The
State of Arkansas Continuity of Operations Program
COOP
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COOP
In mid 2004, the Office of Information
Technology initiated the State of Arkansas Continuity
of Operations Program. The purpose of this program
is to 1) provide a method for the development of
continuity of operations plans by providing web-based
software to produce agency disaster recovery and
continuity of operations plans, 2) to develop a statewide
plan, and 3) to establish a method of ongoing maintenance
of the plans.
The Office of Information Technology
administers software to
assist agencies in the creation of continuity of
operations plans. Agencies are requested to provide
the following information:
1. A disaster recovery plan that
will provide for restoration of agency essential
business functions following a disaster, which can
include the loss of personnel, facilities, transportation,
documents, data, software, communications, and hardware.
A disaster recovery plan should include members of
recovery teams, their tasks to recover agency processes,
and information to get the needed information, equipment
and supplies.
2. A continuity of operations plan
that will provide for the continuation of critical
services in the event of a disaster. Continuity of
operations plans contain evacuation plans, orders
of succession, information about alternate facilities
if the original facility is unavailable, and the
methods for continuing critical services while the
agency is recovering.
NOTE: Planning is not only for the
information technology components of agencies, but
for all agency processes, whether the process requires
a computer to function or not.
The software captures the provided
information and generates a plan for each agency.
In turn, each agency's information is combined to
establish a statewide disaster recovery and continuity
plan. The software allows agencies to access and
update their plan on line and also has the ability
to combine agency plans in a specific geographic
area, such as a building or complex area.
Each agency is expected to
dedicate personnel time to the development of their
disaster recovery and continuity of operation plans.
The Office of Information Technology/State Security
Officer provides ongoing training and consultation
to all agencies to assist with the development
of their plans. The training provides basic information
on plan development, instructions on utilizing
the software and assists the agencies with developing
and conducting table top exercises to assess the
accuracy of their plan and provide opportunities
to further improve agency plans.
Phases of the Program
- Completion of individual agency
business impact analyses
- Completion of individual agency
disaster recovery plans
- Completion of individual agency
continuity of operations plans
- Development of a statewide continuity
of operations plan
- Testing plans
- Development of updating and maintenance
approaches
Benefits of the Tool
The software will allow creation
of a statewide continuity of operations plan and
will identify agency interdependencies so the operations
of agencies can be restored in a logical order. Future
use of the tool includes testing the plans and plan
maintenance. Plan data will be analyzed to identify
those processes requiring hot site arrangements.
It can also be used to analyze plans to identify
vendors common across the agencies to maximize buying
power.
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