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How Ready Is Ready?
9/26/2006
Preparation and suggested procedures for dealing with specific types of disaster events (e.g., hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.) is one thing, but what about a university’s policies and processes for crisis events in general? Both Xavier and UC-Berkeley publish their general emergency procedures on their websites, detailing such vital policies as who is to be in charge and what events will trigger certain procedures. A detailed set of disaster plans and procedures available for public reference on the site is impressive, but how do students, parents, faculty—even staff—know that those plans will work, if the plans haven’t been tested?
UC-Berkeley g'es a step further than USC and Xavier, for it schedules regular testing events and publishes the results of the exercises on its emergency preparedness page. [The latest such test was conducted in April 2006, and the results, After Action (AA)/ Corrective Action (CA) Report, available for online review.] Testing emergency plans can reveal vulnerabilities (e.g., commercial radios without sufficient batteries) and unwarranted assumptions (e.g., that all staff members know how communications are to flow) hidden inside the procedures; such testing can allow administrators and technologists to see precisely where additional options need to be developed.
The tests can also serve another important function, for the willingness of the senior administration team to go along with the testing—especially if there are substantial costs involved—will tell you a lot about the importance the institution assigns to the initiative. If your school d'esn’t have its own testing procedures in place (or even a well-developed set of disaster response plans), your first step might be to visit the websites of institutions that must deal with the potential for disaster (say, the three school websites examined here) and “borrow” the emergency preparedness materials found there, as a starting point or as templates. Truth is, in a world where disaster now seems to lurk around every corner yet budgets are stretched to the max, the sooner we can get up to speed without reinventing the wheel, the better we’ll sleep at night.
Mikael Blaisdell is principal of mikael blaisdell & associates (www.mblaisdell.com), an IT support consultancy.
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