Duties 

Manage Agency Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning

Support the agency’s business continuity initiatives, including:

• Plan for emergency outages (IT, location, staff) that may affect critical business functions.
• Ensure critical systems have complete plans in place for business continuity and disaster recovery and that these plans are stored in the agency's business continuity software tool.
• Serve as the key representative on all agency-wide initiatives related to business continuity and disaster recovery.
• Liaise with the Chief Information Office (CIO) on all joint areas of interest regarding the functions of emergency preparedness, business continuity and disaster recovery.
• Oversee CIO’s disaster recovery plan and ensure regular testing and improvements, as needed.
• Create and maintain a records management program for the agency’s staging kits, including protection, retrieval and distribution of materials as needed.
• Educate all OSC staff to ensure they understand business continuity and disaster recovery roles.

Oversee the agency’s business continuity plans (BCPs) and recovery strategies including:

• Develop a work plan with all division management and their Business Continuity Liaisons (BCLs) to provide clear BCP goals.
• Work with all divisions to ensure that their needs are addressed and that the plan is fully understood, including hosting educational sessions as needed.
• Perform cost-benefit analysis as needed to help management make decisions regarding competing priorities.
• Analyze BCPs to ensure they align with agency priorities.
• Use the agency’s software tool for BCP processing, metrics and compliance, for efficient and accurate emergency planning.
• Direct the yearly testing of BCPs, to review BCP accuracy, reporting results and recommendations along with improvement needs, to agency management and Internal Controls, for risk evaluation.

Work closely with the agency’s 100+ BCLs across all divisions, which includes:

• Oversee the BCLs BCP work and make suggestions for improvement, as needed.
• Using various techniques such as interviews, conferences, questionnaires and observations, to help BCLs to create, maintain and mature their division's BCPs.
• Provide technical assistance to BCLs in implementing BCP processing in the agency’s business continuity software tool.
• Provide one-on-one and group training as needed to ensure BCLs have the knowledge and skills needed to perform their tasks.

Manage OSC’s Business Continuity Software

• Train in all levels of business continuity to obtain expert knowledge in the agency's business continuity requirements and software needs.
• Train/maintain new and existing OSC users, providing technical guidance and direction for OSC users, including documenting manuals, and presenting new functionality to OSC users.
• Create, update and manage agency-wide content, coordinating with OSC management and partner divisions.
• Coordinate business continuity software vendor needs.
• Facilitate any upgrades/updates to the software, including analyzing updates and planning and managing agency-wide projects for any major changes.
• Analyze agency needs and procure new business continuity software, as needed.
• Plan and manage agency-wide projects to implement any new software.

Emergency Preparedness Unit General Activities

• Coordinate closely with the agency’s emergency management function and serve as backup for this function, including onsite emergency planning and management, and agency-wide emergency communications. Maintain the ability to perform these tasks both in the office and from home.
• Keep informed of activities or changes that could affect the likelihood of an emergency, as well as those that could affect response efforts and details of plan implementation. Stay up to date on industry standards related to these functions.
• Create educational content for the Intranet, OSCtv, OSC Insider and other agency communication methods regarding emergency preparedness, business continuity and disaster recovery and work with bureau management and Web Unit to distribute this material.
• Available after hours on an as-needed basis to address emergency issues.