Sacramento State Continuity of Operations/Business Continuity Program

Introduction
Continuity of Operations, also known as business continuity (for businesses) or continuity of government (for government entities) is the discipline and practice of putting advance arrangements or preparations into place to be employed if operations are disrupted. The advance arrangements are designed to minimize the disruption to the extent possible, considering the nature of the disruptive event.

Executive Order 1014 delegates the responsibility for establishing and maintaining an effective Continuity of Operations program to each campus. Sacramento State has developed a unique, high quality and intuitive computer application to guide departments in the creation of their continuity plans. We call the application the Business Continuity Planner. The Business Continuity Planner provides an online process for departments to create, store and maintain their own Continuity of Operations plans.

Departmental responsibility in Continuity of Operations planning
Departments identified as performing essential functions to campus have been or will be notified of the requirement to complete a departmental Continuity of Operations plan. Once your department has been notified, please follow the steps outlined below to complete your plan.

1. Contact the Office of Risk Management to schedule a tutorial by a member of the Risk Management staff in completing your organization’s Continuity of Operations plan.



2. Separately or as a part of the Continuity of Operations tutorial, Risk Management will review the Business Impact Analysis and Risk Assessment of your department which was completed previously.



3. Begin your plan by clicking here: http://www.rms.csus.edu/dcp/bcp.html



4. For a tutorial in using the system or in writing your department’s plan, click here: http://www.rms.csus.edu/dcp/bcp.html

Plan review and acceptance
Once you have completed your plan, it will be reviewed by Risk Management who will provide feedback and recommendations as necessary. Once the Continuity of Operations plan has been accepted, the Business Continuity Planner will automatically prompt you to review and update your departmental plan annually (you will be prompted one year from the date of acceptance). In that process, Risk Management staff will again review your plan and any changes you have made to it.

Plan maintenance
Executive Order 1014 requires that continuity plans be updated periodically. This is accomplished by the annual review process described above. However, the application cannot know if your department undergoes substantial personnel changes or its scope of work is changed. In those cases a self initiated review of your plan is appropriate. To review your plan at any time, simply log in to the site linked above and look it over.

Plan testing
The executive order also requires departments to test or evaluate some part of their plan once a year and the entire plan every seven years. Information and assistance with tests is available at the Office of Risk Management. The tests need to be approved by the Office of Risk Management.