How Does Government Operations Continuity Help Them Perform Better?

Vipika Kotangale | October 7, 2022 | 2802 views | Read Time : 07:00 min

How does government article
One of the challenges the government faced during the COVID-19 pandemic was keeping operations running. Certain advanced economies and developing nations' business continuity plans gave them an edge over their underdeveloped counterparts. But because of the pandemic, the national economy had suffered the pangs of unemployment to fuel the malicious intents of cyber-attackers, thus, protecting government assets that carried important economic information became a national priority.

National security and staying competitive with other economies worldwide are becoming increasingly crucial in elevating a country’s economy. Keeping all public-sector companies and federal agencies running efficiently is a foundational block for the economy. Companies in public administration, like the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as different ministries, public sector businesses, and more, need data protection from international cyber-threats. They use disruptive business strategies to make their operations more resilient.

Now, that we know the importance of business continuity in the context of federal government and agencies, let us understand what risks does business continuity management mitigate.


Business Continuity Management in Government Easily Mitigates:

Individuals rely on the government during economic crises and disasters. A crisis or a disaster can be a huge risk to the economy, which can bubble up to an irreversible loss if not handled on a timely basis. Mitigating the risks of crises such as natural disasters, cyber security compromises, power and communication outages, terrorism, wars and military activities, global financial crises and more has become crucial. These crises can cause the loss of physical assets, human safety, and infrastructure that hamper government operations. This is why having a BCM plan in place is the need of the hour.

The government must serve and meet the expectations of economic contributors. If there is a divergence or a timely action constraint, the government must maintain peace and harmony for the common good and economic well-being.


Government Continuity to Support Individuals and Public Organizations:

Resuming operations for public organizations and individuals quickly can be almost impossible without the intervention and support of the government. Government continuity is directly proportional to the level of trust, government reputation, and business resiliency. This is possible because the financial loss can be covered by insurance and financial help, as explained below.

  • Insurance Policy Claims and Coverage: Making it easy to claim insurance during and after the crisis helps individuals and organizations reclaim their finances, thereby restoring essential functions first and full-fledged functions later. Providing reimbursement of expenses and coverage for losses for public organizations and financial assistance for the public sector remains one of the top priorities as far as resuming business operations is concerned post-disaster. Making sure that the insurance can cover the expenses and losses incurred due to the disaster is a part of the business impact analysis (BIA).
     
  • Resiliency: Restoring public sector infrastructure in an operating condition, overcoming operational obstacles such as IT, power, and communication outages in a short span of time, and maintaining due vigilance to keep a check on national security builds business resiliency for the public sector.
     
  • Reputation and Recovery Management: Reducing the turn-around time to fix and restore normal operations after a disaster provides operational resiliency through recovery management. This keeps a check on the best interests of the economic contributors and enhances their trust and the government’s reputation in the long run.

Now that we understand the risks that a BCP can help mitigate and the role of government policies to support the economic contributors, let us understand how it improves the overall performance of a public organization.


Business Continuity Management for Better Performing Public Organizations:

The federal governments and public organizations have implemented an agile approach to bounce back from disasters, catastrophes, and crises using BCM. Because of this, the federal government is heavily invested into business continuity plans (BCPs) to improve how well their operations work and keep the economy and government stable.

The factors impacting the performance of public organizations using a BCM are as below:
  • Public organizations must know how BCM components influence performance in public sector organizations.
  • They must be aware of BCM and the successful implementation of effective BCM. However, some governments that do not invest in a BCM have a much lower level of awareness due to a lack of human resources, finance, and management.
  • They are allocating enough budget for disaster prevention, preparedness, management, and relief considering the government's initiatives. But not getting enough help from the government can make people unhappy, which can hurt the ruling party and lead to people protesting for their rights.
  • Even though there is no direct financial benefit or gain from investing in a BCM, BCM testing helps to improve performance significantly.
  • For governments to consider investing in the successful implementation of BCM and get funding for it, BCM professionals need to predict and evaluate the potential loss due to idle service time and its results.
  • Each government entity must identify the likelihood of risks, define the best rescue objectives, and indicate the most cost-effective clarification and knowledge about BCM.
  • Another challenge is using BCM in organizations that cut across several business groups or completing it with collective business-wide support.
  • These situations show that old management responsibility and regulation are useful for making sure that all members of an organization prefer BCM actions.
  • Recognizing the potential impacts of BCM on organizational performance is required in order to provide accurate value to the BCM powers, attract consideration, and, finally, obtain adequate assistance from senior management.

