COOP in DoD – Part #6 of 10 – Business Continuity Management Requirements

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This is the sixth paper in a set of 10 on Department of Defense (DoD) Continuity of Operations (COOP) targeted to the oft-overlooked smaller program; this paper’s topic is on Business Continuity Management. Written as part of the Master’s program in Information Assurance (IA) at Norwich University in 2011 and subsequently submitted to the Federal IT Institute, they provide a complete roadmap to create and operate a compliant, cost-effective, and reliable COOP program throughout DoD.

Business Continuity Response planning identifies the necessary actions and resources to enable an organization to manage disruptions regardless of the cause. Within the commercial world, this response planning enables a complete Business Continuity Management (BCM) solution to provide organizational resilience and the ability to safeguard its reputation, brand, stakeholders, and value producing ability.

In the public sector, a Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program accomplishes much the same as BCM, with the aim of ensuring continuity of overall governmental functions rather than ensuring an agency’s value-add capabilities. This paper analyzes how the equivalent of Business Continuity Response planning can be performed in the context of a small Army Program to demonstrate the opportunities that even small Department of Defense (DOD) and federal programs can leverage to help ensure their ability to accomplish their mission despite crisis conditions. The paper then summarizes its findings and presents practical recommendations for the reader.