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What Happens if State and Local Governments Lose the Ability to Provide Services?
Arkansas Continuity of Operations Program (ACOOP) Overview
Since 2004, the Arkansas Continuity of Operations Program (ACOOP) has provided a methodology, hardware, software, training, and user assistance for the development, maintenance and testing of all-hazards plans for Arkansas agencies, boards and commissions. These plans are intended to ensure that essential services will continue to be provided after any disruptive event. As of January 1, 2010 over 1500 planners from our agencies, boards, commissions, school districts, counties, and cities are maintaining plans for over 300 entities at more than 600 locations in the state.
The ACOOP methodology includes the following elements:
- FEMA elements of a viable COOP, consistency with NIMS, ICS
- Addresses all hazards, available to all state entities
- Response, Continuity of Operations, Disaster Recovery
- Complimentary to existing emergency response plans
- Continuity of Government (COG)
- SunGard Systems’ Living Disaster Recovery Planning System (LDRPS) software tool
The software tool facilitates the maintenance of standards and consistency of the hundreds of plans for Arkansas state entities. Behind the scenes, its relational database allows planners to enter data once to be used multiple times in task assignments, reporting structures, call lists, skill sets, and resource requirements. The extensive reporting and analysis capabilities have made possible the review of critical services across plans and agencies. Work is now underway to identify the dependencies and interdependencies of services provided by these 300 agencies, boards, commissions, institutes of higher education, school districts, cities, and counties. About 400 ACOOP entity plans and all k-12 school districts are capable of associating any of their data items with physical locations through geographic information systems (GIS) tools.
The ACOOP effort has focused state entity energy and resources on developing plans to minimize the impact of natural and man-made disasters on state operations. Reviews of the work completed thus far make it clear that plan development is only the start of the process. In order to ensure long-term effectiveness, these plans must be continually tested, lessons learned must be institutionalized, and recommendations for improvements must be supported and adopted. The key to the success of this program is establishing a state government culture where our leadership and staff are aware of the need to plan, accept responsibility for ensuring the continuity of essential state services, and are actively involved in refining and following an ongoing, repeatable program methodology.