In the journey to optimizing the performance of your public sector company using BCM, there are many hurdles that you need to overcome. Let us discuss them further.


Challenges in Maintaining BCPs and Performance Growth in the Public Sector:

Maintaining a business continuity plan as per the recommended guidelines is crucial to optimize its performance and efficacy. Your public sector organization's BCP will need to overcome some of the challenges to enable their performance growth as follows:

  • Dedication of time from the top management of the public organizations, the ministry, and leaders towards deciding which functions are essential to maintain the BCP.
  • Lack of complete understanding of all the business functions and their dependencies on other public sector organizations.
  • Comparing the business functions on the level of criticality.
  • Not implementing the BCM approach completely.
  • Tweaking the BCM approach to show everything is taken care of
  • Inaccurate assumptions are used to create a business continuity plan.
  • Business Impact Analysis (BIA) - Determining how long a business process can be rendered inoperable without affecting performance.

The Business Continuity Plan (BCP) takes care of aspects such as:
  • Who will be affected by the business operations disruption?
  • How and when will customers be notified?
  • What issues are to be addressed in the first 48 hours?
  • From the initial response to restoration, unique access roles and functions are assigned.
  • Testing of BCP should be done regularly with the help of table-top exercises, walkthroughs, crisis communications, emergency enactments

The importance of a BCP cannot be undermined as it minimizes the cost of business disruptions on the operations of public organizations. Let us discuss them in-depth.


The Cost of Not Having a Crisis Plan like a BCP for All Sizes of Public Organizations:

Although the costs involved during times of crisis may be difficult to calculate, there may be significant infrastructure and data recovery charges that can have a long-term impact on business revenue. Monetary loss, revenue loss due to idle time, reputation loss, productivity loss are some of the consequences that small, medium, and large enterprises have to go through. The major losses among them are as under:

  • Loss of time and revenue for recovery and resuming operations.
  • The company's brand image and reputation are at stake.
  • Financial instability and loss
  • Productivity loss
  • Customer satisfaction is hampered.
  • Some laws and regulations are violated during idle time.
  • Distrust and loss of faith among investors
  • Employee safety is at risk with the consequences of injury and death.
  • Loss of infrastructure
A business continuity plan has four strategies to boost business resilience. These include crisis and risk management; disaster recovery; incident response management; and business continuity planning.

Acting quickly to mitigate the risks of loss as per incident response management during the event of distress is the first step. Crisis and risk management take care of the plan of action during the event of distress. The disaster recovery plan takes care of resuming the business operations to their normal condition after the disaster has subsided, whereas the business continuity plan takes care of all these aspects to minimize loss during distress as well as the time required to resume normal operations with the help of dedicated software.


Conclusion:

Performance optimization for public organizations is the number one priority for economic growth. A business continuity plan can directly boost performance as it encourages organizations to identify essential functions and maintain their operations during uncertain times. It helps save time, money, and safeguards people, processes, and technologies in the long run.

Spotlight

Waukesha County

Waukesha County is located in southeastern Wisconin, directly west of Milwaukee and 100 miles northwest of Chicago. Waukesha County is part of the Milwaukee Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area. The County covers 576 square miles and consists of 8 cities, 18 villages and 12 towns and has the third largest population in the state. 2008 estimated population is 382,697.

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Emerging Technology, Government Business

CSG Government Solutions Selected for Program Management Office Services on the Connecticut Medicaid Enterprise Technology System Program

