UK local authorities given high marks for business continuity

Local authorities throughout the UK are setting exemplary standards of practice when it comes to data management and backup, according to a survey by Adam Continuity.

Nearly all of local authorities surveyed have rehearsed IT disaster recovery procedure within the last two years, three quarters have reviewed their disaster recovery support within the last year and over 80 per cent use a third party to assist in disaster recovery rehearsals, according to the survey.

“It’s a refreshing case of practise what you preach with local authority IT departments”, says Philip Caulfield, managing director of Adam Continuity. “Around 65 percent of those responsible for IT in local authorities in Britain believe business continuity to be extremely critical to the council and that attitude is totally reflected in how they manage disaster recovery and in their professional planning.”

On a scale of one to five, with one being the most important, 67 percent of IT professionals in local authorities gave business continuity a top rating when it came to how critical it was to the council’s business. Interestingly, they did not think that councillors shared their view of priorities, only a quarter believed elected members would give business continuity the same level of importance.

Half of those responsible for business continuity in local authorities believe that their IT resilience budget is not sufficient and nearly 80 per cent saw no increase in budget during 2008.

Two thirds of local authorities use a combination of in-house resources supported by external contractors as their disaster recovery solution, the remaining third outsource completely.

•Date:3rd March 2009• Region: UK •Type: Article •Topic: BC statistics
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