By Ric Colton, Vice President & Chief Information Officer (CIO), e-Management

Hurricane Katrina (see above) was one of the most destructive natural disasters to hit the U.S.A. During its aftermath, businesses, governments, and communities struggled to get back to a place of normalcy. Are you prepared for a disaster of Katrina magnitude? (Photo Credit: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC)

Unforeseen events and disasters can strike at any time. Are you prepared to handle your “business” when the unexpected occurs? In the business world, many corporations—small and large—turn to continuity of operations planning (COOP) procedures to respond to the unanticipated, the unpredicted, and the down-right astonishing. In other words, COOP helps organizations return their businesses back to normalcy after experiencing a man-made or natural disaster. Most often, COOP focuses on: (1) people; (2) places; and (3) things.

Have you ever thought about how your home or workplace would recover following a terrorist attack, an act of aggression from a state enemy, an evacuation based on an outbreak, or a natural disaster? Check out our COOP tips that may be used to help you prepare of the unspeakable.

Tips to Help in Your Recovery from an Emergency…

Think about possible scenarios that could require COOP. A good COOP should answer the questions that your home or organization would face if there were a sudden disruption, such as:  What type of events could cause a disaster? Where would we go?How would we communicate to our family, friends, or staff members? What functions are most important? What items are necessary for our critical functions?

Identify your COOP contacts and planning team members. Your COOP team should include people or groups responsible for planning, relocation, support, and communication. Your home or workplace COOP team should assign one person who is ultimately responsible for coordinating the activities of the team; assigning responsibilities; and ensuring that members of the senior management team or adults in authority (e.g., parents, adult siblings) are kept informed of all COOP activities.

Identify alternate locations. There are several types of events (e.g., flood, earthquake, hurricane, loss of utility power) that could require family or colleagues to be relocated to an alternate work location. So your COOP team should conduct a risk analysis of current and alternate operating facilities/locations and the team should consider selecting alternate locations in areas where power, telecommunications, and Internet grid would be different than those used by the primary facility. A risk analysis is simply the process of assessing or identifying factors that may harm or jeopardize the success of COOP. Another criterion to be considered is the distance of the alternate locations from the primary facility, because depending on the type of emergency, employee or family members may not be able to gain access to their vehicles or use public transportation.

Identify mission essential functions. Your COOP team will need to identify the essential functions that the organization is expected to perform to be considered operational and they must also identify the priority for restarting any machinery, device, or information technology (IT) equipment (e.g., computers, servers) required to support the essential functions. In addition to identifying essential functions, your COOP team will also need to identify essential persons required to assist with restoring normal operations and identifying people whose role is to lead in the absence of the usual leader or expert.

Protect vital records and resources. After identifying the essential function, your COOP team will need to document the vital records and resources required by your home or business to complete its essential functions. Vital records for businesses, government, or nonprofits may be financial; human resource; legal; and other records and systems. Similarly, examples of home vital records may include birth certificates, social security cards, financial records and the like. Vital means that if these records or resources are lost there would be a negative effect on the organization’s ability to carry out essential functions or to conduct business.

Determine how best to communicate during emergencies. When a disaster occurs, it will be extremely important that you have identified several different options to communicate operational status of your home or business to family or staff.  So your COOP team will need to develop a communication plan that has primary and secondary methods of communicating (e.g., text, mobile, landline, computers, Twitter, Facebook, Google+) with their family or teams. In a recent experience, I found that cell towers and networks that deliver short message service (SMS) messages were unreliable means of communications. So although I would suggest that social media be considered as one method of delivering COOP communication, I would not suggest that it be considered the primary means of communication.

Now, it’s time to set this in motion.
Hopefully, these basic tips provide you with an overview of the crucial tasks that you must complete in order to develop a successful COOP plan. Remember, to ensure that your plan remains viable, your COOP team should conduct ongoing reviews and implement corrective actions when deficiencies are found. So, I ask: (1) Do you have “COOP” in place at your home or office? (2) Is your family or workplace prepared for a disaster? (3) Are there any other tips you think we might have missed?