Business Continuity Plan

Definitions

Business Continuity 

The aim of business continuity planning is to outline how the business will continue to function should an adverse event occur that prevents normal operations in some way.  

Categories

There are various types of adverse event that may require the use of this plan. Examples include:

• Technology related.
  • Hardware failure.
  • Software failure.
  • Vendor failure.
  • Cyber-attack or incident.
• Infrastructure related.
  • Power failure.
  • Internet failure.
  • Data Centre failure.
• Organisational:
  • Personnel loss.
  • Lost client(s).
  • Financial issues.
• External:
  • Natural disaster.
  • Pandemic.
  • Armed conflict.
  • Civil unrest.
  • Strikes. 

Priority services

Prater Raines provides the following services:

• Fleet: The website system for the Liberal Democrats.
• Lighthouse: The membership management system for the liberal democrats.
• Email Your MP: Microsite campaigning functionality for a variety of organisations. 
• Adnum: An internal system for FIM Capital.
• Website Hosting: Various CMS based websites for businesses, organisations, and councils.
• SRB Intranet: The document management system for SRB. 
• Email: Microsoft reseller email accounts for businesses and a mail server for Liberal Democrat local parties. 
• Domain name registration: Nominet registrar for .uk domains.
• APIs: For the Liberal Democrats and for the Email Your MP service.

The priority services within the above list are those provided to the Liberal Democrats and to FIM Capital. Maintaining these services during an adverse event should be the priority, with maintaining other services being subject to available resources. Where services do fail, priority services should be restored within 24 hours, and all other services within a further 48 hours.

Critical Vendors

The following alternative vendors may be used in the event that a critical vendor failure occurs:

Actions and responsibilities

Should an adverse event affect IT systems, the Disaster Recovery Plan acts as a complimentary policy and should be enacted. The following actions will occur as required to allow the business to continue functioning:

• Remote working from home, the BCS offices, the Insititute of Directors, Lib Dem HQ, The Workshop, or Digital Greenhouse as required.
• Use of alternative software or vendors as identified in the Approved Applications List and the critical vendors list shown above.
• Temporarily hosting services in Dartford or Maidstone, or using a cloud provider such as Azure.
• Using alternative communication channels such as Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Slack, Teams, Email, and VoIP.
• Informing customers about the nature of the event and the effects on the business, along with timeframes for resolution of any issues with services.
• Transferring roles and staff resource to ensure services and internal functions are maintained, including employing temporary staff, consultants, and ancillary service providers if needed.

All staff members are responsible for business continuity. Where possible the Managing Director will lead on enacting this plan. If this is not possible, the Technical Director or Customer Support Manager will take charge. This plan will be invoked where an adverse event prevents the normal functioning of the business for more than 24 hours. 

Emergency communications with staff, the Liberal Democrats and FIM Capital should rely on Teams, Slack or WhatsApp in the first instance. Such communications should occur at least once per day until such time as business as usual is achieved. Emergency communications, updates for customers or users, and any emergency expenditure will be approved by the Managing Director or the Technical Director if the Managing Director is unavailable.