Gill Blog

Oil and Banking Controls

2010-06-04T15:50:00.002-04:00

Can we draw connection points between events off the Louisiana Coast and the financial meltdown of 2008? Hmm, let's see. So the blow-up of financial markets was largely triggered by the fact that regulatory controls over things such as the way in which mortgages in the secondary market could be packaged as institutional grade securities were substantially eased. No regulatory controls, the build-up of unchecked risk and kaboom!

Let's now fast forward to a rig in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Lax regulations on drilling standards (why mandate the need to drill relief wells? we're okay), because it's just an added cost. Once a crazy build-up of methane encountered, the whole thing becomes a timebomb that explodes minutes after.

For the most part, Canada is a pretty dull place. Too many rules and not enough looseness. It's the type of place where the government likes to stick their fingers in places the free market thinks it has no place, like banking systems and oilfields. The regulators impose a ton of risk controls and compliance measures required to do business in these spaces and come down hard on those who choose to cut corners. It's a place where rigid controls over who gets mortgages and for how much are strictly enforced. It's also a place where any offshore drilling can only take place if relief wells are drilled.

So far so good in the Great White North. As for the issues that flying fast in the U.S.? Maybe sticking to the old line about Communist buggaboos will hold back that wolves.

Brand Risk Associated with Third Party Contracts

2010-05-05T21:03:00.002-04:00

So the casual talk around the water cooler today is that given the costs associated with the clean-up in the gulf, when everything's said and done, BP will be done like dinner. Very unfortunate once the full dynamics of the situation are considered. Many will agree that BP's brand is tarnished forever, regardless of what happens, but actually, this represents an instance where brand damage was at least in some part associated with their collaboration with of a third party contractor Transocean, who owned the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that sunk to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico after two days after an explosion that occurred on April 22.

It's still too early to definitively pinpoint the cause (given the rig now sits on the ocean bed 5,000 feet below the surface, the cause will likely never be determined), but regardless of the outcome, it is the case of two business partners: a large multinational energy company with a highly visible brand, and a relatively anonymous owner of drilling platforms. It doesn't matter who's at fault, from the standpoint of public perception, all the blame and risk shifted over to BP.

Over the last few years, I worked for a large financial institution, whose global headquarters were housed in a multi-story sky scraper, with prominent company signage affixed to a facade just above the top floor. The building exterior was finished in marble slabs that had been affixed during building construction in the mid-1970's. I suppose the tiles can hang only so long before wear and tear take over. Two years ago, during a fierce windstorm, one of these tiles (approximately five feet by five feet) became dislodged, and came crashing down more than 50 floors to the sidewalk below. Fortunately, this occurred at around 6:30 in the evening, and miraculously, nobody was impacted at street level.

What happened in the next few hours was telling and indicative of the risks associated with unique third party agreements. The building, and its maintenance were the responsibility of the building owner, however, from the public's standpoint, this prominent landmark with bank signage prominently displayed on top was the bank's. The next morning, the major dailies splashed pictures of the building and the bank's logo on the front page. The truth of where the fault actually lay was irrelevant; in the eyes of the public, the blame lay totally on the shoulders of the company whose banner shined prominently on top of the building.

Circle this back to BP and the Deepwater Horizon. Moral of the story? Always beware of risks associated with third party contracts.

Business Continuity in Banking vs. Retail

2010-05-03T21:10:00.002-04:00

For the most part, I've been an inactive blogger since taking a business continuity job with a large bank in 2006. Well, I just moved things along this past month, as I now moved to one of the country's largest retailers as one of the guys charged with developing an end to end business continuity program in that organization.

Interesting comparisons and contrasts between financial services and retail. By their very nature, banks are charged with the fiduciary duty of safeguarding their customer's assets, and this is the main driver of comprehensive risk management programs (business continuity now resides under this umbrella). Because of this, the programs tend to be some of the most rigorous in any given sector. But really, what is actually being safeguarded? For the most part it's all about adding a resiliency layer to the electronic movement of funds - clearing and settlement, it's called.

Now, think about what is being protected in a retail environment, especially for a big box retailer that provides a wide assortment of goods. Products are sourced from around the world using elaborate just in time delivery systems. The supply chain complexities involved in the global distribution of goods is mind boggling. Domestically, the corporation needs to create resiliency around its franchisee program. and create business continuity standards for its corporate operations. None of this has a regulatory body that provides oversight, so everything is driven purely by market forces.

In other words, if any significant disruption were to negatively impact operations for an extended period, it could have serious impacts on brand reputation.

If I can actually get myself to get back into the practice of blogging, I'll elaborate more. Feels nice to tap out a few lines again!

Parallel Addictions?

