By silicon.com, 15 March 2006 16:50
The threat of a worldwide flu pandemic - whether you believe it is being over-hyped or not - on the back of the H5N1 strain of avian flu, highlights some serious problems with business continuity planning today: the human angle.
If bird flu does mutate into a strain of the virus which is able to easily spread from human to human then the experts tell us the world faces a pandemic that will totally eclipse the 1918 flu outbreak which killed millions of people.
In the list of threats to the global economies and markets at the World Economic Forum in Davos, flu came second only to rising oil prices and ahead of terrorism, and it was one of the biggest worries on delegates' minds at the Business Continuity Expo in London this week.
The worry was not so much an IT issue - although things such as remote working feature heavily in the contingency plans of the big banks - but a people one.
The latest worst-case scenario UN predictions for an avian flu pandemic are that it could kill up to 150 million people. That's not only a huge human cost but it would obviously have a massive impact on businesses' ability to operate and on the stability of the world's financial markets and systems.
A delegate from Lloyds TSB said his bank is currently working on an assumption of a 55 per cent staff absentee rate during a flu pandemic, while another is looking at 90 per cent - based on 30 per cent being sick, 30 per cent off looking after someone sick and the other 30 per cent too scared to come into work.
Which means it's all very well keeping the IT systems up and running but that's not much use if there's no one using them.
Such is the potential threat to the financial markets that the Financial Services Authority has set up an avian flu committee to help co-ordinate the UK banking industry's preparation for a possible outbreak, while the government's civil contingencies group responsible for the financial services sector is now also advising firms to draw up a list of alumni who could cover for critical positions in the organisation during a flu outbreak.
Sound advice, obviously, but the problem is that business continuity is all too often still an afterthought tacked onto the IT director's list of responsibilities.
One head of IT speaking at the conference told the story of how at the board meeting when it was decided that his organisation needed a business continuity plan, and that someone would need to take responsibility for it, everyone looked at their shoes and simply pointed to the IT guy.
That is a potentially disastrous route to follow, as the bird flu threat so worryingly highlights. It is vital that business continuity becomes more than a box-ticking exercise for the auditors and instead involves all parts of the organisation, starting at the very top.
If it isn't then you're likely to end up with the lights on but no one at home.
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. Marc Yacht MD, MPH
It is important that we put this disease in perspective. THere are less than 200 cases worldwide. Person to person transmission may not occur, if it does the viral strain could be mild.
Treatment modalities are available today that were not available in 1918 including effective antivirals and possibly a vaccine.
It is important to watch this disease evolve but not in such a way that would create panic in the business community. Simply, the disease may not happen and it appears that fear of the disease is spreading faster than the disease itself. Marc J. Yacht MD, MPH
2. Simon
Marc Yacht is right to call for a more measured attitude to Avian Flu, but that misses the point of the article. As hinted at the end of the article, too many companies equate business continuity to "IT keeps running" and forget about all the other stuff that a business needs to keep going. I know that approach first hand having been on the receiving end of "it's an IT problem, you deal with it" from management - I don't work there any more !
I've seen first hand the effect on a business when key people are not available. Last year I lost some friends in a plane crash and the effect on their businesses was very significant. They had a number of interests, and some of them were simply wound up as it wasn't possible to continue with the loss of all their key people.
3. Nick Cole
To add to the bye-line sub heading:
What happens if because of the systems a company has too few staff to operate manually? Over dependance on complex IT has the potential for significant disaster. The correct solution is an effective mix of people and the tools to maintain the business.