EXERCISING YOUR CONTINUITY OF OPERATIONS PLAN

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Description 2

What You Need Before Starting this Work 2

Step to Completion 2

If You Only Have a Little Time 3

If You Have More Time to Spend 3

Where This Leads You 3

Pitfalls to Avoid 3

How You Know You Got it Right 3

Considerations for Rural Health Departments 3

COOP Exercise Purpose, Structure, Objectives 5

COOP Weather Exercise Slides – Word format 6

COOP Exercise After Action Report – Sample 18

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EXERCISING YOUR CONTINUITY OF OPERATIONS PLAN Description: This tool will share resources to help your local health department (LHD):

• Develop and implement a tabletop exercise of its continuity of operations (COOP) plan • Assemble an after-action report, including what went right and what improvement is needed • Develop and implement an improvement plan based on the lessons you learned from the

exercise If done properly, completion of this tool should result in:

•A plan and outline for a continuity of operations (COOP) tabletop exercise. •A well-run and comprehensive continuity of operations (COOP) tabletop exercise. •An after-action report. •A plan for improvement based on learnings from the exercise.

What You Need Before Starting This Work:

• A completed continuity of operations (COOP) plan. •Experience or training in exercise design. (If you don’t have this experience, check with

knowledgeable team members or try one of these recommended resources.) • DeKalb County Board of Health’s Master the Disaster: An interactive tabletop exercise

builder for public health emergencies www.naccho.org/toolbox/tool.cfm?id=1224 •FEMA’s Independent Study Program on Exercise Design (IS-139)

http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/is139.asp Steps to Completion:

1. Identify and make note of the purpose, structure and objectives for your desired COOP tabletop exercise. See PHSKC’s purpose, structure, and objectives. from a recent COOP exercise as an example

2. Tailor the COOP Weather Exercise Scenario and Discussion Points to your organization’s needs and to the capabilities you want to test.

3. Make sure to test the most updated COOP plan and procedures in the exercise. If you need to take the time to update your plan now, do. This way you will be familiarizing everyone and testing the most recent version of all protocols.

4. Schedule your COOP tabletop exercise and invite participants. Make sure to attach background documents like the agency’s COOP plan and procedures to participants’ invites, so they can familiarize themselves with the materials before the exercise.

5. Conduct the tabletop exercise. If you’ll be facilitating the discussion, appoint colleagues to observe and make note of how well the players achieved the stated objectives.

6. Debrief the exercise immediately after while the learnings are fresh in everyone’s minds, or schedule a debrief to occur within a week.

7. Draft a formal after-action report noting successes and lessons learned. Create an improvement plan assigning responsibilities and timelines for correcting those things that did not work well in the exercise. Share the report and improvement plan with all players, and other COOP program stakeholders.

8. Track everyone’s progress completing the items in the improvement plan to make sure nothing gets forgotten.

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If You Have Just a Little Time to Spend: Even if you only have a little time, still complete the exercise, but limit the scope of what you’re testing. A continuity of operations tabletop exercise increases agency awareness and staff understanding of your agency’s COOP program while providing a way to test and strengthen the COOP plan. You can establish COOP program priorities for next year based on what you learn from this exercise. But, if preparation time is in short supply or you need to keep the exercise brief, test only the highest-priority objectives or capabilities. At the barest minimum, provide training on your COOP plan and procedures and wait until later to test them in an exercise. If You Have More Time to Spend: Cross check your learnings and improvement items from the COOP exercise against those from other recent exercises or real-world emergency responses. If common themes emerge (unclear chain of command? limited familiarity with communications equipment?), work with your public health emergency preparedness and response group to address these recurring issues in a coordinated way. Where This Leads You: After conducting your COOP tabletop exercise, you can:

• Incorporate regular continuity of operations capability testing into your exercise program. • Update and improve your continuity plans and procedures based on your exercise

learnings. Remember, the best way to be prepared is to: plan, do, check, act! Pitfalls to Avoid: Don’t get hung up on factors outside of your agency’s control during your COOP tabletop exercise. For example, is your city slow to plow access roads to your office? Do parent-employees often have to stay home with their children when schools close for severe weather? While these factors do impact your agency’s ability to maintain the continuity of your critical services, not much time should be spent discussing them during this exercise. Make a note of these issues, while pushing players to focus on what your agency can do to adapt when these things happen. Prioritize and address the outside factors later, as time and resources allow. How You Know You Got it Right: Players will be able to more easily engage with a scenario based around a frequent hazard in your region. Stick to a scenario you are likely to encounter (like a flood, snowstorm or bridge closure) rather than a less tangible threat (like an aerosolized anthrax attack) and participants will be able to easily visualize the steps they need to take to sustain your critical services. And, by sticking with a commonly encountered hazard, participants will be rewarded by knowing what to do if the “scenario” becomes “reality” later that year. Considerations for Rural Health Departments:

• If your resources prevent you from holding a COOP tabletop or full-scale exercise, try working COOP objectives into other (perhaps grant-required) exercises, or see if you can implement a functional drill. Planning a COOP functional drill is less resource intensive than putting together a tabletop exercise. One drill could involve staff named in lines of succession deploying to those roles and locating and testing the desk procedures they will need to fulfill their alternate duties.

• Instead of developing your own COOP exercise from scratch, you can customize resources from COOP exercises others have used. Search for successful COOP exercises on sites like Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP)

https://hseep.dhs.gov/pages/1001_HSEEP7.aspx Lessons Learned Information Service (LLIS) www.llis.dhs.gov/index.do NACCHO Toolbox <link to resource http://www.naccho.org/toolbox

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TOOLS SAMPLES AND RESOURCES:

• COOP Exercise Purpose, Structure, Objectives • COOP Weather Exercise Slides – Word format • COOP Exercise After Action Report - Sample • FEMA Continuity Evaluation Tool - Version 6, “Test, Training, and Exercise Program,”

pages 36-41 www.fema.gov/pdf/government/coop/cet.pdf

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COOP Exercise Purpose, Structure, Objectives

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COOP Weather Exercise Slide

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COOP Exercise After Action Report For the full report visit: http://www.apctoolkits.com/business-continuity/coop-exercise-tools-samples-resources/