2009-02-21T13:40:00.000-05:00

The recent volatility of oil prices has inevitably led to a broader discussion about our dependence on oil and the need to develop new sources of clean energy. Try as we will to avoid the topic, the facts continue to mount. Gone are the days when our insatiable appetite for oil was satisfied by the seemingly endless supply of light sweet crude gushing freely from the oil fields of Texas, and Happy Motoring was the mantra for a generation that believed the future had arrived (how else to explain the introduction of the AMC Pacer?).

Over the past 35 years the landscape has changed dramatically. Increased demand from developing giants like China and India combined with our love of SUVs has created oil shortages not created by oil producers’ desire to curtail supply, as much as it has by their inability to keep pace with an ever increasing global demand. Hence, it’s not surprising that when pundits look into a crystal ball and identify the one single point of failure in a system ensuring our long term stability and security, all points lead to our reliance or addiction to oil (I’ll come back to that).

Amidst the uncertainty, there are still those who doggedly cling to the belief that the auto industry is simply reacting to market demands; the “give the people what they want” mentality. In a particularly animated conversation in our lunchroom today, I debated this point with a colleague who saw no fault in the collective strategic decision making of Detroit. “Look,” he began, “some people like big cars and SUVs; Detroit is just giving people what they want.”

I quickly responded “Do you know how hard the auto industry in Washington has been lobbying lawmakers not to increase taxes on oil, and this in turn continues to fuel demand for big dumb cars?”

“Nor should they” my friend retorted, “that would impose artificial variables in the free market system.” At that moment I caught myself sizing up his graying temples, thinning hair, and expanding girth and realized that like me, he probably came of age when Ronald Reagan became President with his prescription that society’s ills would be cured when government stepped aside and let the free market run the show. Indeed, he could have been making a speech from an era when mousse transformed limp hair into a form that seemed capable of taking flight at any moment.

In the summer of 1991 I was a student at the University of Waterloo studying economics, when a wise professor, Wayne Thirsk began a lecture by asking the class if we knew what portion of the price we paid for gas went toward taxes. Frankly, I don’t remember whether that was 20% or 60%, but the entire class was perplexed by the notion taxes constituted such a large proportion of what we paid; apparently, the forces of communism hadn’t died when the Berlin Wall fell two years before, they only crossed the Atlantic and swooped in under radar. Dr. Thirsk rationalized this explaining the tax could be used to encourage drivers to curtail their driving habits, while using the revenues to fund the development of alternative energies.

During the same semester I took a political science elective and our professor gave us an open-ended assignment requiring we choose a contemporary hot-button issue and analyze it from a perspective where personal liberty conflicted with public good. One of the biggest issues of the day was the Ontario Government’s attempt to launch a sustainable program that would curtail smoking; two years prior it had enacted its first significant anti-smoking legislation banning smoking indoors and now the cost for a pack of cigarettes jumped from about $2.50 to $7.50; the province rationalized the additional tax revenue was a user fee for smokers (Ontario, like other jurisdictions in Canada has a publicly-funded health care system, so from a financial point of view it made sense to target smokers who imposed a disproportionate demand on health care resources).

At the time, this seemed inconceivable. I grew up when smoking was socially acceptable, even sophisticated, but once the government determined to rid Ontarians of this addiction, it started a program that would never look back. Today, these efforts have resulted in significantly reducing the number of smokers, and marginalizing those who continue to light up. Smoking has in fact become a curious vestige from another era. It is interesting then to note that the pitch made by those advocating the development of alternate energies always includes the standard catch phrase: “we need to break our addiction to oil.” Sound familiar?

I used this as my analogy as I plead my case in the lunchroom and said that if all of our actions were calibrated to “give the people what they want”, then most of us would still be dragging to our heart’s content (a rapidly weakening one) on an endless flow of cigarettes, our kids could pick up a pack at the snap of a finger, and Joe Camel would likely have a series of instructional smoking videos out on YouTube. Oh, and a whole lot more of us would be dead. Sometimes, the government has to step in and create artificial mechanisms disrupting the flow of the free market and curtailing our individual liberties for the sake of the public good.

Quite the program, and not too dissimilar to the types of plans energy experts envision for steering us away from oil and adopting alternate energy sources. The similarities between our love of oil and tobacco are noteworthy. Their widespread popularity took off around the same time, until people started realizing these were actually unhealthy addictions. In breaking our habits, both programs begin by imposing taxes to curtail a certain behaviour, and follow up with steps intended to wean us off our powerful addiction. With oil, it is hoped that one day our past dependency will also look like another curious relic from a by-gone era.

Doughnuts and BCP Conferences

2008-02-28T08:43:00.004-05:00

What a perfect day to get back to the business of blogging. It's a crisp -15 Celsius outside and with the wind, it feels like -30. Under these circumstances, you never know what can happen. I have been on somewhat of a self-imposed exile over the past year, but have spent the time getting only deeper into this field we call business continuity planning. Frankly, I'm amazed at how many of the ideas we pioneered within this field (e.g. blogging, webcasts before ubiquitous broadband connections) have become mainstream for so many organizations out to make the mighty buck.

