NiCE announced a new standard for AI accountability, extending its long-standing mission to help public safety agencies capture, preserve, and understand critical incident information. At APCO 2026, NiCE will introduce NiCE Witness, an AI governance solution that creates an impartial, cross-vendor record of AI activity, personnel actions, and incident outcomes from the first call through dispatch, response, and final review. Together with NiCE Inform and NiCE Inform AI, NiCE Witness enables agencies to reconstruct the incident, assess both AI and human performance against agency policies and procedures, peer benchmarks, and national standards, and preserve an independent, auditable, and defensible record of every critical decision.
For nearly four decades, each major technology shift in public safety has expanded the record agencies rely on NiCE to keep. Voice logging preserved what was said. Digital and IP communications enabled end-to-end incident reconstruction. NG911 and multimedia brought digital evidence together. AI-assisted quality assurance made it possible to evaluate emergency interactions at scale. Now, as AI enters call triage, language translation, dispatch, threat assessment, report generation, records management, and other mission-critical workflows, the next record agencies must keep is how AI and people made decisions together.
That need is emerging as three forces converge: chronic staffing pressures, rapid AI adoption, and growing scrutiny of automated decisions. Agencies need AI to reduce workload and accelerate response, but most applications can explain only their own role. Without an impartial record across vendors and systems, agencies may be unable to show what AI recommended, what personnel saw, whether policy was followed, and why a decision was made during critical incident reviews, public records requests, litigation, accreditation, or after-action investigations.
“Public safety has always depended on a trusted record when the stakes are highest,” said Chris Wooten, Executive Vice President, NiCE. “AI does not change that need, it expands what the record must capture. Across the first-response lifecycle, NiCE Witness provides an impartial, cross-vendor account of what AI did, how personnel responded, what happened, and whether the response aligned with policy and standards. The result is independent, auditable proof of whether AI is performing as intended, and a verifiable, defensible record of every critical decision.”
Designed as the “flight recorder” for public safety AI, NiCE Witness creates a single, time-aligned record of AI activity and human decision-making across the emergency response lifecycle. Unlike individual applications that log only their own activity, NiCE Witness provides a vendor-neutral view across multiple systems—including call triage, language translation, dispatch support, threat assessment, report generation, records management, and other operational workflows—so agencies can reconstruct not only what happened, but how technology and people interacted throughout the response.
NiCE answers three critical questions about every incident
Each technology shift has expanded the record that agencies trust NiCE to keep. Together, NiCE Inform, NiCE Inform AI, and NiCE Witness give agencies a connected answer to three questions that define accountability in an AI-enabled environment:
What happened? NiCE Inform brings together 911 audio, CAD activity, radio communications, reports, and digital records into a complete, chronological incident view, while Intelligence Center dashboards help leaders see patterns and performance trends across operations.
Was it handled correctly? NiCE Inform AI extends quality assurance from small samples to virtually every emergency interaction through automated evaluation, configurable scoring, coaching workflows, and performance analytics—for people, and increasingly for the AI working beside them.
Can we prove every decision? NiCE Witness adds the independent, auditable, and defensible record of AI-assisted decision-making, showing how recommendations and human judgment combined from the first call through final review.
At APCO 2026, NiCE will demonstrate these capabilities from initial emergency call through final reporting and review, including incident reconstruction, AI-assisted quality assurance and coaching, Intelligence Center dashboards, and preservation of AI-assisted recommendations and human decisions through NiCE Witness. Visitors can see how agencies can reconstruct every critical incident, evaluate every emergency interaction, record every AI-assisted decision, and defend every operational outcome at NiCE Booth 2412.
