COOP in DoD – Part #7 of 10 – Emergency Communications Planning

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This is the seventh paper in a set of 10 on Department of Defense (DoD) Continuity of Operations (COOP) targeted to the oft-overlooked smaller program; this paper’s topic is on Business Continuity Management. Written as part of the Master’s program in Information Assurance (IA) at Norwich University in 2011 and subsequently submitted to the Federal IT Institute, they provide a complete roadmap to create and operate a compliant, cost-effective, and reliable COOP program throughout DoD.

Within the federal government and Department of Defense (DOD), sound and effective emergency communications capabilities receive top priority for guiding an organization’s response to a crisis. This paper, the seventh in a series of ten analyzing Continuity of Operations (COOP) and using a small Army Program as a use case, examines the role of emergency communications in responding to and minimizing the impact of a declared emergency situation.

This paper uses guidance from the commercial, federal, and DOD spaces to propose a common emergency communications lifecycle consisting of management structures, facilities support, mobility support, and stakeholder involvement; all undergirded by formal policies and procedures, and furthermore enabled via training and exercise. Specific recommendations adapted to the Army Program use case, in conjunction with a summarization of the paper’s findings, provide a practical implementation basis for the COOP practitioner to use throughout the public, and the Business Continuity Management (BCM) practitioner to use throughout the private, sectors.