Business Continuity Committee November 2008 Meeting Minutes

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

Date: Held 11/19/2008 @ 2:00 PM CGI Office

From: Tom Luther, Chris Lloyd and Mark Spreitzer

Attendants, and the agencies or organizations they represent:: NYS Housing and Community Renewal - Richard Siek; Tax & Finance - Shelly Brosen, Joanne Lonczak, Janine Messina; OSC - Tom Luther; State Police - Frank Wicks; Health Department - Jeanne Behr, Ivan Gotham; CGI - Mark Spreitzer, Jim Hewitt; DOS - Steve Conant; SED - Ken Mason; SID - Niki Brate; OFT - Benita Sokolowski; Mike Riley - Ciber; Representatives of Quest, Paetec, Time Warner Telecom, Verizon Business
Mark Spreitzer discussed the theme of the recent Contingency Planning & Management (CPM) conference.: Planning focus should be on Enterprise Risk Management, reassuring customers, partners and employees of the basis by which decisions are made follows the mission and charter of the organization.

Richard Siek, DHCR's disaster preparedness coordinator, said he has developed a tool to help program managers identify their critical functions. In addition, they plan to conduct a BC/DR test at an alternate site soon.
Joanne Lonczak and Janine Messina from Tax & Finance said they have established a goal to test all their program areas within the next year.
Tom Luther reported they are conducting follow up meetings with their Continuity Command Staff groups to address feedback from their consultant on the large tabletop exercise they conducted in June.
Ken Mason reported that SED has a new co-location contract with TWT and is also working with EMC on a DR Plan and doing a gap analysis.
Niki Brate reported that SID now has space in the SEMO facility and also has MOUs with alternate work space for about 35 people at DMV and Banking work sites.
Frank Wicks indicated that the State Police are working on a DR plan at an alternate site.
Benita of OFT indicated they have established a schedule to: test their BCP annually and update the plans quarterly for about 25 business units. In addition, they are pursuing the use of NY Alert system for emergency notifications.
Steve from DOS indicated they are updating their BCP.
Jeane from DOH reported they are conducting exercises with various DOH program areas.
Ivan from DOH indicated that DOH has a DR data replication and failover arrangement at an alternate DOH site for some key DOH systems. They have performed some IT related tabletop exercises.

Larry is the leader of the OGS team for this contract and either he or Donna McNeil, who also attended, can be contacted to address any questions.

A handout with information about this contract is available in MS Word format at http://www.nysforum.org/documents/docs/2008/businesscontinuity/Group77017Award20268ComprehensiveTelecommunicationsServices.doc. If you are unable to open the MS Word file or require a different format, please contact us and we will provide an alternative format.

Some notes from Larry's presentation are shown below:

Five companies (see web site shown on attachment for more information) offer co-location services and most if not all have multiple locations available within NYS.
Some services under this contract may require OFT's approval.
The contract does not appear to include satellite services although Larry did follow up with Tom Luther after this meeting and indicated he located another contract which includes some satellite services (contact Larry if interested).
Contract update procedures exist allowing these companies to offer additional services. This suggests that agencies could contact them to inquire about specific needs that might be added.
Agencies should perform a Risk Assessment and determine their risk profile as a measure for identifying which locations to consider

There will be no December meeting.
The next meeting will be held at 12 Corporate Woods Blvd, Suite 201on Wednesday, January 21 from 2 to 4:00 pm.

Action Item: Tom - send copy of OSC's BIA interview tool to Shelly Brosen and Richard Siek
Owner: Tom Luther
Due Date: Done
Action Item: Becky Hathaway volunteered to work with Mark Spreitzer and Tom Luther in developing a lessons learned presentation around their policy program which may be on the January meeting agenda.
Owner: Becky Hathaway
Due Date: Pending
Action Item: Committee members should feel free to inform other BC planners to become members.
Owner: Committee Members
Due Date: On going
Action Item: Develop and agenda item for the January meeting on identifying mission critical functions in an organization.
Owner: Mark, Tom and Chris
Due Date: Next meeting