Transcript Business Continuity Planning at CSULB

Business Continuity Planning
at CSULB
Business Continuity Services
California State University, Long Beach
CSULB, 2008
Topics
-- What is business continuity?
-- Why is it important?
-- What are the key questions continuity
planning addresses?
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Business Continuity is…
An ongoing program of activities
conducted in advance by an organization to
ensure it’s prepared to continue its
mission-critical functions when an adverse
event occurs…
...sometimes called “continuity of operations”...
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Importance of Preparing
Planning provides resource backup / alternatives
– If staff unavailable – who will do the work?
– If a system or records are gone – how do we operate?
– If a specific building cannot be occupied – where do we go?
Planning creates routines
– Routines create repetition and normalcy
– Normalcy generates calm instead of panic
Planning reduces the impact of adverse events and boosts capacity to
rapidly restart an organization’s critical functions
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Emergency Preparedness /
Business Continuity
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Emergency Preparedness —
Preparation and planning to cope directly with hazards and
crisis-events, protect people and property

Business Continuity —
Preparation and planning to continue teaching, research,
and other mission-critical functions despite crisis-events
–
CSULB Goal: Continue critical functions as soon as
possible and within no longer than 30 days.
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CSULB Response Spectrum for Disaster Events
Emergency Response-Emergency Response (ER)
Crisis Management (CM)
Business Continuity (BC)
Initial actions to recognize/declare incident
and protect CSULB people, property, and
surrounding communities. (Public Safety,
EOC, Cabinet, external agencies, some or
all business and academic units)
Level of Activity
Crisis Management-Continuing activities to manage secondary
issues arising from incident. (Cabinet, EOC,
some business and academic units, some
external agencies)
CM
Business Continuity--
ER
BC
Time
Ongoing actions to maintain or resume
instruction, research, and essential services
for campus constituents. (Cabinet, EOC,
business and academic units providing
critical functions)
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Answer Central Questions
Overall, continuity planning addresses two key questions:
1. What are the critical functions of your organization?
2. How will each critical function be continued
at sufficient levels if essential people, building(s), or
infrastructure elements aren’t available?
(All Hazards Approach to Planning—identify resources in place
and necessary to rapidly restart each critical function)
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How we can do it:
Three Steps
Identify / Prioritize
Determine critical
functions, their
priority categories,
lead units and
representatives
Develop
Generate plans
(Using CSULB Continuity
Planning Tool)
Maintain
Act on,
Communicate,
Test, Update
plan content
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Guidelines for Determining
Critical Functions
• Identify them in terms of functions and services,
rather than processes or department names
• A critical functions has one or more of these attributes:
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Has direct, immediate effect in preventing loss of life, personal injury,
or loss of property
Is absolutely essential for teaching or research
Provides vital support to critical function(s) of another dept., unit,
organization
Is required by law
Must be continued under all circumstances
Cannot suffer a significant interruption
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CSULB Continuity Planning Tool

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Award winning, FEMAfunded, online planning tool
Developed by UC-Berkeley,
designed for higher
education organizations
Adopted for use by all UC
campuses, UC Medical
Centers
Answer series of questions
using web-based form,
produce a department-based
continuity plan
THE
CSULB
CONTINUITY PLANNING TOOL
Build your continuity plan:
1. What are the essential resources (people, facilities, and
infrastructure/systems/equipment for “Critical Function n”?
2. If essential resources for “Critical Function n” are not available,
what alternatives exist?
3. If alternatives do not exist, what should be put in place?
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Describe capacity and needs for
restarting each critical function
1. What are the essential resources for “Critical Function n”?
Vital records, equipment / systems, people, communication tools,
etc.
2. If essential resources for “Critical Function n” are not available,
what alternatives exist?
Line of succession, alternate work locations, copies of vital records,
alternate communication, alternate processes/workarounds,
alternate human resources / vendors, IT recovery approaches, etc.
3. If alternatives resources don’t exist, what should be put in place?
Action Items (To Do Items) that can increase capacity for a rapid
restart, minimize impact of disaster events
Campus and division project timeline
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Phase 1: Identify critical functions Spring 2008
Phase 2: Develop plans Summer-Fall 2008
Phase 3: Evaluate dependencies and prioritize action items 2009
How long will it take?
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Department Planning
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Approximately a 3 month project – longer time frames do not produce better
plans
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Who should plan?
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Upper/middle: Key functional directors and managers, asst. directors, asst. deans,
HR managers, IT Managers, etc.
Strategies for completing
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Actual staff hours are small because tool uses fill-in-the-blank approach
Mostly “white space”
Critical function team members often have information in their heads
Data entry 2 hours; training on tool 1 hour
Let the tool guide the discussion with team members engaged in planning
Little-or-no homework; instead thoughtful consideration of issues
Ongoing maintenance required
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How do we know we’re done?
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Written plan(s) and related activities in place
that include approaches and indispensable information
necessary to recover your area’s critical functions
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Maintenance calendar established for periodic plan
updates, tests, and sharing plan contents with relevant personnel
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Maintenance conducted (taking action on “to do” items
and testing, revising and communicating plan contents)
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BUSINESS CONTINUITY SERVICES
CONTACT INFORMATION
Cathy Gottlieb
Business Continuity Specialist
Brotman Hall 320
562/ 985-7148
[email protected]
Mishelle Laws
AVP, Quality Improvement
Brotman Hall 320
562/ 985-8356
[email protected]
CSULB, 2008