Something seems to be missing in the dialogue. As much as BCP-types are using technology to get the message out, the actual message that is going out is about as fresh as cheap cigar. Time and time again, all we get is the same rhetoric with familiar refrains such as "Are we Prepared?" "What is the new normal" or value-pitch promotionals that inevitably begin with "9-11, Katrina, Blackouts, SARS - this could happen to you." Please, give me a break. If you think I'm the only one singing from the pulpit, believe me, there are others.

I was asked in a meeting yesterday by the head of a BCP committee who is eager to assume a key leadership position within risk the best strategy by which she can ramp up her knowledge. I tossed out a few suggestions, but she seemed really excited by the idea of conferences. My opinion? I think the premise of conferences is good, but year after year when you attend those conferences, you start to realize the speakers are recycling the same song and dance. Every once in a while, you'll find someone who has extrapolated earlier learnings into something great, but in general it all tends to be the same old stuff. I liken the conference circuit to the old economics analogy of the law of diminishing returns best illustrated by a box of a dozen doughnuts. The first doughnut you eat is heavenly; the second still pretty good; by the time you start nibbling on the third, you're already getting tired of it; by the time you get to the sixth, all the warm and fuzzy stuff you may have been feeling is out the window. Now, simply make a quick substitute: swap doughnuts for BCP conferences, and you start to get the picture.

In order for the dialogue to meaningfully advance, planners everywhere have to take stock in exactly how this field is evolving. The key is moving this field from one that is grounded in a compliance-based orientation into one that is much more strategic. When time permits, I will periodically fire up the old blog and share what I can in my attempt to help move things along.

Pandemic Influenza Mitigation

2007-02-02T13:07:00.000-05:00

Interim Pre-pandemic Planning Guidance: Community Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Mitigation in the United States - Early Targeted Layered use of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions

Mitigation guidelines issued by the CDC
February 1, 2007 (108 pages, PDF).

Coverage of the press conference at Avian Flu Diary.

Martin Luther King, Jr. & Gandhi

2007-01-15T20:28:00.001-05:00

Mohandas K. Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 into a family of moderate wealth in western India. Trained as a lawyer, he would go on to demonstrate against racism in South Africa and colonial rule in India, using a technique of satyagraha, or nonviolent resistance. A testament to the revolutionary power of nonviolence, Gandhi directly influenced Martin Luther King, Jr., who argued that "the Gandhian philosophy of nonviolence is the only logical and moral approach to the solution of the race problem in the United States."

... more ...

While in prison, Gandhi began a fast to protest the policy of separate electorates for untouchables—those who occupied India's lowest caste—within India's new constitution. The fast elicited public attention, helped to refocus attention on the problem of untouchability, and resulted in a major campaign. A resolution was passed by India's Constituent Assembly in 1947 making the practice of untouchability illegal. It was a historic decision that the New York Times compared with the abolition of slavery.

Despite Gandhi's urgings, on 15 August 1947, in the midst of violence and rioting, Britain transferred power to a partitioned India, creating the two independent states of India and Pakistan. Gandhi was dejected by the sacrifice of unity in India's independence, as he wrote, "it would be on the question of Hindu-Moslem unity that my Ahimsa [nonviolence] would be put to its severest test."

On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was assassinated while entering a prayer meeting in New Delhi. The man who demonstrated to the world the revolutionary power of nonviolence to counter racism in South Africa, colonial rule in India, and the economic exploitation of workers and peasants was gone; but Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence would go on to directly influence Martin Luther King, Jr. and the American civil rights movement, as well as many other nonviolent struggles throughout the world.

Martin Luther King, Jr. walking up to the Samadhi (cremation site) of Mahatma Gandhi, 1959. Royal Studio.

Homeland Security Report

2007-01-06T11:10:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than five years after the September 11 attacks, only four big U.S. cities have emergency communications allowing police, fire and medical officials to coordinate fully during a crisis, a federal report said.

The Department of Homeland Security report, due to be released officially on Wednesday, listed Washington, D.C.; San Diego, California; the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area of Minnesota; and Columbus, Ohio, as the major urban areas that achieved "most advanced" status.

The study awarded the same status to the smaller metropolitan areas of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Laramie, Wyoming.

Portions of the report obtained by Reuters said federal officials surveyed the emergency communications systems of 75 urban and metropolitan areas.

New York City, which was hardest hit by the 2001 attacks that killed 3,000 people, did not appear among those with the most advanced systems. Neither did Chicago, another city seen as a potential target.

The report ranked Chicago in the early stages of communications development and cited political divisions between the city and surrounding Cook County as the reason.