Prweb | August 03, 2023

CSG Government Solutions, a national leader in government program modernization, today announced that it has been selected by the Connecticut Department of Social Services (DSS) to provide Program Management and Project Support Services for the Connecticut Medicaid Enterprise Technology System (CT METS) Program, including the implementation of an Enterprise Data Warehouse and Analytics module and Enterprise Provider module. CSG is supporting DSS’ initiative to replace their core MMIS and other systems supporting the Medicaid Enterprise with modern, modular solutions. The CSG team will provide full-service Program Management Office (PMO) services and expertise in Medicaid, enterprise architecture, system integration, Health Information Exchange, and security. The team is also providing quality assurance, risk management, schedule and resource management, and CMS certification support. “CSG is a leader in providing PMO and other services for Medicaid system modernizations across the country,” says Robin Dufresne, Executive Vice President and Senior Practice Director. “Our team applies our Medicaid expertise and dedication to help the DSS Medicaid Enterprise make a positive impact on the health and well-being of Connecticut’s individuals, families, and communities.” About CSG Government Solutions CSG Government Solutions is a leading government operations consulting firm helping states modernize critical program enterprises. We help governments leverage innovative technology and processes to meet the challenges of administering complex programs. Founded in 1997, CSG clients include 47 state and territory governments, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Labor, and large municipal governments. For more information, visithttp://www.csgdelivers.comand connect with us onLinkedInandTwitter.

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Cybersecurity

Semperis and Carahsoft Partner to Provide Comprehensive Identity Security and Recovery Solutions to U.S. Government Organizations

Business Wire | September 12, 2023

Semperis, a pioneer in identity-driven cyber resilience, and Carahsoft Technology Corp., The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider®, today announced a partnership. Under the agreement, Carahsoft will serve as Semperis’ Public Sector Distributor, making the company’s industry-leading identity resilience platform available to the Public Sector through Carahsoft’s reseller partners and National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) ValuePoint, National Cooperative Purchasing Alliance (NCPA), and OMNIA Partners contracts. Active Directory (AD) and Azure AD (now Entra ID), used by 90% of organizations worldwide to authenticate and access critical applications and services, are under sustained attack in the Public Sector by numerous threat actors. The Semperis and Carahsoft partnership will accelerate delivery of comprehensive identity threat detection and response (ITDR) solutions for protecting hybrid AD environments across U.S. Public Sector entities. “Our partnership with Carahsoft will further expand adoption of our identity-first security solutions designed to help Federal, State and Local Government agencies protect their critical identity systems from ransomware and other directory-related attacks,” said Jared Vichengrad, Vice President, Public Sector at Semperis. “We are excited to join Carahsoft’s trusted partner network of Government IT solution providers to prevent, detect and mitigate proliferating identity attacks that are disrupting operations in the Public Sector.” Identity-related attacks on Public Sector entities are intensifying in scale and severity amidst an expanding digital attack surface and increasingly sophisticated attack techniques. Verizon’s 2023 DBIR reveals that from November 1, 2021, through October 31, 2022, public administration entities faced 3,273 incidents—and of those, 584 with confirmed data disclosure. The Public Sector is a high-value target for cyber criminals who seek to disrupt State and Local Governments, schools and public utilities in record numbers. These attacks can steal or encrypt data, disturb services and jeopardize public safety. Public Sector organizations are particularly vulnerable to AD attacks because of legacy infrastructure, lack of identity security expertise and limited resources. With a multi-layered defense approach that spans the identity attack lifecycle, Semperis offers the industry’s most comprehensive security and recovery solutions for hybrid AD environments, combined with deep incident response expertise. “We are thrilled to partner with Semperis and our reseller network to offer its identity resilience platform, provide advanced ITDR solutions and protect Public Sector customers’ hybrid AD systems from attacks,” said Brian O’Donnell, Vice President of Cybersecurity solutions at Carahsoft. “We repeatedly see how vital it is to prevent bad actors from infiltrating Government systems and how having the right solutions on board can make a significant impact in remediation. We are committed helping Public Sector organizations get access to Semperis solutions to safeguard citizens’ data and facilitate uninterrupted Public Sector services.” Semperis’ technology and services are available through Carahsoft’s NASPO ValuePoint Master Agreement #AR2472, NCPA Contract NCPA01-86, and OMNIA Partners Contract #R191902. For more information, contact the Semperis team at Carahsoft at (703) 889-9808 or Semperis@carahsoft.com. The dedicated Cybersecurity team at Carahsoft specializes in providing Federal, State and Local Government agencies and Education and Healthcare organizations with security solutions to safeguard their cyber ecosystem. To learn more about Carahsoft’s Cybersecurity solutions, visit www.carahsoft.com/solve/cybersecurity. About Carahsoft Carahsoft Technology Corp. is The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider®, supporting Public Sector organizations across Federal, State and Local Government agencies and Education and Healthcare markets. As the Master Government Aggregator® for our vendor partners, we deliver solutions for Cybersecurity, MultiCloud, DevSecOps, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Open Source, Customer Experience and Engagement, and more. Working with resellers, systems integrators and consultants, our sales and marketing teams provide industry leading IT products, services and training through hundreds of contract vehicles. About Semperis For security teams charged with defending hybrid and multi-cloud environments, Semperis ensures the integrity and availability of critical enterprise directory services at every step in the cyber kill chain and cuts recovery time by 90%. Purpose-built for securing hybrid Active Directory environments, Semperis’ patented technology protects over 50 million identities from cyberattacks, data breaches, and operational errors. The world’s leading organizations trust Semperis to spot directory vulnerabilities, intercept cyberattacks in progress, and quickly recover from ransomware and other data integrity emergencies. Semperis is headquartered in Hoboken, New Jersey, and operates internationally, with its research and development team distributed throughout the United States, Canada, and Israel.

