Swine Flu Fears Raise Questions About Business Continuity Plans

Despite recent power blackouts in Sydney and the threat of a swine flu pandemic, many Australian organisations are still “flying by the seat of their pants” claim experts

“I suspect not many businesses have really got in place full BCPs as they are a challenge,” he says. “They are the sort of thing that organisations look at, and endeavour to implement, but they don’t realise it’s a big undertaking. [As a result] I suspect lots of organisations have incomplete BCPs.”

According to Duckett, the magnitude, drain on resources and the complexity involved in implementing a BCP is a major stumbling block for many organisations.

“You have to come up with strategies for building evacuations, you need a teleworking or remote access component, plus you’ve got to maintain the BCP and keep it all up to date,” he says. “It becomes even harder if you have an organisation which has multiple locations, as you have to have a plan for each of those.”

For DLA Phillips Fox’s part, the law firm has been working for a number of years toward a full BCP, and is currently in the process of implementing a detailed strategy for a full business recovery in its Melbourne Office should its Sydney headquarters become unusable.

“We have been taking steps to mitigate the risk of having to evacuate the [Sydney] building,” Duckett says. “One simple step is to provide mobility to staff -- high level notebooks to key staff and the CEO -- so they can work outside of the premises.”

Bob Hayes, principal at Hayes Risk Management says while preparedness varies widely buy industry -- with the banking and finance, and food production sectors doing well -- a difference in preparedness can also be seen between the private and public sectors.

“It’s fair to say that pandemic planning in the government sector is pretty good, and is better than their continuity planning,” he says. “On the other hand in the wider community, organisations tend to have done the business continuity planning, but have not looked at the pandemic planning.

Hayes puts this down largely to a lack of incentive and direct business need.

“In the government sector, pandemic planning has been an imperative -- state and federal governments have instructed their agencies to get involved and develop pandemic plans. For the private sector, governments haven’t been beating the drum very loudly that you absolutely have to take pandemic planning seriously. It’s just been viewed as one of those things they have to get around to.”

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