The Makings of a Virtual Emergency Operations Center

Credit Union audit , Credit Union cloud readiness, virtual emergency operations center

Credit Union cloud readiness, virtual emergency operations centerWhen your leadership team is separated by the event, it is important to understand how to quickly assemble your virtual emergency operations center (EOC).  Having a cloud based DR/BCP program is the key but first let’s let at EOC basics.

Having supported hundreds of Clients through disaster events and thousands of exercises, your Ongoing Operations Team has learned that there are 2 distinct challenges facing leadership in the initial incident stages. How effectively these 2 issues are dealt with will determine the success of your recovery and continuity efforts.

Those two issues are:

  1. Making timely decisions
  2. Communication

Everything else takes a backseat to these! Fortunately there is a methodology and a tool set to get through these issues and move into getting the job done.

The methodologyNIMS (National Incident Management System)

The tool set – for CURecover users is The Incident Management Console, Announcements tool, Crisis Notification System, Event Discussion Forum, Employee Check-in tool, Branch Check-in tool, and the Crisis Management Team (CMT) procedures. The power of the tool set comes from the fact that it is completely in the cloud!

All of the above should work together when the Emergency Operations Center is activated!

FEMA offers a great 4 hours online EOC overview course. Significantly more detail than we need at the Credit Union level but all good information to understand how to integrate with local, state, and federal teams in a wide-area event: http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/courseOverview.aspx?code=is-775

We recommend all BCP Administrators take the above and this 3 hours FEMA course on that provides an overview of NIMS: http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/courseOverview.aspx?code=is-700.a

The Virtual Emergency Operations Center:

Once the fundamentals are understood, we can quickly see how the virtual EOC can be virtualized.

  • Faster response time (no travel)
  • Tools at your fingertips
  • Team leads “assume” their role, feed information to the CMT (Crisis Management Team,) and execute actions
  • CMT assumes the clear roles of Incident Commander, Information Officer, Safety officer, and Liaison.
  • CMT monitors and gather all information possible and delegates 100% of action items to other team leads (100% delegation is critically important!)
    • Incident Commander is the chairman. Primary responsibility is to keep the decision and communication process moving forward.
    • Information Officer is focused on delivering the right message, to the right audience, at the right time.
    • Safety Officer is focused on doing everything possible for human health, safety, and support.
    • Liaison interfaces with police, fire, other Incident Response teams, other EOCs, all outside sources of information, and helps to collect information from the other internal teams.
  • It takes mature communication tools to make this work in a virtual situation. Local, state, and federal agencies practice this BEFORE and emergency strikes and so should you.
    • Bring the CMT together for short (30 minutes will do) practice sessions with the tools.
    • No pressure, introduce a scenario and walk through optimum response.
    • Give them time to think about it and do it again with less support.
    • Decrease the support and increase the scenario pressure until they are confident using the tools.
    • Now you are ready to do the same thing but virtual (everyone in a separate location.)
    • NEVER embarrass your Executive Team! Prepare them before doing a tabletop with all staff involved and present the level of challenge that creates a learning environment.

Practice makes perfect! With a mature response that is focused on human health and safety immediately followed by Continuity of Service to the member no matter what happens you can turn any disaster into an opportunity to do something extraordinary for your staff, Members, or the community.

 

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