Priority 4

Be ready when it counts, modernize emergency communications

Group of humanitarian workers in orange vests distributing aid and registration materials.
Group of humanitarian workers in orange vests distributing aid and registration materials.
Graphic of a red smartphone with a white notification bell and red alert badge.
Graphic of a red smartphone with a white notification bell and red alert badge.

When an emergency happens, communication isn't a nice-to-have. It can be the thing that keeps people safe, informed, and connected to the help they need. And the data4 shows that most public sector organizations have built real emergency communications capacity. Seventy-four percent of public sector organizations communicated an emergency in the past year, and most have multichannel protocols in place. Now, the opportunity exists to make it faster, smarter, and more responsive to how citizens actually want to be reached.

Percent rating emergency communications as good or excellent.

The gap that matters the most

Eighty-four percent of organizations rate their emergency communications as good or excellent. Only 58% of citizens agree. That gap holds across every level of government: local, state, and federal organizations all receive similar citizen ratings, which means this isn't a problem isolated to one part of the sector. It's a systemic one.

The most actionable finding in this section is also the most specific. Citizens prefer text and SMS for emergency alerts above almost every other channel. Only 48% of public sector agencies currently deliver them through this channel. 

Meanwhile, organizations continue to lean heavily on email, with 53% using it, even though only 45% of citizens prefer it for this type of communication. In a category where the right message in the right channel can be the difference between someone getting to safety or not, that variation matters.

Woman in yellow shirt reading a flash flood warning message on her phone.
Woman in yellow shirt reading a flash flood warning message on her phone.

Closing the emergency communication gap

The gap between leaders and the rest of the public sector on emergency communications is one of the widest in the entire dataset, and it comes down to coordination. Most organizations operate in isolation, managing alerts within their own department or agency without the cross-agency integration that makes real-time, comprehensive communication possible.

Public sector organizations on the "leader" level of digital maturity have solved for that: 37% describe their approach as proactive and adaptive, and they are significantly more likely to use email, text, and chatbots than their peers. When every agency works from a separate system, citizens get a fragmented picture at exactly the moment they need a clear one. 

 

The payoff for getting this right is transformational

Closing the text and SMS gap is the highest-impact near-term investment the data identifies for emergency preparedness. It's specific, it's actionable, and citizens have told us exactly what they want. Building toward AI-supported alerting is the longer arc, but the public sector organizations that start by meeting citizens where they already are will be the ones best positioned to make that transition.

The AI moment

Reaching the highest tier of emergency communications maturity, "proactive and adaptive," requires AI by definition: forecasting, automated workflows, real-time alerts, and cross-agency coordination. Organizations rated as leaders are 5x more likely than those at the beginner level to operate there. The public sector organizations that have made that leap aren't just responding to emergencies more effectively. They're anticipating them.

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4 Unless otherwise noted, the statistics cited in this report are based on two blind online surveys commissioned by Twilio, designed and analyzed by Lawless Research, and fielded from April to May 2026