Business Continuity Planning – Not Just for IT Anymore

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Opinion

Business Continuity Planning – Not Just for IT Anymore

9/27/2006

By Terry Calhoun

Actually, IT has a major role to play in institution-wide business and learning continuity for two reasons: (a) of all departments on campus, the IT department already stands the best chance of having its own business continuity plan that works, and (b) when you talk or think about institution-wide business and learning continuity, you don’t get very far before you realize that IT has a central role to play. Basically, if your IT d'esn’t work, you don’t have any business or learning continuity except for in the smallest and most specialized of situations.

My boss, Jolene L. Knapp, CAE, executive director of the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) was privileged to be invited and attend the EDUCAUSE Business Continuity Summit in August. EDUCAUSE has posted “A Report on the Business Continuity Summit” on its Web site for anyone to read. I recommend it.

Until fairly recently you might find on many campuses some sort of “crisis communications plan,” or “disaster recovery plan,” or “emergency management plan.” Typically those have been the purview of health and safety officials, campus police, or public relations – with connections primarily to telephone folks and physical facilities managers. But you won’t find many “business continuity plans” (BCP); I know, I have looked, and looked, and looked.

When my staff or I do find such a plan, it is almost invariably one that pertains to the IT infrastructure. Why? My best guess is that techies think naturally in systems theory, tend to cover their bases, and have a fairly easily defined realm of authority. Another reason might be that in order to have a good business continuity plan, you must have good IT and you must work closely with IT staff. Nowadays that’s kind of like the minimum required to get going.

So, at the summit, Ron Janofsky, an ECAR fellow, reported on a recent survey of CIOs. One of its major findings was that there is a paucity of good business continuity planning going on in higher education. Another is that there is widespread pessimism “about business and academic units’ ability to carry out essential operations in the absence of IT systems and services.” There followed a case study presentation about George Washington University and a panel discussion with several distinguished panelists, including the executive director of Microsoft’s homeland security department and SCUP member Wendell Brase of the University of California, Irvine.