The Audit of business continuity planning (BCP) was conducted concurrently with the Office of the Comptroller General’s (OCG) Horizontal Audit of BCP, which involved selected large and small departments and agencies, including Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC). The objective of the internal audit was to determine whether ECCC had in place a departmental governance framework and processes for BCP.

Why is business continuity planning important Every department is at risk from potential disasters, including natural disasters, sabotage, power and utility disruptions and cyber-attacks. Critical services or products are those that must be delivered to ensure survival, to avoid causing injury and to meet legal or other obligations of an organization. Strongly integrated BCP governance and processes are key to enhancing the resilience of government operations. Specifically, in the event of disruptions to normal government business operations, these elements will help enable service delivery to Canadians, with minimal downtime. What we found Key elements of departmental BCP governance framework, such as governance committees, formal policy and key BCP roles and responsibilities, were in place. However, monitoring and reporting have been limited to Executive Management Committee (EMC) presentations of an annual BCP status report, a high-level overview of what works well and areas requiring improvement. Furthermore, testing of the plans was limited to table-top exercises instead of full-scale tests.

Sample Business Continuity Plan Template

A formal monitoring and reporting frameworks (including testing) to periodically assess the effectiveness and compliance of the BCP program would enable ECCC to proactively identify and address any existing gaps and enhance the Department’s resilience to events that disrupt normal business operations. While the departmental policy and plan provide for training and awareness activities, the audit found that ECCC activities in this area are currently limited to providing some useful tools on BCP and recovery activities. ECCC has conducted business impact assessments (BIA) and has business continuity plans in place for the critical services sampled. Get bazzism 2.4.9 for mac. Two of the three critical services reviewed had a service level agreement in place to describe service levels for the restoration of critical services. For the most part, the BIAs and the plans were developed in conformity with government’s BCP requirements.

While some companies have developed contingency plans, most have not. This lack of preparedness not only threatens the viability of sectors in Canada but, as in the case of manufacturing, it also jeopardizes the delivery of critical goods that depend on complex supply chain systems.

Creating and maintaining a business continuity plan helps ensure that your business has the resources and information needed to deal with an emergency. A well designed plan will help you minimize the risk that an emergency poses to your employees, clients and suppliers, the continuity of your business operations and your bottom line. To plan your business continuity exercise and mitigate the potential effects of an emergency, use the templates.