Key Steps to Prepare for a Possible Avian Influenza Pandemic – Gartner’s View on Natural Disaster and Risk Management

Gartner proves why it is the world’s leading analyst firm, with a practical guide on how businesses can plan for business continuity when faced with the possible outbreak of avian influenza or ‘bird flu’. The advice, in the report developed by Steve Bittinger and Dion Wiggins, is, once again on the money, but the tips it offers for ensuring business continuity when faced with a potentially more lethal threat than SARS can be applied to a much wider range of risky scenarios.

Previous Gartner reports have espoused the virtues of preparedness and, reassuringly, the message is the same here. Organisations that can respond quickly and effectively when faced with a serious business threat are those which have taken time to put a continuity plan in place.

As we discussed in the last Newsbox, human communications is at the heart of any organisation and, as such, the risk to business, in any scenario, but especially with bird flu, is not so much a risk to the IT system itself but employees’ inability to access it and the vital data it contains. Referencing the importance of human capital to an organization Gartner emphasises the IT manager’s responsibility to ‘ensure that their organizations plan – from the boardroom on down – for a possible outbreak’.

Particularly attention is given to scenario planning as the route to analysing the most disruptive risk scenarios and how to over come them. Bittinger and Wiggins highlight staffs’ inability or unwillingness to travel either locally or internationally when faced with any sort of risk situation as a critical concern. The wider implications of this including school attendance, child care and the subsequent pressure put on ‘available’ staff, are also taken into account.

Gartner, like Logicalis, emphasises the importance of access to data rather than the traditional ‘access to a desk’ approach which has hitherto defined continuity planning. The report concludes that establishing or expanding ‘policies and tools that enable employees to work from home’ is a sound risk management and business continuity strategy. More information on continuity planning can be found at:

http://www.gartner.com/  and enter G00125282 into the search tool.

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