Wednesday, November 7, 2007

National Financial Services Pandemic Exercise: Part 2

The national financial service exercise successfully ran for three weeks. I was surprised by the depth of the scenario and by the number of firms participating.

The exercise site recently became open to all. Regardless of if you work for a financial services firm, this exercise is worth the time to review. If you have responsibility for business continuity in your organization, this exercise is a goldmine and could be used to guide your own tabletop exercises --its rare to get an exercise of this depth developed for free. For individuals, the exercise materials provide great insight into with this critical sector is thinking on the pandemic front.

Exercise Overview http://www.fspanfluexercise.com/Exercise%20Overview_Final.pdf

Pandemic Exercise FAQ: http://www.fspanfluexercise.com/Pandemic%20Exercise%20FAQs.pdf

Pre-Exercise Scenario Brief: http://www.fspanfluexercise.com/Private/PanFlu%20Brief_PreExercise_v3.pdf T

The Exercise itself utilizes projections of sickness, spread, absenteeism, CFR, impact on hospitals, distribution, etc. I think it is may be a little rosy...but it's fairly detailed and it shows that the financial services sector has been thinking seriously about this.

Pandemic Timeline:

Weeks 1 and 2: http://www.fspanfluexercise.com/Private/PanFlu%20Scenario%20Update%201.pdf

Weeks 3 through 6: http://www.fspanfluexercise.com/Private/PanFlu%20Scenario%20Update%202_v3.pdf

Weeks 7 - 10: http://www.fspanfluexercise.com/Private/PanFlu%20Scenario%20Update%203_v1.pdf

Monday, November 5, 2007

A long 60 days!

I've been away from my little blog experiment and feel a little rusty. But in the spirit of dusting off the key board I'll just jump right back in!

Since September 10th I've had a chance to make three long trips from Seattle --a week in San Antonio, 4 days in Florida, and another four days in NYC last week. Three conferences in six weeks, three different airlines (with multiple connections of course) and three utterly unique parts of the country.

I had plenty of time to watch the airlines struggle with operating disruptions, contemplate the spread of communicable diseases, and marvel at the balancing act required to logistically maintain a city like New York on a daily basis.

I also now finally understand what the issue is about Hurricanes in Florida. Having never been to the sunshine state, I debarked after a very long flight in an amazing, tropical, and utterly flat paradise. Being a true Westerner, flat landscapes are outside my frame of reference and always leave me a bit disoriented. It felt like I could stand on the parking garage roof in Tampa and see the Atlantic. But now that I've made that trip, I really don't get why Floridians don't prepare for disaster.

The most recent trip was to attend an event at the Conference Board --http://www.conference-board.org/ focusing on Strategic Crisis Management and Corporate Security. The keynote speaker at the event was Dr. Stephen Flynn, author of the Edge of Disaster --an exceptional book. A true pragmatic straight shooter, his message of resiliency for this nation was reason enough to attend the event. You can find out more about him and the book here: http://www.cfr.org/publication/12380/.

I came out of this marathon tired but thankfully free of the invisible creepy crawlies that circulated around me on every leg of the trip. Lots going on out there, so more to follow.