NYS Forum Business Continuity Committee Meeting
(http://www.nysforum.org/committees/businesscontinuity/)

Date: Held 1/29/2008 @ 2:00 PM Keane Office

From: Tom Luther and Chris Lloyd

Discussion Topic

Introductions
Agencies represented:
Tax & Finance - Janine Messina, Shelly Brosen
OFT - Benita Sokolowski
Dept. of State - Steve Conant, Susan Conway
NYS Thruway Authority - Diane Galuski
OSC - Tom Luther, Keith Farrell, Chad Erickson
Keane - Chris Lloyd
DMV - Annette Roy, Audrey Menard
Labor - Celia Hamblin
DCJS - Larry Tompkins
DHCR - Mike Barth, Leo Frisine
PTDA - Stephanie Pagnotta
Ciber - Mike Riley
NYS Forum - Greg Benson
 
Agency Activities
During introductions, attendees reported on business continuity and DR related activities at their agencies.
Thruway is starting a new ITDR initiative and has proposed budget item pending.
DHCR has developed a DR strategy utilizing the SEMO data center.
DHCR has a new Assistant Commissioner that will initiate a BC initiative.
Tax is working on BC planning with business units. In addition, their ITDR testing has expanded to server systems at their Sungard hot site.
Labor continues to work on BC planning supported by a Federal Grant received in 2007 and has new Deputy for Admin involved. The scope is expanding into Emergency response.
DCJS is beginning a new DR initiative.
DMV is working on a BC initiative.
 
NYS Forum Health Check
The group discussed the recently released BC Health Check and solicited feedback on those who have tried it. The Co-Chairs presented suggestions on how it might be used in an organization to help focus agency interest to improve their commitment to emergency and business continuity planning. In addition, it was announced that a formal announcement is to be sent to CIOs, ISO, and other agency officials.
Feedback was useful and positive; one feedback comment follows:
Question was raised on who in an agency will initiate action to use the Health Check if multiple people receive the announcement. (The announcement will be revised to address this issue).
 
NY Alert
General feedback was solicited to learn if all attendees were aware of the NY Alert emergency notification system and if they had registered to receive notifications.
 
Conducting Emergency Exercises
Tom Luther provided a summary of two emergency exercises conducted at OSC. One was a tabletop exercise to test the BC plan for the state Payroll system and the other was to test a contract OSC has for drop/ship of data center hardware that also included simulating the activities associated with receiving and installing the replacement hardware and restoring the applications and databases. He explained that they obtained good levels of participation from both the business units and IT and identified various improvement opportunities which are being addressed to improve the plans.
 
Open Discussion
A portion of these meetings is devoted to hearing about issues that confront staff in their business continuity and DR related activities. Some of the issues raised and discussed included
Obtaining Executive Support
Challenges associated with the distributed ownership across an organization and lack of single owner for all aspects.
Continued frustration among practitioners that there is no explicit owner for BC and that it Is not treated as a priority.
 
New Topics
New topics for future meetings were solicited and should be sent to the Co-Chairs.
 
BC Committee listserv contact list
Members should feel free to use the committee listserv email distribution to distribute useful resource papers, pose inquires to learn about areas of interest, share information on training and conferences of interest etc. If anyone has names they feel should be added, contact a Co-chair.
 
Meeting Feedback
Was positive. Additional feedback is welcome via email to the Co-chairs.

Action Items

Action Item
Notify Co-Chairs of suggested agenda items.
Owner
Committee Members
Due Date
ASAP

Next Meeting: March 5, 2008 2:00 to 4:00 at Keane Office, Corporate Woods

Additional Documents of Reference

None.