Pandemic preparedness and Continuity of Operations (COOP) planning are all top-of-mind priorities for Federal government professionals, and many employees are uncertain what to do when regular operations are interrupted. According to Steve O'Keeffe, executive director of Telework Exchange, recent research shows that 45 percent of Federal employees do not have personal guidance from their agencies on how to handle a disaster and more than 40 percent feel their agency is not prepared to continue business operations in the event of a disaster.

Given this context, a panel of disaster recovery and COOP experts assembled at the Symantec Government Symposium 2008 on July 31, 2008, in Washington, D.C. to discuss how agencies can better prepare for operating in extended emergency situations and how telework can - and should - be an integral component of their preparedness planning.

During the interactive session, the panelists discussed how to ensure that public sector networks, infrastructures, employees, and management are equipped to function effectively during unexpected contingencies and offered recommended best practices to design practical COOP strategies that educate key agency personnel and relevant stakeholders.

Within the Department of Defense (DoD) Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Information and Identity Assurance (OASD/NII), the effort to ensure reliable, secure operations is based on resiliency and mission assurance. Considerable resources are invested in understanding "how to fight through cyberattacks," noted Anthony Barger, senior policy advisor in the OASD/NII. A key objective for the complex global systems managed by the DoD is to maintain "the ability to recover quickly from a large cyber event," Barger noted, including containing damage by attacks and continuing to operate in degraded environments.

In the City of Hampton, VA, the focus on disaster recovery is tied to preparedness for adverse events, with particular emphasis on the potential hurricane threat to the city's 145,000 residents. The jurisdiction includes a number of military installations, veterans' facilities, and educational institutions that need to be included in city-wide emergency planning. Leslie Fuentes, director of information technology for Hampton emphasized the difficulty in managing large-scale evacuations out of the city, which is further hampered by northbound traffic funneling out of the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Given the geographical circumstances, Hampton emergency plans rely on broad employee responsibilities - all city employees are deemed "essential personnel" - as well as the efforts of a variety of technology personnel to help manage such eventualities. Fuentes outlined how the city has established pre-disaster, response, and recovery programs and emphasized the critical importance of developing IT system restoration priorities that are tied to essential services. She also stressed the need to "conduct planning exercises that involve key stakeholders and internal groups," including families of city employees, dependents of military personnel, and volunteers that will be needed to execute disaster management and recovery operations.

Kristine Lindely, enterprise technologist for storage at Dell, and her colleagues are focused on business operations continuity on a global scale. She noted that the most common causes of systems and network downtime can run the gamut, from operator errors to computer and software failures to planned outages for maintenance and upgrade. Nearly 80,000 Dell employees are deployed worldwide, the majority of whom work remotely, yet rely on constant availability of data from and connectivity to corporate information systems.

Lindley stressed that as IT and security professionals prepare their continuity plans, they must consider the "many moving parts in an effective disaster recovery effort." At Dell, the effort is handled by a dedicated program management office, a command center, and representatives from diverse corporate departments who work to prioritize systems and applications to ensure sustainable business operations. In addition, those responsible perform deliver quarterly "DR Scorecard" reports to the Dell leadership team. The Dell Application Recovery Procedures (DARP) are practiced and refined through quarterly testing, and virtualization is a key component to the recovery strategy, with 60 percent of corporate servers provisioned virtually as opposed to physically.

For more information on the Symantec Government Symposium 2008 and for the complete presentation for this and other sessions, please visit https://www4.symantec.com/mktginfo/Symposium_2008/attendees08.html.