Continuity planning for public health crises: Designing workplace redundancies for organizational resilience

Rob Grace; Sanjana Gautam; Andrea Tapia

doi:10.5055/jem.0769

Authors

Rob Grace, PhD https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6517-6806
Sanjana Gautam, BA
Andrea Tapia, PhD

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5055/jem.0769

Keywords:

continuity of operations, business continuity management, high-reliability organizations, cyber-physical-social systems

Abstract

Continuity planning prepares organizations to maintain essential functions despite disruptions to critical infrastructure that occur during crises. Continuity planning is especially important for Public-Safety Answering Points (PSAPs), which must prepare to answer 911 calls and dispatch first responders in all-hazard environments, including public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, continuity planning typically focuses on disruptions to cyber-physical infrastructure rather than social infrastructure disruptions that occur when outbreaks of communicable disease limit the ability of essential personnel to perform an organization’s essential functions.

Reporting findings from interviews with US officials, this study examines how PSAPs decentralized essential personnel by designing redundant workplaces during the COVID-19 pandemic. Realizing existing continuity plans prepared PSAPs to relocate and recentralize essential personnel in a single, shared workplace, officials developed new plans to protect and decentralize telecommunicators across multiple, separate workplaces. To do so, PSAPs achieved passive, standby, and active workplace redundancies that recommend continuity planning objectives and requirements for organizations preparing for future public health crises.

Author Biographies

Rob Grace, PhD

Assistant Professor, Technical Communication, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas

Sanjana Gautam, BA

PhD Student, Informatics Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania

Andrea Tapia, PhD

Associate Dean for Research, Professor, Information Sciences and Technology, College of Information Sciences and Technology, Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania

References

FEMA: Continuity of operations plan template and instructions for federal departments and agencies. 2020. Available at https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-10/fema_planning-template-federal-departments-agencies_october-2020_0.pdf. Accessed November 5, 2021.

FEMA: Developing and maintaining emergency operations plans: Comprehensive preparedness guide (CPG). 2021. Available at https://www.dhs.gov/presidential-policy-directive-8-national-101. Accessed March 6, 2022.

FEMA: Continuity guidance circular. 2018. Available at https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-07/Continuity-Guidance-Circular_031218.pdf. Accessed November 4, 2021.

NENA: NENA communications center/PSAP disaster and contingency plans model recommendation (NENA-INF-017.3-2018). 2018.

CISA: Guidelines for 911 centers: Pandemic planning. 2020. Available at https://www.cisa.gov/emergency-communications-pandemic-guidelines. Accessed November 4, 2021.

Lee CP, Dourish P, Mark G: The human infrastructure of cyberinfrastructure. In Proceedings of the 2006 20th Anniversary Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work-CSCW ’06. ACM Press. 2006: 483. DOI: 10.1145/1180875.1180950.

Klinenberg E: Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. New York City: Crown, 2018.

CISA: Guidelines for 911 centers: Pandemic operating procedures. 2020. Available at www.cisa.gov. Accessed December 31, 2021.

FEMA: Continuity planning for pandemics and widespread infectious diseases. 2018. Available at https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-07/fema_brochure-pandemic-ncp_082918_0.pdf. Accessed November 4, 2021.

FEMA: COVID-19 supplement for planning considerations: Evacuation and shelter-in-place. 2020.

Yang L, Holtz D, Jaffe S, et al.: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers. Nat Hum Behav. 2021; 6(1): 43-54. DOI: 10.1038/s41562-021-01196-4.

NENA: Initial impacts of COVID-19 on 9-1-1 centers. 2020.

NENA: How 9-1-1 is changing in a COVID-19 world. 2020.

EENA: Impact of COVID-19 on PSAP activities. 2020.

Epilogue HE: RAG—The resilience analysis grid. In Hollnagel E, Pariès J, Woods D, et al. (eds.): Resilience Engineering in Practice: A Guidebook. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2017.

Nowell B, Bodkin CP, Bayoumi D: Redundancy as a strategy in disaster response systems: A pathway to resilience or a recipe for disaster? J Contingen Crisis Manag. 2017; 25(3): 123-135. DOI: 10.1111/1468-5973.12178.

Crichton MT, Ramsay CG, Kelly T: Enhancing organizational resilience through emergency planning: Learnings from cross-sectoral lessons. J Contingen Crisis Manag. 2009; 17(1): 24-37. DOI: 10.1111/J.1468-5973.2009.00556.X.

Groenendaal J, Helsloot I: Cyber resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis: A case study. J Contingen Crisis Manag. 2021; 29(4): 439-444. DOI: 10.1111/1468-5973.12360.

Bryce C, Ring P, Ashby S, et al.: Resilience in the face of uncertainty: Early lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. J Risk Res. 2020; 23(7-8): 880-887. DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2020.1756379.

Guo X, Kapucu N, Huang J: Examining resilience of disaster response system in response to COVID-19. Int J Disaster Risk Reduct. 2021; 59: 102239. DOI: 10.1016/J.IJDRR.2021.102239.

Laufs J, Waseem Z: Policing in pandemics: A systematic review and best practices for police response to COVID-19. Int J Disaster Risk Reduct. 2020; 51: 101812. DOI: 10.1016/J.IJDRR.2020.101812.

Prasad M: Recognizing and mitigating against COVID-19 consequence management impacts in emergency management organizations. J Emerg Manag. 2022; 20(7): 19-27. DOI: 10.5055/JEM.0680.

Meaton J, Kruger H, Williams A: Pandemic continuity planning: Will coronavirus test local authority business continuity plans? A case study of a local authority in the North of England. Emerg Manag Rev. 2020; 4(1): 4-27. Available at https://emr-wlv.com/index.php/emr/article/view/43. Accessed February 11, 2022.

Grace R. Overcoming barriers to social media use through multisensor integration in emergency management systems. Int J Disaster Risk Reduc. 2021; 66: 102636.

Urquhart C, Lehmann H, Myers MD: Putting the ‘theory’ back into grounded theory: Guidelines for grounded theory studies in information systems. Inform Syst J. 2009; 20(4): 357-381. DOI: 10.1111/J.1365-257500328.X.

Lidwell W, Holden K, Butler J: Universal Principles of Design. Gloucester, MA: Rockport, 2010.

Smith DJ: Reliability, Maintainability and Risk. 9th ed. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2017.

National 911 Program: 911 Public-Safety Answering Point/Emergency Communications Center: COVID-19 pandemic continuity of operations response plan. 2020.

Hu XE, Hinds R, Valentine M, et al.: A “distance matters” paradox: Facilitating intra-team collaboration can harm inter-team collaboration. Proc ACM Hum Comput Interact. 2022; 6(CSCW1). DOI: 10.1145/3512895.

Pollitt C: Decentralization: A central concept in contemporary public management. In Ferlie E, Lynn L, Pollitt C (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Public Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007: 371-397. DOI: 10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780199226443.003.0017.

Capano G, Lippi A: Decentralization, policy capacities, and varieties of first health response to the COVID-19 outbreak: Evidence from three regions in Italy. J Eur Public Policy. 2021; 28(8): 1197-1218. DOI: 101080/1350176320211942156.

Kuhlmann S, Hellström M, Ramberg U, et al.: Tracing divergence in crisis governance: Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in France, Germany and Sweden compared. Int Rev Adm Sci. 2021; 87(3): 556-575. DOI: 101177/0020852320979359.

Yang K: Unprecedented challenges, familiar paradoxes: COVID-19 and governance in a new normal state of risks. Public Adm Rev. 2020; 80(4): 657-664. DOI: 10.1111/PUAR.13248.