The need for robust continuity
provision is specified in the Civil Contingencies
Act, which local authorities must now comply with.
So Reigate and Banstead Borough Council has adopted
a voice communication business continuity system
to ensure that the phones never go silent.
The Civil Contingencies Bill became an Act of Parliament on 18
November 2004. The Act replaces older legislation regarding the
duty that councils have for ensuring the continuity of services
and facilities in the event of major emergencies and other types
of serious civic incidents.
The scope of the new Act now covers
telephony as well as IT communications as services
that local authorities need to support with contingency
plans. These services must be resilient to the
risk of failure and measures need to be taken to
ensure service continuity.
The Civil Contingencies Act demands
that local authorities have contingency planning,
emergency planning and business continuity management
in place. Councils are also classed as Category
One Responders if an emergency occurs.
This puts great emphasis on these
organisations being prepared for any eventuality.
The task is not just about having continuity plans,
but also maintaining the plans and keeping readiness
levels of all communications systems.
Focus on Voice Continuity:
The Civil Contingencies Act specifies a broad-based approach to
maintaining vital services and systems in a persistent manner.
In the digital age IT infrastructure has been the main focus
of attention. Voice communications have been mostly treated as
an ‘always available’ utility.
Yet the loss of telephony communication
will cause a major interruption for any organisation.
Such an event can even be considered an emergency
in its own right. Arguably, local councils are
hit harder when the phones go silent given the
responsibilities they carry for the populace at
large.
Reigate and Banstead Borough Council
is responsible for an area that covers a population
of around 126,000 people and has to provide core
council services, local taxation, benefits and
street care, amongst others. Without question,
the loss of voice communications would bring serious
disruption to the council’s effectiveness.
For instance, people living within
the council’s boundaries would not be able
to call to get information and make transactions,
or alert the council about problems. Even the standard
voice messaging facilities would be down if the
telecoms cut out.
Just as importantly, the council
would face serious disruption to its internal activities,
with email not being capable of filling the gap
left by lost inbound and outbound voice communication.
Seeking a persistent voice service
In order to comply with The Civil Contingencies Act, Reigate and
Banstead Borough Council gave a team responsibility for developing
service continuity around the council’s voice network and
finding the best technology solution.
Linda Neale, projects and emergency
planning manager at the council was instrumental
in moving the voice continuity project forward
with the help of Alan Morris, project support officer.
In fact, the Council had already been actively
evaluating the possible business continuity choices
in advance of The Civil Contingencies Act becoming
law.
“We knew there was an issue
in terms of continuity for the telephone service
and The Civil Contingencies Act heightened our
interest in solving this problem,” Linda
Neale says. “We looked at a number of options
and demos and then we came across GemaTech at the
Business Continuity Expo in 2004.” The Council
were required to carry out due diligence and considered
a number of other solutions alongside the gematech
system.
“We looked at a number of
telecoms suppliers but none of the solutions on
offer matched gematech”, comments Linda Neale.
Linda Neale was impressed by the
gematech business continuity system. “We
were interested in the ease of installation and
the flexibility of the gematech BCMLITE capability
as we needed to cover a range of situations,” she
says. The fact that the gematech system is located
at the local NTL exchange was also a plus point
for the Council.
The Council’s business continuity
plan was also required to cater for any situation,
which resulted in loss of access to the main council
site in Reigate. In fact, Reigate and Banstead
Council is highly centralised. Apart from the Town
Hall there is a much smaller site at Earlswood
Depot as well as some small satellite offices providing
a local Help Shop service. This high degree of
centralisation made it important for the council
to be able to divert all of its voice systems to
a back-up location quickly and easily
As part of earlier contingency
provision, the Council also has access to a 16-line
mini switch that is located remotely from the Town
Hall and could be used to front the Council’s
operational numbers. Even so, this alternative
telephone system can only provide a message taking
service.
Such circumstances made it apparent
to the Project Team that the Council required a
highly flexible business continuity system. The
fact that the GemaTech solution was able
to re-route calls to any other location specified
was another
major plus in the vendor’s favour compared
to its rivals.
Benefits
The gematech system has cost the council £16,000 plus annual
maintenance, along with the cost of the ISDN-30 connection that
is also required. The system went live at the Council in July 2005
and they have already benefited from the system being in place
and the Council is confident it now has the business continuity
it needs.
In the event of failure, the voice
services will now be re-routed within seconds and
no one would notice any difference – the
service is transparent to customers, and Reigate
and Banstead Borough Council has a business continuity
solution in place that helps the organisation comply
with the key requirements of the Civil Contingencies
Act.
Linda Neale says that the success
of the telecoms business continuity project has
been shared with other organisations in the Surrey
area, in particular the Reigate and Banstead Housing
Trust were keen to find out more about the telecoms
continuity project at Reigate and Banstead.
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