Contingency Planning

Today was the Iowa Contingency Planners’ annual conference. One of my many hats is business continuity/disaster recovery. So I toddle off to meetings 3 times a year, and once a year to the conference. Contingency Planners is a diverse bunch. Many of us are IT or started in IT, but there are HR people and accounting people as well as first responders and government types. After a few years of business continuity planning, I honestly believe the planner starts sinking into your skin. One day I was driving to work and noticed a plane approaching the Davenport airport – the approach path was directly over our building. Mental note: time to include plane crash in the BCP (the airport built a new runway, and that changed approach paths for jets). I tend to have a heightened awareness of impending issues, thanks to this part of my job.

The first speaker today gave us a presentation on Crisis Communication. She spoke mostly about the reasons our organizations need to be prepared to communicate in crisis situations, and how to prepare for that inevitability. There was quite a bit of discussion about Twitter, Facebook, and bloggers. It seems that a year ago quite a few people were skeptical that Twitter would ever amount to much. The speaker specified fifty-something men – but I’m sure there were others as well. Fast forward to this year, and hurricane Irene. Twitter was one of the biggest sources of information – and people took to Twitter to look for information. The governor of New Jersey tweeted updates regularly in order to make sure the correct information was being communicated. With all of the communication avenues technology gives us, it is very easy for misinformation to be spread – and for the public to express their anger and frustration about not getting information in a timely manner.

I was a little disappointed that the speaker categorized all bloggers as young men sitting in their mothers’ basements in their boxer shorts. Ma’am, there are a lot of bloggers just like myself who are indeed living in the real world. I also tweeted about your presentation – and your comment that people who tweet couldn’t have anything interesting to say.

FEMA gave their presentation just as the Emergency Alert System test started… I suppose they planned it that way so we could hear the EAS test. If you’ve ever wondered what goes on in the background during a disaster, sit in on a FEMA presentation or after action. Talk about organized chaos! There’s the Emergency Operations Center, meetings with state agencies, procuring resources and supplies, Information Technology needs, media to keep informed, governors promising the moon, presidential tours… it goes on and on. FEMA presenter said one of the issues they had was information security was so locked down they had trouble doing their jobs. Infosec can still be locked down but have the flexibility to allow what is needed. Perhaps I should offer my services?