The inability of police and fire officials to communicate during the September 11 attacks was blamed for the deaths of New York City firefighters despite a police warning when the World Trade Center towers began to collapse.

The September 11 commission, which investigated the attacks, recommended "interoperability" of the communications systems of urban emergency services.

The new Homeland Security report said 75 urban and metropolitan areas have policies governing interoperability. But it said leadership and planning have lagged and emergency services in some areas were still in need of regular training.

Homeland Security awarded most-advanced status to areas that have standard procedures for interoperable communications, proven familiarity with the equipment during emergencies and a strategic plan for meeting further communications goals.

Happy Holidays

2006-12-25T11:41:00.000-05:00

Students join sand sculpture artists to create a 30-meter-long (100-foot-long) Santa Claus sculpture on the Puri golden beach, in the Indian state of Orissa on the eve of Christmas, Sunday, Dec. 24, 2006. Though Hindus and Muslims comprise the majority of the population in India, Christmas is celebrated with much fanfare.
(AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout)

The Carnival of the Capitalists

2006-11-06T00:00:00.000-05:00

We're pleased to host the Carnival of the Capitalists at Gill Blog again this year. Remembering what a huge success last year's party was here, we planned ahead for a good turnout and hired this magnificent tent from Carnival Marquees in the UK, who we'd like to thank for the use of the tent. We'd also like to thank Igloos, the luxury travelling loo company, for the bespoke lavatories.

With formalities out of the way, let's see who's at the party.

Jack Yoest at Reasoned Audacity has 7 Tips for Mass Marketing, earning the top spot in this week's Carnival of the Capitalists for, among other things, this pullquote:

A few months ago, Charmaine and I visited Tammy in her beautiful Georgetown home in Your Nation's Capital. She put up a tent in her back yard and had a few of her closest A listers over for an off the record party. OTR. Which means I couldn't talk about what Micheal Barone said about CNN nor who Chris Matthews was talking to. Contacts connected. Deals got done.

Carmine Coyote, on the Slow Leadership blog, looks at the place of creativity in business, and concludes it is often misunderstood and underrated.

Trizoko, a daily biz journal to empower company-builders to kick ass, explains how to price your brand's products.

Photon Courier has good news that MIT researchers have developed a modified gasoline engine said to reduce fuel consumption by 30% while also reducing engine size.

James Hamilton of Econbrowser suggests that the way to make sense of conflicting estimates of the employment situation is to combine the evidence from different sources.

The Boring Made Dull reports on Minimum Wage Shennanigans in Ohio.

Wisdom From Wenchypoo's Mental Wastebasket looks at the economics of a college education. Wenchypoo also has an interesting post about the revolt of the fairly-rich hard-working people with good educations.

Free Money Finance has some thoughts on the value of a college education, too.

Economic Edge, musings on investing, money management, life, and personal finance, advises How to Invest For High Returns & Avoid Losing Your Original Investment. This post is written in response to a reader's question on the "About" page. Ah, the power of the business blog.

Canadian Entrepreneur Rick Spence presents a post about telling good credit risks from bad, with information for anyone who wants to be able to tell whether a given small business is serious about seeking success.

Adventures in Money Making tells how individual investors can invest in the adult entertainment industry.

The Sharpener is trying to make a point with a post on the scary economics of Halloween.

Five Cent Nickel also has an economic analysis of Halloween.

RadicalHop.com says venture capitalists adore fremiums this year.

Knowing what will cause financial failure is just as important as knowing what financial steps you should take so that your don't sabotage yourself. Personal Finance Advice makes note of 10 steps that will ensure financial failure.

Britain looks set to become the first western country to introduce a regulatory regime to support the domestic issuance of sukuk so-called "Islamic bonds", or those which do not pay overt interest. Mover Mike discusses this news he spotted in the Financial Times.

Bob Witeck and Wes Combs are the authors of Business Inside Out: Capturing Millions of Brand Loyal Gay Consumers. Their DC-based firm, Witeck-Combs Communications, Inc., works with uber cool, gay-friendly clients and their names are synonymous with thought leadership on LGBT demographics and marketplace trend spotting. Queercents asked them to respond with their thoughts about the myth of gay affluence, the behavior of queer consumers and a few personal questions to drive the conversation home.

If your boss leaves confidential salary info in plain sight, is it fair game? InsureBlog's Henry Stern thinks not; what about you?

David Maister asks and answers this question: "What can the Marines teach your business?" I would have thought the answer might be semper fee.

"Have you ever wondered what were your biggest mistakes in your professional career? Which things you should do another way or at least try to change?" At Software Project Management, Pawel Brodzinski candidly shares some of his biggest mistakes made during his professional career in different roles.

