A business continuity plan is like homeowner’s insurance – it’s wise to have it, but the hope is you’ll never have to use it.
UI Police Lt. Todd Short said Public Safety surveys have shown that not nearly enough campus units have adopted comprehensive business continuity plans, which are more in-depth than a traditional disaster plan.
Administrators are asking Urbana campus units to create business continuity plans that would be called upon in the event of a disabling disaster, joining efforts already under way for units at UIC and UIS.
“We’re talking about very small-percentage occurrences,” said Jason Heimbaugh, a technical program coordinator at Administrative Information Technology Services charged with leading the implementation of all Urbana unit plans.
“But even though the risk is small, the impact could be devastating,” Heimbaugh said.
The plans would be vital to getting the university operational again should a tornado, earthquake or other disaster destroy any major campus system.
In Urbana, 365 academic units will be asked to create and manage business continuity plans through a state-of-the-art open-source software system. Offered by the Kuali Foundation, a non-profit consortium of higher-education institutions, the easy-to-use system – called Illinois Ready – initially was developed at the University of California at Berkeley.
“It’s a plan that helps maintain core critical functions after an emergency or a catastrophe,” said UI Police Lt. Todd Short, who is working with Heimbaugh to encourage units to create their plans.
“If your building and people are gone, how are you going to continue to conduct your business?” Short said. “It’s going to get you to think about things you’ve never thought about.”
Short said Public Safety surveys have shown most campus units don’t have a business continuity plan although many may have informally adopted emergency operations plans, which are not usually as comprehensive.
One reason, said Short, is because catastrophic occurrences happen so infrequently that planning for one doesn’t always take top priority.
“We’ve had this historical gap and we’ve taken steps to fill it,” he said. “Jason will be leading the charge and knocking on your door.”
Units are being asked to designate a contact person to gather information from the 500 questions in the Kuali system, which Heimbaugh compares to TurboTax tax-preparation software.
“It might appear overwhelming, but if you methodically answer every question in order and click ‘print’ at the end, you get a well-formed business-continuity plan,” he said.
He said the software’s developers worked with UI’s Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services experts to ensure local-site authentication and password continuity with the online Kuali system.
“It’s one less account and one less password,” Heimbaugh said. “It’s very easy to get access to the tool.”
Collected information will include departmental hierarchy, equipment, space, critical functions and a host of other relevant information. Each function is ranked by importance, with life-safety-related issues, for example, being the top priority.
“You have to determine, ‘What are your critical functions?’ ” Heimbaugh said. “This exercise will help you line up your priorities. These plans are never going to be completely finished because we’ll build on them every year.”
Training and lab time for the software will be made available for the lead people in units, and Heimbaugh said he will conduct hands-on walk-throughs to ensure the system is operating correctly. He will be meeting with every unit contact this year to help build individual plans and to schedule training.
Short said once plans are complete, security officials will regularly test the system. Such a dress rehearsal could include a scenario where a major campus building has been destroyed. Annual testing will be conducted for core campus structures.
“The first time through (for testing), there are going to be a significant number of unknowns,” Heimbaugh said. “But once you go through this, you’ll say, ‘We really should have been doing this all along.’ “
Copies of the unit plans will be kept at on- and off-site locations. Eventually, each unit’s plan could be encapsulated in an even more-comprehensive business continuity plan for the university as a whole to “aid in higher-level decision making during a disaster,” Heimbaugh said.