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Emerging Technology

Accela Migrates Five Local Agencies to the Cloud, Modernizing Critical Services in Cities Nationwide

PR Newswire | September 26, 2023

Accela, the trusted provider of cloud solutions at the heart of government, today announced new successful migrations across the nation. The milestones were shared during the company's government technology conference, Accelarate, punctuating a month of noteworthy business and customer modernization momentum announcements. Over the past several months, Accela has successfully migrated the City and County of Denver, CO; Allendale, AZ; Cleveland, OH; Indianapolis, IN; and Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control to the cloud to securely streamline their critical resident services. These migrations follow significant cloud migration momentum in Florida as well as Accela's migration of over 33 jurisdictions to the cloud in fiscal year 2023 alone. "Local governments around the country are increasingly looking to the latest technologies to streamline critical services and build trust with their residents. Cloud-based government technology is the key to unlocking this potential," said Jonathon (JK) Knight, chief customer officer at Accela. "Accela is proud to be there every step of the way in governments' modernization journeys, empowering agencies to break down data and departmental silos, and transform the government experience for staff and residents alike." Agencies nationwide turn to cloud-based solutions for improved user experience, service delivery speed and efficiency, and help in overcoming IT staffing shortages. With unprecedented federal funding, more municipalities are investing in cloud solutions to provide residents and staff with seamless digital experiences and create new efficiencies for critical services – like inspections and permitting – that support the livelihoods, health and safety of all community members. "Denver, like many other municipalities, is aggressively infusing more affordable housing options into our communities to offset the skyrocketing costs of housing," said Paul Kresser, deputy chief information officer at the City and County of Denver. "We rely on Accela's flexible, scalable and resilient SaaS environments to process all the activities needed to introduce affordable housing options quickly into our neighborhoods. From zoning to permitting to inspections, Accela's solutions support our work to build a stronger, more vibrant community." Accela's Civic Platform, powered by Microsoft Azure, hosts various pre-built cloud solutions ready to streamline delivery of critical services to support community growth. Agencies utilize the single platform to manage resident services, from building new structures, to licensing local businesses, regulating safety with regular inspections, and more. Accela recently closed its 2023 fiscal year with a 31 percent increase in SaaS annual recurring revenue, 36 percent increase in new accounts signed and a net customer retention of 117 percent. To learn more about Accela's solutions, please visit https://www.accela.com/solutions/. About Accela Accela is the trusted provider of cloud solutions at the heart of government operations. The company works with governments across the globe to accelerate their digital transformation, deliver vital services, and build stronger communities. More than 300 million residents worldwide benefit from Accela's government software solutions. The company offers agile, purpose-built solutions and the power of a platform that provides users with a consumer-like experience, shares data across departments, and ensures world-class security. With Accela, government agencies experience rapid and effective digital transformation. Accela's government software meets agencies wherever they are on their modernization journey, while also helping them prepare for whatever comes next. The company is a four-consecutive year Microsoft US Partner Award winner for its innovative SaaS solutions. In 2022, Accela was honored as a recipient of Inc.'s Best in Business award for SaaS, and selected by Fast Company for its World Changing Ideas Award. Accela is headquartered in San Ramon, California, with offices around the world.

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