoming World Cup providing the fuel.
The latest example comes from a company called DeskOfficer. It recently launched a new language-translation campaign designed to get its technology into more emergency call centers in the U.S.
DeskOfficer sells what it calls an AI “desk officer” that can answer non-emergency calls, take police reports and handle other low-priority requests that come into 911 call centers, reflecting a larger gov tech trend that is helping to drive business and investment.
Now the company, founded in 2025, has launched its free 911Translate offering. It provides real-time conversational access to more than 70 languages, which could reduce the time it takes for emergency call takers to understand requests and then dispatch police, fire and medical personnel.
The service frees the 911 call taker from having to conference in a human translator, Jamieson Johnson, DeskOfficer’s co-founder and president, told Government Technology.
Because of the lack of real-time translation on calls, Johnson said, people can die from the delays involved.
Johnson said the new 911Translate tool provides translations that “sound like the native speaker of the language.”
His company is sending free versions of 911Translate to the approximately 6,000 emergency call centers in the U.S. The free version offers 100 minutes of translation each month, which Johnson said will suffice for many smaller departments. Agencies that need more use from the tool will pay a dollar per minute.
The company insists there is no trick or loophole.
“We want to get people comfortable with AI,” Kushyar Kasraie, DeskOfficer’s CEO and co-founder, told Government Technology. “This will show people that AI will work. A lot of people are on the fence about AI.”
The company is betting that trends favor this move.
That’s one reason they are using the upcoming FIFA World Cup tournament in North America as a selling point — a wave of foreign visitors would presumably result in some foreign-language emergency calls into local police departments, a potential need that is already driving some gov tech deployments.
“We hope to alleviate the pain,” Kasraie said.
And while Florida might be trying to cut back on foreign language access in government, other states are moving in a different direction — one that might also encourage more use of 911 translation tech. Washington state, for instance, recently passed a law that calls for state agencies to provide what a summary calls “language-accessible public programs.”
