Transcript Slide 1
Pandemic Planning
Immediate and Near Term Action Items
Project Leadership Associates
May 6, 2009
PLA confidential material. May not be copied or distributed without consent of PLA
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Our Organization
PLA provides a broad range of business and technology solutions that address
enterprise wide strategy, operations, applications and infrastructure challenges
Multiple practice groups with specific subject matter expertise
Infrastructure, Messaging, Unified Communications, Disaster Recovery, Software
Development, Business Intelligence, Business Strategy, IT Consulting and
Managed Services
Is one of the fastest growing business and technology firms
Inc. 5000 – PLA was ranked in the top 41 percent of the fastest private growing
companies for the second consecutive year.
Fast Growth 100, CRN Magazine – PLA was ranked #46 in its third year of
being included on the list.
Crain's Chicago Business Fast 50 – PLA was ranked #29 on the list of 50
fastest growing companies in Chicago area
Is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois with branch offices in Dallas and Houston
Is 75% employee-owned
Has over 180 employees
Leverages only experienced consultants
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Consultant Warning: ***DO NOT DO THIS!!!***
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Agenda
Current Situation and Things to Know for Planning Purposes
Immediate Action Items
Near Term Action Items
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Pandemic Planning is Just Different from Normal BC Planning
It is important to understand that a business continuity plan
will NOT necessarily address issues specific to pandemic
planning
Concurrent impact in multiple offices
Significant employee outage
Scale of technical infrastructure required to sustain a multioffice outage
Must be handled at a Firm-wide level
Reality check what your plan does or does not cover then
adjust accordingly
Create a plan if you don’t have one
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Current Situation and Things to Know
WHO Level 5 Threat
Sustained human to human contact
Imminent potential for global pandemic
Level 6 means government can shut down all events or businesses
that create a “public gathering”
CDC Recommendations
Stay home if you are sick
Stay home 7 days after the onset of symptoms (10 days in
children) or at least 24 hours after the last symptom is gone
Consider closing schools/day care with one confirmed or suspected
case of swine flu
Stay closed for 14 days following the last confirmed case
Containment through isolation
Consider how the impact of this approach may impact your daily
operations
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Immediate Action Items Summary
Establish a formal Pandemic Planning Team and get
educated
Reality check – remote access capabilities
Educate office management on remote access
capabilities
Define and procure supplies
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Immediate Action Items
Establish a formal Pandemic Team if you don’t have a Business
Continuity Team in place
Administrative management (Exec Dir, COO)
HR Director
IT
Facilities
Marketing or Communications Group
Labor/employment lawyer
Role of Team
Standardized communications and education
Develop/formalize pandemic-related policies
Develop and implement action plan
Stay 3 steps ahead of everyone else in their understanding of
the flu
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Immediate Action Items
Centralized command and control is an absolute must for this type
of planning
The bigger the firm, the more likely the response will spin out of
control
More people making decisions for individual offices, when this is really a
Firm-wide situation and must be handled that way
Centralize crisis management/control for the following
Education and communication
Problem escalation/decision making
Analyze impact at the office level and how that may change
the firm-wide response
Monitoring Firm IT resources along with the Global Team
Remote access
Laptop pool
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Immediate Action Items
Reality Check Technical Remote Access Capabilities
Infrastructure
Building servers is not what you want to be doing during any emergency
If they are in the budget, procure and deploy them sooner rather than later
Bandwidth to handle additional load
Average Citrix user consumes 32 – 50kbps
Some types of remote access consume even more bandwidth
Licenses
Adding licenses during a disaster can work as long as the infrastructure can
support it
Applications
Core applications seem obvious, but what about others that support the
practice of law or mitigate business risk?
Litigation/IP docket
Conflicts
Practice specific applications
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Immediate Action Items – Remote Access Capabilities
Data
Again, understand your capabilities for how people will really work
remotely
Access to contact information
Access to local or server drives for specialized or sensitive data
Saved search histories
Basics
Survey “work from home” capabilities of lawyers/key staff to create
baseline
Firm-provided laptops (do they take them home every night?)
Home PC
Scanners
Printers
High speed
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Immediate Action Items – Remote Access Capabilities
Business Impact Assessment
Understand RTO/RPO for critical applications in order to build
the proper DR capability
Once you understand current capabilities
Meet with management to ensure expectations meet the
capabilities
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Immediate Action Items
Remote Access Scaling
Generally recommend 65% concurrent usage for the largest
office or cluster of offices
During the avian flu scare, Gartner suggested a 40%
concurrent outage of all employees in all offices
How do you realistically scale for that?
Recommend approximately 35 users/box Citrix
Again, don’t forget to address bandwidth
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Immediate Action Items
Define and procure supplies
Laptops
Security devices
Citrix licenses
One time/limited usage license for one year for reduced costs
SSL VPN licenses
Terminal server licenses
Repurpose for home use
Low end printers
Scanners
Fax machines
Air cards
Any device that makes working remotely easier
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Immediate Action Items
Educate Management/Lawyers on Current Remote Access
Capabilities
Tell them the ways in which applications/data can be accessed
remotely
Ensure they understand the advantages and disadvantages or
limitations for each way
Estimated number of concurrent users
Point at which there would/may be a reduction in performance
Application publication
What applications and data are/are not available
Don’t embellish current capabilities – this is an opportunity to sell the
Firm on expanding current capabilities
Work in collaboration with administration to create a “how to work
remotely” manual to give lawyers/staff
Must be business process focused
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Immediate Action Items
Understand their true “work from home” capacity and/or comfort
level
Level of training and awareness for all lawyers/staff to work from
home
HR considerations of non-exempt personnel working this way
Level of consideration given to workflow, not just data flow
Remember even if lawyers love working from home, during a true
disaster it is not business as usual if the office is closed or
administrative staff are unavailable
Workflow interruptions
Communication problems
Locating key staff
Interruptions and noise
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Near-term Action Items
Talk with your mission critical vendors and suppliers
Start developing workflow reallocation plans
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Near-term Action Items
An important note about insurance
Business interruption insurance does NOT cover lost
billable hours during a pandemic
Guess what that means for you?
IT’s ability to enable lawyers to work remotely will be the
single most important factor in a true response to a
pandemic
…but no pressure…
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Near-term Action Items
Identify mission critical vendors and suppliers
Discuss their pandemic plans with them
This is important for business continuity anyway, but even
more important now
Collocation/hosting solution vendors in particular
Current economic times have seriously thinned out staffing levels,
making pandemic planning even more problematic
Start thinking about workflow re-allocation if key internal staff
are unavailable
Do this regardless of pandemic planning or not – its just a
good business practice
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Near-term Action Items
Address disaster security considerations
Purchase additional fobs, tokens, or other licenses etc
Develop processes to enable rapid deployment of the
access devices
Consider changing security measures during the initial
stages of any type of emergency situation
Talk with HR/management about their plans for allowing
staff to work from home
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Questions?
Pam Hill
217.778.6976
[email protected]
Lee Hovermale
713.446.8422
[email protected]
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