Becky McCray at Small Biz Survival has a review of the scoop on Google partnering up with Intuit, integrating several Google services into QuickBooks.

Michael Wade at Execupundit.com gives a lighthearted look at film dialogue that matches management topics.

At Blog Business World, Wayne Hurlbert says, "Entrepreneurship has made a resurgence, in recent years, as a viable career option for many people."

How Do People Get Rich? Apparently, it's the power of compounding interest.

Dan Melson posted Sellers Lending to Buyers and Selling the Note at Searchlight Crusade.

Nike has expanded the marketing campaign for the new Air Zoom LeBron IV away from television into a variety of new media. Mark at SportsBiz says it may set the tone for consumer marketing of the future.

"Great for accountants. This is not so good for shareholders and the public," says Leon Gettler at Sox First, pointing out that Sarbanes-Oxley has been a gold-mine for accountants but that hasn’t stopped them pushing to get Government protection from shareholders who might want to sue them for doing bad audits. "And now it looks like the US Government, with the blessing of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, is going to give it to them," says Gettler.

Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends points out that immigrants refresh the supply of small businesses.

How long should a sales letter be? Just as a 300 page book isn’t inherently better or worse than a 200 page book, a four page sales letter isn’t inherently better or worse than a one page letter, according to Jim Logan. But there is a danger in being both too short or too long...

On that thought, it looks like our Carnival of the Capitalists is about to wind down. For everyone who wants to continue the business blog carnvial, we recommend moving the party over to Political Calculations, which features the best of the business blogosphere every week On the Moneyed Midways -- including three excellent posts from last week's Carnival of the Capitalists.

Before we take down the tent, we should note that there's something else on a lot of people's minds this week -- midterm elections in the United States.

Inactivist, an unpolitical demonstration by deeply uncommitted inactivists, has evidence that the Investor Class is delighted with the prospect of a Democratic victory in the midterms and a return to divided government.

For more election coverage, we encourage blog carnival lovers to check out Blawg Review, the carnival of law bloggers, for the next two issues at Votelaw and the Election Law blog.

We'd like to thank Rob May and Jay Solo for the opportuntiy to host the Carnival of the Capitalists at Gill Blog again this year, and we look forward to having another chance to host the CotC again in the near future.

Go here to see who's hosting the Carnival of the Capitalists next.

Evian Flu

2006-11-03T18:25:00.000-05:00

Structural Differences Between Avian Flu and Other Events

2006-10-18T11:04:00.000-04:00

There's much discussion these days about how business should go about addressing avian flu, should a global pandemic break out. More often than not, business continuity planners continue to lump avian flu with a number of other events of mass disruption. I think, however, that avian flu should be approached differently. In fact the dynamics of avian flu are completely different than the dynamics of most other events, regardless of their impact. Consider the following illustration:

This chart shows that avian flu differentiates itself from an other type of event based upon two criteria: event duration (whereas other events can unfold in a moment or a day, allowing recovery to take place when the event is over, the duration of an event such as avian flu can continue for weeks or months; receovery cannot take place until after the event is over), and the way in which anxiety levels of people which are usually at their highest point during a more "traditional" event and gradually decrease over time will actually increase over time.

The chart is fairly self-explanatory. Take a look at it and make sure your planners understand this dynamic and calibrate their planning strategies accordingly.

Managing Business Risk

2006-10-15T13:18:00.000-04:00

The Sourcing Innovation blog reports on a Business Continuity Planning presentation given by Francis Borromeo of Shell Oil Canada at a recent conference.

Business continuity planning and risk management does not have to be ridiculously expensive. The key is that you

1. have a business continuity plan with
2. prioritized risks and recovery plans that you can use to
3. manage the recovery process in order to
4. transition to business as usual in a manner that permits an
5. after action review to allow you to improve and thrive.

A business continuity plan not only provides a framework for the recovery of the critical business processes, but it allows you to safeguard your brand and reputation.

But it's probably last on your management priority list. After all, you only see a return when a major disruption or disaster happens. However, considering that Aberdeen recently found that your average international company experiences two significant disruptions per year, it is critical that you have one. So how do you get the support and resources you need to initiate one?

Read Michael Lamoureaux's post to find out.

Of all the noteworthy business blog posts reviewed this past week on the Political Calculations blog, this post was awarded the title "The Best Post of the Week, Anywhere!"

Impact of Global Warming on Financial Services

2006-10-14T20:49:00.000-04:00

At a recent conference in Australia jointly hosted by The Insurance Ombudsman Service, Financial Industry Complaints Service, and the Banking and Financial Services Ombudsman, Bill Peck, General Manager Risk Management and Compliance for AON Australia, delivered a paper with an interesting PowerPoint presentation on Global Warming - Impact on Financial Services [pdf].

