Thursday, August 30, 2007

National Pandemic Exercise

From September 24th through October 12th, the Financial Banking Information Infrastructure Committee (FBIIC) and the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council (FSSCC) will be conducting an exercise sponsored by the US Department of the Treasury and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. The exercise website is: http://www.fspanfluexercise.com/. Registration is open through tomorrow but limited to financial services firms, all major banks, investment houses and insurance companies operating in the US are participating.

This national exercise is unique in its tremendous scope and use of an innovative format. Over 2300 firms have registered to date and will participate with anonymous identifiers through a secure website. Each week for the duration of the exercise participants will receive new information on Monday morning and have until Wednesday to respond.

The exercise starts with a random assignment of sick employees based on letters of the alphabet. Participating firms then match those to actual employee names in order to more realistically analyze what impact can be expected. It will allow companies to analyze such things as accumulated sick leave, succession planning, contingency operations and more. A summary document will be available at the end of the event.

Although this exercise is limited to companies within the financial services sector, it is an extremely useful event for any company. Pandemic planning is lagging and the uniqueness of this hazard is not well addressed by "all hazard" plans. I will be posting the exercise announcements here so that others may play along.

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