Information concerning Disaster Recovery Planning for Oregon agencies is maintained on this site.

What is Disaster Recovery Planning?
Developing a Disaster Recovery (DR) plan is part of the business continuity planning process and is defined as: 
 
“The technology and telecommunication aspect of a business continuity plan.  The advance planning and preparations necessary to restore IT infrastructure, minimize loss and ensure continuity of the critical business functions of an organization in the event of disaster or unplanned event.”
(Definition is from the Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII) Statewide Business Continuity Policy and is included in the Oregon Statewide Business Continuity Planning Policy Directive)
 
Your agency’s DR plan should relate to (and follow) your BCP.  As you develop your BCP, you will identify your agency’s critical business functions and determine the “Recovery Time Objective” (RTO) and “Recovery Point Objective” (RPO) for each function.  (How quickly do these functions need to be restored following a crisis event?) 
 
A BCP will address non-IT topics such as key personnel, facilities, and crisis communication.  The DR plan should then deal with the IT piece – which applications, data, hardware, networking and other IT infrastructure are needed in order to restore the critical business functions within the identified timeframes?
 

What are agencies required to do?
The DAS policy requires that Executive Branch agencies “complete a disaster recovery plan for the IT infrastructure that supports critical business functions” as part of the business continuity process.  As we get closer to the end of the biennium, most of you are now working on the DR piece of the process.  However, for most agencies, the staff working on disaster recovery are not the same as primary BCP staff. 
 
To help ensure that coordination is occurring, we have asked that you please identify a Disaster Recovery Sponsor and a Disaster Recovery Coordinator, just as you have a BCP sponsor and coordinator.

The State Data Center and the Enterprise BCP Program are coordinating to provide agencies with assistance in developing DR plans.

Role of the State Data Center
Claudia Light with the State Data Center (SDC) is the lead staff person working on the disaster recovery project for the SDC.  This involves:

• Working with the agencies which are dependent on the SDC for IT support to determine how quickly those agencies need to have services restored.
• Coordinating with agencies and vendors to provide a menu of costs for recovery services.
• Working with all agencies with network infrastructure housed at the SDC to determine how this infrastructure will be restored following an event.

Role of the Enterprise BCP Program
Lynn Beaton and Katie Bechtel with the Enterprise BCP Program have a secondary role with DR, involving:

• Providing DR guidance documents for agencies and boards not hosted at the SDC.
• Working with agencies to determine IT and resource interdependencies between and among agencies.
• Facilitating the discussion to decide the priority ranking of critical business functions for agencies hosted at the SDC.

On March 19, 2009, Claudia Light facilitated a meeting for all DR Coordinators and Sponsors.  The primary focus of the meeting was to explain DR concepts, the role of the State Data Center, and available contract resources.

• Agenda (doc) 
• Presentation by Lynn Beaton, Enterprise Business Continuity Program (ppt) 
• Presentation by Claudia Light, State Data Center (ppt)
• Presentation by Bill Norfleet, Oregon Department of Revenue (ppt) 
• SunGard Presentation (ppt) 
• State Data Center Disaster Recovery Data Collection Form (xls) 
• Meeting Q & A (doc) 
• Meeting Minutes (doc)

Although all agencies are required to complete a DR component for their BCP, there is no standard DR template.  The following documents are meant as resources only.  Your organization may choose to follow the guidance documents or use your own.
 

• NASCIO Disaster Recovery Planning Toolkit (pdf)
• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) - Disaster Recovery Planning Guide (pdf) 
• State of California - Agency Instructions for Disaster Recovery Planning (pdf) 
• State of California - DR Plan Review Checklist (pdf)