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Community-Owned Emergency Response Software

In December 2025, The New York Times and others published reports private equity group Vista Equity Partners has nearly cornered the market on emergency response software in the United States. The report described a rural volunteer fire department with a small tax base being charged seven times more once the new company, ESO Solutions took over. At NTARI we identify this as a form of technofeudalism, just the sort of thing our Municipal Counter Automation Strategy is designed to combat. We're developing an open-source version of the software for fire departments everywhere.

About COER

Development

NTARI CleanRoom

Cleanroom development copies functionality, not creative design making it a legal process for reproducing useful software. NTARI cleanroom development is hosted in the Software Development Studio, where collaborators work on repoductions for release under GNU Affero General Public Licensing, preventing private groups from capturing it again. COER will be produced with the help of student, volunteer and staff developers over 8-12 months beginning January 2026.

Products to Be Delivered

COER 1-- Standard Model

COER2-- JFA Model

Once developed, COER will be available for departments around the world-- free to download, inspect, alter and redistribute in English +5. NTARI subsidiary Fruitful Management LLC will develop a certification program, assist remotely with hosting, modification and staff maintainer hiring. The goal is for communities to employ a local software maintainer instead of exporting funds to NTARI as part of our Municipal Counter Automation Strategy. 

How to Get Involved

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NTARI is a 501.c3 nonprofit based in Louisville, Kentucky. We are currently fundraising for the following:

  1. Travel assistance for developers to observe department software use on-site

  2. Tools and resources for volunteer development teams hosted @ ntari.slack.com

  3. Small form factor servers for departments to host the software locally achieving fastest reaction time possible

  4. ​Funding to rent server space on NYC Mesh, Starry or other alternative broadband networks​ as an alternative to SFF servers

  5. Attorney review of documentation and final product to ensure no copyright contamination

  6. Operator certification program development

Image by Albert Stoynov

Support Your Department

With around 30,000 publicly funded departments in the United States, venture capitalists stand to extract $150 million/ year in indirect taxation. Don't let them. Develop an alternative that evolves to every community's needs in digital commons.

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