Gartner advise for Pandemic Planning

The recent swine flu outbreaks highlight the need for organizations to have pandemic plans in place. Gartner has comprehensive research related to pandemic planning that can be found here.  Immediate steps for organizations to take include:

• Monitor www.pandemicflu.gov and other government and public-health sources to determine what actions are appropriate to ensure workforce safety and continued business operations.
• Download and examine the FFIEC’s “Pandemic Flu Exercise of 2007 After Action Report” immediately, and disseminate their findings across your organization. To the best of our knowledge, this is the only large-scale testing of business pandemic plans ever conducted.
• Review pandemic response plans to:
  • Identify existing and projected critical skills shortages
  • Initiate necessary cross-training, testing or certification of personnel
  • Ensure that cross-trained personnel have the appropriate system/applications access rights
  • Determine which business operations are sustainable, and at what level, and the likely downtime for normal business operations during periods with absenteeism rates of 40% or higher
• Immediately initiate rigorous, ongoing and well-documented testing to isolate and remediate identified problem areas.
• Prepare for travel restrictions to be significant in the event of an epidemic and near-universal in the event of a pandemic.
• Implement a communications program that ensures that all personnel are aware of the enterprise's pandemic response plans, as well as measures they can take to limit the spread of disease — including practices as simple yet effective as regular hand-washing.

see the link full report the_swine_flu_i...pdf