Risk Management Insures Against Terrorism

2006-10-06T10:46:00.000-04:00

Representing business insurance policyholders throughout the construction, entertainment, manufacturing, real estate, retailing and transportation sectors of the economy, the Coalition to Insure Against Terrorism (CIAT) is seeking a long-term solution to make comprehensive terrorism risk insurance coverage available and affordable after the expiration of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Extension Act at the end of 2007.

On this organization's blog there's a link to a recent interview in which Terry Fleming, Director of Risk Management for Montgomery County Maryland as well as a member of the Board of Directors of the Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS), sat down with the hosts of The REIT Report podcast to discuss the current state of terrorism risk insurance in the United States.

The Real Estate Roundtable has links to testimony given recently to committees of Congress by Roundtable Chairman Christopher J. Nassetta on behalf of the Coalition to Insure Against Terrorism.

His testimony emphasized three points: that the market conditions necessitating creation of a federal terrorism reinsurance backstop in 2002 have not changed; that, as demonstrated in 14 other nations, there is a need for a long-term, public-private partnership with a role for the federal government; and that consumers of terrorism insurance stand ready to assist Congress in devising a workable, appropriate solution.

The Risk and Insurance Management Society has information about the upcoming 2006 Intergovernmental Forum on Risk Management: Case Studies of Effective Implementation in Ottawa, Canada on October 24-25, and the 2006 RMIA National Conference of the Risk Management Institute of Australasia scheduled for November 12-14 in Melbourne, Australia.

Remote BCP Using VPN

2006-09-26T08:26:00.000-04:00

Our latest article connecting remote work to business continuity has just been published in the innaugural issue of the Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning in London (more details to come). Yes, it is indeed gratifying to know that the message we have been pushing for some time now - i.e. how telework plays a key role an integral part of business continuity - is being recognized, but as it does, it requires that we drill down to more granular levels of detail that force us to offer specific solutions.

One topic that has garnered a fair bit of discussion is how is it that organizations that deal with very sensitive data can risk putting this data out over networks that run the real risk of being hacked? The answer is increasingly being found in private networks. I came across this press release this morning that really drives the point home:

A new remote access business continuity plan, based around SSL VPNs, is being launched in the UK by SSL VPN vendor Array Networks and its new value added distributor Wick Hill.

The Array Business Continuity (ABC) Flex Plan allows workers to access business critical applications and resources on the corporate network anytime, anywhere, when circumstances prevent them getting into the office. This may be due to natural disasters such as avian flu, terror threats or other business interruptions such as transport disruption, bad weather, or seasonal events (e.g., student registration).

By no means does this represent the one killer app that will revolutionize the space, but is presented to illustrate what is sure to become a growing area.

Kimveer Gill a Disaster Waiting to Happen

2006-09-14T11:07:00.000-04:00

The 25-year-old man who opened fire at a Montreal college yesterday has a very common surname, Gill, that has attracted a lot of attention to Gill Blog, which is not related to Kimveer Gill.

Media attention has focussed on the gunman's blog postings on VampireFreaks.com, which apparently contains numerous photos and comments that, in retrospect, should have been taken very seriously by authorities with regard to weapons displayed.

The blog, posted on an online hub of goth culture, paints a dark portrait of the 25-year-old man published reports have identified as the trenchcoat-wearing gunman who opened fire on students at Montreal's Dawson College Wednesday, killing one and injuring 19 others.

Gill's image gallery, which contains more than 50 photos, depicts the young man in various poses holding a Baretta CX4 Storm semi-automatic rifle and donning a long black trenchcoat and combat boots.

Kimveer Gill, who is known to other users on the website as Fatality666, describes himself as Indian, 6-foot-one, who was born in Montreal on July 9, 1981, and refers to himself as the "Angel of Death", a disturbing moniker.

The shootings recalled Marc Lepine's murderous rampage at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique school on Dec. 6, 1989, when he opened fire and ended up killing 14 women.

[Police Chief Yvan] Delorme said the lessons learned from the Montreal Massacre about the need to co-ordinate emergency services and act promptly helped save lives.

"Before, our technique was to establish a perimeter around the place and wait for the SWAT team," he said. "Now the first police officers go right inside. The way they acted saved lives."

While such incidents are not classified at "terrorism" by law enforcement authorities, it seems that rapid response teams that are geared up for terrorist attacks are better prepared to handle random acts of violence by mentally disturbed individuals without any apparent political motivation.

The latest shooting has also triggered memories of the 1999 Columbine massacre in the United States, where two teenagers killed 12 other students and a teacher, before killing themselves.

Be Ready Camp for Kids

2006-09-13T08:55:00.000-04:00

When one hears of Huntville, Alabama, the big news often centers on the Space Camp at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

This week, as part of the federal Homeland Security Department's National Preparedness Month, Space Camp hosted "Be Ready Camp" where 80 area sixth-graders helped triage and evacuate the victims of a mock disaster.

