Storms test GSA's continuity plans

A series of powerful storms on Wednesday, which left more than 300,000 Dominion Power customers in the Washington area without electricity, gave the General Services Administration a chance to test its plans for dealing with natural disasters and other catastrophic events.

Comment on this article in The Forum.GSA's Willow Wood facility, like much of Northern Virginia, was without power on Thursday, forcing the agency to scramble to make sure all employees were accounted for and able to perform critical functions remotely. Parts of the area also lacked phone and Internet service, adding to the difficulties.

The federal government's continuity of operations plans, or COOP, have drawn a great deal of attention in recent years, especially after the Federal Emergency Management Agency's much-criticized response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"We take this very seriously," said Josh Sawislak, GSA's acting chief of emergency response and recovery. "This is part of the planning we do on a regular basis to look at these continuity issues."

The first thing the agency did in response to the power outage was test its new notification system, which Sawislak likened to a telemarketer's automated phone dialer. The device works as a cascading system, and contacts an employee's office phone, then cell phone, home phone and e-mail in the order chosen by the employee. The system tries to establish contact until a response is received and then directs the employee to a toll-free call-in number or the agency's Web site for further information and instructions.

"If we had a fire where we had to evacuate people immediately, we would use it for accountability too," said Sawislak. "That's the big value of the system; it lets us make sure all folks are accounted for." Once officials get an automated report on who hasn't responded, they attempt to contact missing employees.

The agency then determines which employees need immediate access to their work resources and which can be dealt with later. The Willow Wood facility houses parts of the Information Technology Service and a division of the Federal Acquisition Service, both of which work with telecommunications and IT customers.

"That's what we're working on right now, looking at individual issues related to that facility," said Sawislak. "If we don't have the facility up, we have functionality for all the people. To the extent that people can work from a remote facility, we want to get them up and functioning as soon as possible."

Employees were encouraged to telework from home, a practice GSA has been championing in recent years. Eighty-six percent of the agency's employees are eligible to telework and 20 percent are doing so at least one day per week. GSA's goal is to increase that figure to at least 50 percent by 2010.

"In an emergency, we can put anyone with access [to agency networks] on telework," said Sawislak. "We just want to make sure they have the right equipment, training and a secure virtual private network tunnel into our system."

Casey Coleman, GSA's chief information officer, said all eligible employees received laptops for the office and home for teleworking. The VPNs used from home allow access to not only to the agency's e-mail network but also business systems, shared communications and files storage.

For employees unable to access the network from home, there are 14 GSA-sponsored telework centers in the Washington area, with computers, fax machines and other equipment. Employees without power were encouraged to visit one of the centers or another GSA facility, such as Crystal City, Va., so they could continue working.

Sawislak acknowledged that telework was a not the solution for everyone in the storm's aftermath, including those in security or shipping jobs, which required them to be on-site, or jobs that involve classified information. He said the agency still was looking for alternate facilities where such information could be handled.