ISO22301 Published as a draft international standard (DIS)

After a long time in gestation, ISO22301 has finally been published by ISO as a draft international standard.  This provides the first opportunity for the community at large to see and comment upon this to provide feedback to the committee and hence to improve the content.

The current draft has a number of recognised weaknesses, as the project team leader I am acutely aware of these.  There is a certain amount of repetition which may be confusing and this has largely arisen because of the constraints of trying to standardize management systems approaches between standards.  What the UK audience has been particularly asked to consider is whether the specific business continuity content in section 8 meets UK requirements - does it include things that we are not happy about or does it exclude things that we feel are vital?  The document certainly reduces some of the prescriptive requirements in terms of the detail and this was a deliberate choice - but in doing so, have we lost anything of importance.

At an International level this provides the first continuity management standard that will be applicable across regions and countries, and in doing so is it fit for purpose?  We think it is a good start but it is not the finished article so please feel free to provide feedback to me or your national standards body (BSI in the UK).

Organizational Resilience

ISO are now working on a standard which will define Organizational Resilience and provide both requirements and guidance in a single document.  This will be very interesting in a number of ways.  On the plus side this will make management decisions between different areas of resilience explicit (e.g. spending on physical security in preference to business continuity), provide a more holistic approach to planning for the unexpected and place it outside the reach of the professional communities who may defend their own positions.

On the down side, it is not clear how you could audit this and what a certificate in Organizational Resilience would truly mean.  Is it an alternative to business continuity or complimentary to it? How does this relate to Risk Management, and is just the same thing with a different name? And what does resilience mean in any case?

There is clearly a long way to go, and in a previous entry in this blog I have mentioned that the UK has just formed a committee on this very subject.  So watch this space, and any ideas and thoughts are welcome.

This week, Next week

The big news from this week has been one of the great disaster recovery stories of all time, the rescue of the Chilean Miners.  A genuinely good news story emerged but it is worth considering not just how well the technical aspects went but also how well the Chileans managed the story.  From a potentially tragic event, they quickly set expectations that the rescue would take a long time - the aim was to get them out by Christmas - and they then developed 3 plans to reach and rescue them.  It was "Plan B" that succeeded.  In the end, our memories will be of the rescue and not of the underlying reasons for the accident that initiated it.  Perhaps BP might learn something from all of this. 

Another event took place in Germany this week when a WW2 bomb was discovered in a river near Potsdam.  Footage of the resulting explosion can be seen at:   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11547964.  Nine tonnes of straw were used to suppress the explosion and the shrapnel.

Also originating in Germany will be the first through train to London from Frankfurt coming via the Channel Tunnel.  A sign of things to come but this is just a dry run.  Disputes between SNCF and Deutsche-Bahn following the enforced opening up of competition on high speed rail across Europe as well as technical issues look delaying service until 2013.  However this week will see safety tests as the train stops in the tunnel and checks are made about such fundamentals as the positioning of the doors in an evacuation and rescue situation.  The hope is that these services will lower pricing and provide real competition to short haul air traffic.

This week saw the BBC's History of the World in 100 Objects select the 100th object - a Solar Powered Lamp.  Of particular interest to Oprel as we are closely following a project to introduce solar lamps into Africa where they would replace Kerosene Lamps - these are expensive but also cause fires and noxious fumes.  A potentially transformative technology, and as the object selected shows, they have the potential to provide mobile phone charging too and this is another technology transforming lives across Africa.  Mobile phones have allowed farmers and fishermen to know the best pricing and to cut out middlemen, providing a real change in the lives of many. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/

Similar transformation is being sought by a campaign to improve hand washing around the world.  The availability of soap since the industrial revolution is now taken for granted by most of us but it is not widely used in other cultures.  A campaign aiming to reduce the huge numbers killed or made ill from easily preventable diseases has resulted in the launch of Global Handwashing day - October 15th. Simple steps will reduce infant mortality and improve the lives of millions. See http://www.globalhandwashingday.org/ for a lot more on this.

More prosaic news from the UK where the Government has announced the abolition and substantial reform of many Non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs - most commonly called Quangos).  Whilst many of them will continue and perform good work at arm's length from Government, one must wonder how some have survived this long.  Next week sees the results of the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) and we will then know where the cuts to Government spending are really going to occur.  Anyone expecting to do business with the Public Sector is looking on with interest, not to say trepidation.  

Whilst both of these aim to reduce "Government waste" we heard this week from Philip Green about how the UK Government might spend its money more effectively.  Greater centralisation and use of its buying power seem to be the message and whilst this is probably true for many items - for instance the Government has around 112 Data Centres but probably only needs 10-15.  However the central issue with Government is how difficult they can make it for themselves in buying a service that they want, inventing rules that do not help them to achieve the best value.  So in order to buy consultancy they seek a supplier from a list that was written some years ago and to which only big firms can afford the time and energy to ensure that they get on it.  They then seek support from these firms who sub-contract to smaller firms not on the list.  The Government then gets support from a smaller company but pays a big name premium to do so; Government could save time and money by going direct.  What will become of the Green review and its findings?  Who knows, but this is the umpteenth review and whilst it might bring improvements in some areas it will probably drive more smaller businesses away from public sector work.

A final footnote for this week.  Shadow-Planner has now been launched as V4; now under the ICM Banner this remains the best of breed software for those who need a business continuity software tool.  The real question is whether you need one, and whether the tool helps you to meet your objectives or whether you end up managing the tool.