In introducing Service Continuity Management we do not intend to recommend
heavy expenditure or time-consuming tasks. We aim to help you use other FITS
processes to become more aware of the needs of service continuity and to
improve your ability to respond to a threatening situation.
Service continuity management needs to be ready for any situation. It takes over
where preventative maintenance leaves off, in that it is what you need when all else
has failed. How serious it is for you depends on how important ICT is to the day-to-
day operation of your school. If you can fairly easily and quickly revert to manual
procedures or methods, then it is not too much of an issue. If you rely totally on ICT,
then it is serious.
The important thing to begin with is that you know what ICT services are used and
what the order of criticality is. If you know this, you know where to start and where to
finish. You still have to work out how to do it, but at least you know what 'it' is!
The scope of FITS Service Continuity Management, therefore, is to concentrate on
defining and prioritising services, identify some potential risks and look at cheap
and easy ways in which you can be ready to respond to a major outage.
In the long term, you can examine ways of reducing risks, implement some risk-
reducing changes if appropriate, and consider preparing a full contingency plan for
your ICT systems. In the short- to medium-term, though, we think that your time
would be better spent implementing the other FITS processes to improve the
overall resilience and reliability of your ICT infrastructure and minimise some of the
risks as you go.
