Gartner tells business continuity leaders to make preparations for the impact of an Avian Influenza pandemic "Business continuity and IT leaders are ideally placed to plan for avian flu's threats," said Steve Bittenger, research director at Gartner. "Organisations rely on IT to keep the business running, and they can leverage IT to ensure their business operations continue if travel and transportation restrictions, quarantines or problems with vendors or employees because of illness or fear occur." "Organisations must include the possibility of an avian flu pandemic in their business continuity planning and crisis management preparations to ensure they can react quickly and effectively" said Roberta J. Witty, research vice president at Gartner. "But this is not business continuity planning as usual. It requires a re-think of some of the most basic business processes. Use scenario planning to assess possible business impact, and as the basis for developing appropriate contingency plans for different situations." A pandemic would not affect IT systems directly, but it could cause considerable economic disruption through its impact on the workforce and on business activity. The 2003 SARS outbreak suggests that a pandemic would affect international and local travel, supply chains, health systems, personnel and schools. It would also have direct economic impact on most industries, but particularly travel, tourism and hospitality. Gartner recommends organisations perform the following key activities: * Work with your public health department - demand a plan * Make your workforce aware of the avian flu threat and the steps your organisation is taking to prepare for it. * Assess your business continuity preparedness for this type of workforce outage scenario and try to improve it – hardly any organisations have planned for a 30 percent absenteeism rate, and sustained over a period of weeks and months, not days. * Assign someone in your business to track biological threats such as the avian flu. This person should regularly review business continuity plans and update them in response to new information. * Establish or expand policies and tools that enable employees to work from home with broadband access, appropriate security and network access to applications. Plan for absenteeism rates of 25 to 30 percent. * Expand online transaction and self-service options for customers and partners. * Work with customers and partners to minimise any disruption by developing coordinated crisis response capabilities. * Re-think your approach to just-in-time inventories. If transportation systems are down, it could greatly impact the delivery of an organisation's raw materials. "We advise these leaders to use experiences from SARS to plan for a potential avian flu outbreak to ensure business continuity," said Dion Wiggins, research vice president at Gartner. "If a pandemic occurs, the spread may be rapid, affecting many industries, economies and regions worldwide - directly and indirectly. This will leave little or no time to prepare contingency plans."
•Date: 31st Oct 2005 • Region: UK/World • Type:
Article •Topic: Pandemic planning |