Since Monday, the students from Huntsville, Madison and Madison County schools have been learning about the importance of having a family emergency plan and what to put in a preparedness kit.

The students are also visiting fire stations, the Madison County 911 headquarters and the Emergency Operations Center, among other tours.

The real focus of Be Ready Camp is to teach the students about individual, family and community preparedness," said Tracey Ayres, communications director for the Alabama Department of Homeland Security in an interview with The Huntsville Times.

Ready Kids is the web-based experience for children presented online by the federal DHS at Ready.gov.

The Dust At Ground Zero

2006-09-11T01:43:00.000-04:00

In her first appearance on 60 Minutes, Katie Couric reports how the dust at Ground Zero affected first responders.

In all there were about 40,000 people who worked on the pile — a collection of firefighters, policemen, construction and utility workers. One of them was 30-year-old New York City Police Det. James Zadroga. When the planes hit the World Trade Center, he drove straight to ground zero and stayed for weeks. His father, Joseph Zadroga, says he remembers that shortly after that his son started getting sick.

"Every morning he would wake up and he said he would be coughing and hacking, and this black stuff would come up out of his lungs," Det. Zadroga's father remembers. "And he just didn't know what was happening to him. He couldn't figure out what was happening to him."

If you missed it, you can read the story and watch the video clips at the 60 Minutes website, including an interview with Christine Todd Whitman, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Five years later, Ground Zero is "The Hole in the City's Heart" described in great detail in a 24 page feature article in today's New York Times.

Wireless In Toronto

2006-09-10T23:17:00.000-04:00

The big news that got all the mainstream media attention this week was the long-awaited launch of Toronto Hydro Telecom's One Zone wireless network in Toronto's downtown core. Toronto joins a handful of other cities in Canada and around the world, including San Francisco, Philadelphia and London, England, that are setting up such a network.

"This is a watershed moment that will put Toronto on the leading edge of the telecommunications industry nationally and globally," said Toronto Mayor David Miller. "It sends a strong signal to investors, researchers and other business partners that we see Toronto as a hub for innovation, investment and continued prosperity."

One Zone™ will be free to all users from September 6, 2006 until March 6, 2007. After that time, three different packages will be offered:

1. A pre-paid monthly subscription priced at $29per month
2. A daily rate including 24 consecutive hours of use priced at $10
3. An hourly rate at $5

For more locations where free wireless access is provided at key hotspots in Toronto check out The WT Blog at Wireless Toronto, a not-for-profit group dedicated to bringing no-fee wireless Internet access to Toronto. Did you know that Yonge-Dundas Square is an Internet hotspot?

Hurricane Katrina Anniversary

2006-08-29T02:23:00.000-04:00

The 52nd Carnival of Hurricane Relief this week marks a year's worth of blog posts concerning relief efforts and recovery. Way back on November 30th, three months after Katrina, which we thought was then something of a post-Katrina milestone, we hosted the Carnival of Hurricane Relief on Gill Blog.

It's hard to believe it's been a year since Hurricane Katrina made landfall; hard to believe that there still remains so much work to do in recovery and rebuilding, and so many people still need help.

The effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans was catastrophic and long-lasting.

Katrina: the good, the bad, and the ugly

The Katrina Timeline

Mile High Club

2006-08-27T16:19:00.000-04:00

The Transportation Security Administration advises that, due to enhanced security measures, liquids, gels, lotions and other items of similar consistency will not be permitted in carry-on baggage. Generally, those types of items must be packed in your checked baggage. There are exceptions.

Members of the Mile High Club will be interested to know that personal lubricants up to 4 oz. are permitted for those who like to carry on. I can't tell you how difficult it is these days for a guy who looks like me to get into an airplane lavatory with a woman and 4 ounces of personal lubricant. Frankly, I'm more likely to cause a flight delay by dropping my new iPod in the toilet.

When the Levees Broke: A Spike Lee Film Review

2006-08-21T00:00:00.000-04:00

When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, a four hour HBO documentary set to debut over two nights, Aug. 21 and 22, just in time to mark the first anniversary of Katrina's landfall is reviewed by film critic Joe Leydon in Variety and on his movingpictureblog.

Charged with profound sorrow, galvanizing outrage and defiant resolve, Spike Lee's extraordinary "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts" renders the worst natural disaster in U.S. history -- Hurricane Katrina's unforgiving assault on New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities -- as a perfect storm of catastrophic weather, human error, socioeconomic inequity and bureaucratic dysfunction. The four-hour HBO documentary will debut over two nights just in time to mark the first anniversary of Katrina's landfall. Unfortunately, as Lee and his many interviewees repeatedly emphasize, rebuilding and recovery in the Crescent City have only just begun.

