APS 13.2 – Organizational Resilience

(Approved by authority of the President)

Purpose

This policy requires University units to develop and maintain plans for academic, business, or operational disruption. Disruption can be anticipated or unanticipated from large events, severe weather, or air quality. Disruption impacts may affect facilities, utilities, technology infrastructure, people, and suppliers.

The University will maintain a business continuity management program and plans that reasonably ensure the University’s ability to continue, restore, and recover critical business, academic, and research functions interrupted by an incident or ongoing emergency. The University’s business continuity and resiliency program will align with local, state, and federal law and be grounded in best practices, as well as regulations that are specific to higher education, research, and medical institutions.

Scope

This policy applies to all University locations including UW Bothell, UW Seattle, and UW Tacoma, jointly owned facilities, University occupied or operated space, and temporary field operations and field trips that are under the control of University operations and staff.

UW Bothell has special considerations related to co-location with Cascadia College and relationships with local jurisdictions and agencies.

UW Tacoma has special considerations related to local jurisdictions and agencies.

UW Medicine locations have unique regulatory requirements regarding emergency management and business continuity planning. Business continuity and organizational resilience work for UW Medicine is led by the UW Medicine Preparedness and Business Continuity Program. Continuity and resiliency plan support from UW’s Business, Academic and Research Continuity program is available to UW Medicine and its clinical operations as requested and will be coordinated with the UWM Preparedness and Business Continuity program for alignment.

Definitions

Business Continuity—The preservation of the capability of the University to continue academic, business and other operations at acceptable pre-defined levels during and following a disruptive incident.

Business Units—The generalized term used to identify specific functional areas for planning purposes. The term includes all academic and student-serving units in addition to administrative, research and clinical units.

Disaster Recovery (IT) —Disaster recovery in this instance applies to technology systems upon which the University depends and the process to restore technology availability and capabilities for infrastructure, applications, data, services, and hardware within timeframes acceptable to University needs.

Organizational Resilience—The ability of the University to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from impacts or disruptions to the execution of academics, research, student support and related events and services.

Preparedness Oversight Committee—The University group that guides the continuity program goals and objectives and provides sign-off for University wide Business Continuity strategies.

Policy Statements

1. Continuity and Resiliency Plan Development and Maintenance

University units are required to have a plan in place that ensures an appropriate level of operational continuity to support the University’s critical services in the event of an incident or crisis causing disruptive impacts. Each vice president, vice provost, dean, department chair, director, and manager is responsible for the operational continuity of the respective units. Plans must be consistent with current UW Human Resources policies.

Plan development guidance and support are provided by the University’s Business, Academic & Research Continuity (BARC) program staff. Continuity and resiliency plans are maintained in the HuskyReady platform by individual units with support from the University’s Business Continuity & Resiliency Program in the Division of Campus Community Safety. Plans will be in the HuskyReady format supported by BARC. All plan development and plan refreshes will be supported by BARC. Annually, BARC will engage select units across the University to develop new plans and refresh and exercise existing plans.

The fundamental dependency on digital communication and information storage via email, shared document sites, third-party applications, and other digital supports requires that every continuity and resiliency plan include assessment of digital dependencies and plans for operating through or after a digital disruption (Disaster Recovery).

Continuity and resiliency plans must account for suspended onsite operations or other disruptions in typical work locations or hours and must reference up-to-date UW Human Resources information.

2. Activating a Continuity and Resiliency Plan

In the event of an anticipated disruption (e.g., forecast snow and ice prompting suspended onsite operations) or a spontaneous one (e.g., a widespread power outage), unit leaders and administrators will consult the unit continuity and resiliency plan as part of the unit’s response.

3. Compliance

The BARC program will report annually to the Preparedness Oversight Committee and to the Vice President for Campus Community Safety on metrics and activities over the past 12 months supporting continuity and resiliency planning across the University, including examples of plan activations in the previous 12 months.