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Purpose and Context
Preparations,
Responsiveness, and Responsibility >>
While senior leadership’s involvement is essential to the effective
direction of response and recovery, success also depends upon:
- Comprehensive
preparations to ensure:
- Awareness
of key issues, decision points, and factors at all levels of the
organization;
- Purchase,
positioning, and familiarity with equipment and supplies to assist
in managing the impact of incidents at the local level;
- Necessary
redundancy of programs, records, and files to facilitate transition
to manual systems or rapid re-establishment of access to systems
and data bases;
- Faculty and staff
carrying out the pre-planned responses and using their best judgment
to meet the specific challenges of the incident; and
- “Designated
personnel” restoring or sustaining all possible operations and
support consistent with the challenges that have disrupted, or threaten
to disrupt, our critical infrastructure and logistics.
To that end, this manual intends to provide information that will develop
a degree of confidence in all those who will need to take initial actions
in response to any incident. Further, those requiring authority
to act, absent the ability to communicate with their supervisor due
to the loss of effective communications or the immediacy of the situation,
are empowered to do what is necessary to protect: people, property, and
the vital interests of the university.
To accomplish this, the university re-evaluated its requirements for emergency
response through the broader perspective of “emergency” made
clear by the events of September 11, 2001. This manual builds upon the
sound foundations already in existence and incorporates expanded plans
to ensure, to the fullest extent possible, the safety and welfare of all
entrusted to our responsibility or care or who otherwise fall within our
purview and our opportunities to help each other. Further, it outlines
the prioritized steps to restore the university to normal
operations expeditiously. This is especially true for those functions identified as
critical.
Our objective is to prepare ourselves in such a manner that:
- Those in positions
of leadership will be empowered to take effective initial actions without
specific guidance;
- The Response Management and Leadership Groups can effectively intervene to mitigate risk in any case and to reduce
the impact of loss and damage in the worst case;
- We can respond
effectively to and recover quickly from the incident; and
- In the end, that
each person involved will be able to tell that their welfare was
the highest priority of The George Washington University.
One of the most important
aspects of this manual is the distribution of responsibilities across
the university community. Fulfilling these responsibilities is essential
to attending to the university's priorities and realizing the objectives
above.
At this juncture it is important to note that the leaders of each distinct
element of the university are responsible to maintain local contingency
plans for the areas where their people work and for the expeditious restoration
of normal operations should an incident disrupt our continuity of operations.
Local contingency and continuity of operations plans must be validated annually. To assist in the preparation of these locally developed plans,
guidelines and critical issues for inclusion are provided in Annexes A
and B. These local plans are reviewed for effectiveness and
included as appendices to those annexes to assure the coherence of our
overall plan.
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