Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
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Identify issues, concerns, and potential obstacles to implementing the pro-
gram, as well as a strategy for addressing these, as appropriate.
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Establish planning, training, and exercise activities, as well as milestones for
accomplishing these activities.
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Identify the people, infrastructure, communications, transportation, and
other resources needed to support the program.
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Forecast and establish budgetary requirements to support the program.
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Apply risk management principles to ensure that appropriate operational
readiness decisions are based on the probability of an attack or other incident
and its consequences.
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Incorporate geographic dispersion into the organization's normal daily opera-
tions, as appropriate.
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Integrate the organization's security strategies that address personal, physical,
and information security to protect plans, personnel, facilities, and capabili-
ties, to prevent adversaries from disrupting continuity plans and operations.
Each organization should develop a corrective action program (CAP) to assist
in documenting, prioritizing, and resourcing continuity issues identified during
TT&E, assessments, and emergency operations.
Essential Functions
All organizations should identify and prioritize their essential functions as the
foundation for continuity planning. Essential functions, broadly speaking, are
those functions that enable an organization to provide vital services, exercise civil
authority, maintain the safety of the general public, and sustain the industrial/
economic base during an emergency.
The identification and prioritization of essential functions are a prerequisite for
continuity planning, because they establish the planning parameters that drive an
organization's efforts in all other planning and preparedness areas. Resources and
staff will likely be limited during an event that disrupts or has the potential to
disrupt normal activities and that necessitates the activation of continuity plans,
preventing the organization from performing all of its normal functions or services.
Therefore, a subset of those functions determined to be critical activities are defined
as the organization's essential functions. These essential functions are then used to
identify supporting tasks and resources that should be included in the organiza-
tion's continuity planning process.
The National Continuity Policy Implementation Plan has established three cat-
egories of essential functions: national essential functions (NEFs), PMEFs, and
MEFs. The ultimate goal of continuity in the federal executive branch is the con-
tinuation of NEFs. To achieve that goal, the objective for nonfederal entities is to
identify their MEFs and PMEFs, as appropriate, and ensure that those functions
