How Can IT Respond to a Flu Pandemic?

This article examines the potential role of information technology (IT) in business continuity planning to protect companies from the effects of a possible flu pandemic. As stated here, according to the survey organisation Deloitte, of 163 large companies, 48% of respondents said their companies haven't adequately prepared for a pandemic, which is 14 percentage points better than the same survey the previous year. The survey organisation states that a United States (US) Department of Homeland Security estimate suggests that worker absenteeism could reach 30-40 percent during a pandemic’s peak. For a corporation with about 20,000 employees, the cost of lost labour and health care could exceed US$60 million.

The article states that planning needs to take place at the executive level, and focus on the key role of IT. "Companies must expand on business continuity plans, which typically assume that disasters will be regional and affect infrastructure, to deal with a disaster that is global and affects staff resources....Preparations include cross-training IT staffers to handle critical functions such as hardware maintenance. Beyond that, the IT department can deploy e-learning tools, expand remote access gateways to support more telecommuters and beef up intranet portals, video conferencing, Web conferencing and other communication channels that will keep employees informed during an outbreak."

Web-based seminars, called “webinars”, are being used to educate executives on the threat and how they should respond. Manager and executive suggestions for IT preparation include:

• "The two cornerstones of any plan are being able to communicate and to receive and distribute timely and accurate information to decision-makers."
  
• Pandemic planning may be “layered” into crisis management planning and tested through a full-scale simulation of the plan to operate a data centres at fractional staffing levels.
• Planning may include use of a company's intranet portal and an interactive voice-response system to communicate information to employees and clients during an emergency, as well as deployment of e-learning courseware for pandemic education (including social distancing, use of masks and gloves, and environmental cleaning in the workplace.)
• Preparation may include ramping up of remote access gateways, which can support simultaneous network access for IT workers and the percent of a workforce who are full-time teleworkers - and, in some cases setting up a large percent of employees for some level of remote access.
• For businesses using a just-in-time economic management system (in which parts or other goods are ordered as needed), "[t]hought ought to be given as to whether and when to increase stockpiles of critical equipment." ..."IT should plan now for supply chain disruptions. Spare parts and [things like] new laptop shipments could be restricted to some degree. Even backup tapes and off-site storage could become a challenge as transportation bottlenecks emerge."
  
• If IT decision-makers become suddenly unavailable, "[o]ne option is to predefine task orders or procedures, such as procurement", which could be based on a pre-approval system.
  
• Data centre operations may be made manageable remotely, including planning for moving IT workloads to sites that are not pandemic-affected and are set up with capacity for a heavier load.
• Companies with outsourced IT operations may want to study their planned co-location facilities to be sure they have the strength to cover the potential need for IT services.
• For those planning a remote access strategy, concerns include security, whether to supply laptops loaded with appropriate applications, cross-training for remote applications, and installing the capacity for remote repair.
  

This article includes a chart of flu pandemic challenges and IT-based strategies.