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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Repurpose for home use
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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
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 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
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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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