Read the review, watch the documentary, and share your thoughts and experiences. Comments are open.

In Vino Veritas

2006-08-12T22:33:00.000-04:00

Truth in advertising by Hugh MacLeod, famous for his cartoons on the backs of business cards, from a new series of wine labels for Stormhoek.

Welcome CBS News Blogophiles

2006-08-09T11:37:00.000-04:00

If you've just arrived at our humble corner of the blogosphere this morning from this wonderful link on CBS News, we're pleased you stopped by to check out our blog.

With millions of sites floating through the blogosphere, who really has time to peek at even a fraction of them? Blogophile reads them for you and presents a weekly roundup of the buzz on must-read blogs. Blogophile appears new each Wednesday, and is written by CBSNews.com's Melissa P. McNamara.

Blogophile leads with the buzz about satirist Stephen Colbert, who likes the wikiality of Wikipedia. Who's to say Brownie wasn't really doin' a heckuva job? Let's see if it doesn't say so here in the Wikipedia. There, see? It's there now. ;-)

Gill Blog can't compete with Stephen Colbert for buzz, but we know truthiness when we see it.

Bloggers are concerned that people are unprepared. "Are you ready for the next natural disaster or terrorist attack?," Michael Hampton asks at Homeland Stupidity. "If you're relying on the Department of Homeland Security’s Web site, or think the Federal Emergency Management Agency will be able to help you, then you aren’t ready."

Melissa McNamara has kindly mentioned our blog below the fold, as real newspaper journalists say, at the very bottom of her article to ensure that only her most conscientious readers are referred to the Gill Blog.

But Tony Gill points out that DHS has said the Federation of American Scientists is woefully misinformed and the Really Ready website is likely to confuse the public. So perhaps preparedness is in the eye of the beholder?

Thanks for the link love, Melissa. I'm adding Blogophile RSS Feed to my blog reader right now. Good stuff.

Google Earth a Disaster Management Tool

2006-08-02T01:51:00.000-04:00

Disaster control experts are discovering Google Earth as a powerful tool in their work, according to a recent article in Spiegel Online.

Google Earth wasn't really intended for scientists. The Google search engine's extraordinary globe, which is made up of hundreds of thousands of satellite photos and aerial images, was initially meant as a game for virtual hobby pilots. Users discovered that it was fun to fly over their own homes, swing up into space and, within seconds, swoop back down into the depths of the Grand Canyon. But now the scientific community is discovering how useful the software is for their own work.

Homeland Security applications include:

* Critical infrastructure vulnerability assessment and protection
* First responder site familiarization and planning
* Pattern visualization of surveillance data

Google Earth solutions for homeland security include professional Google Earth Enterprise Solutions and Google Earth Pro.

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast almost a year ago, people across the country and around the world wondered how to help. Many donated money; others lent their homes to dislocated survivors. A group of Googlers lent their expertise by leveraging the power of Google technology.

Over several long nights, the teams from Google Earth and Google Maps created satellite imagery overlays of the devastation in the affected region, which showed more accurately the scope of the disaster.

Soon after, Google was told that rescue workers and the U.S. Air Force were using Google Earth to find people who were stranded.

And last week, Google received formal recognition from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Members of the NGA presented the "Hurricane Katrina Recognition Award" to the Google Earth team, as well as the Google Enterprise and Global Support groups, for their direct support during the Katrina disaster. [via]

Really Ready or Not?

2006-08-01T17:17:00.000-04:00

Today the Federation of American Scientists launched ReallyReady.org, a comprehensive emergency preparedness website developed in nine weeks by FAS intern Emily Hesaltine.

Modeled after the Department of Homeland Security's Ready.gov, ReallyReady.org addresses the inaccuracies and incomplete information on the DHS site.

ReallyReady.org includes clear and accurate information to help individuals, families, businesses, and individuals with disabilities prepare for and respond to a variety of threats. A thorough analysis of Ready.gov is also available on the site.

"I know it isn't good to laugh about such a serious topic, but when I saw the graphic on Ready.gov suggesting that when a nuclear bomb goes off a hundred feet away you might want to protect yourself by walking around the corner, I just couldn't help myself," said Ivan Oelrich, Vice President of Strategic Security at FAS. "After three years and millions of dollars, taxpayers should expect a better website from the Department of Homeland Security."

The appropriate reaction to a nuclear attack is to hide from the light and heat of the blast, then walk perpendicular to the wind away from the dust cloud. Accurate information like this, not available on Ready.gov, can be found on ReallyReady.org. Modifications were also made to repetitive, lengthy, and generic Ready.gov material to make it easier to use and remember.

A section was added to help Americans with disabilities prepare for and respond to emergencies. The section, developed in collaboration with the National Organization on Disability's Emergency Preparedness Initiative, is titled "ReallyReady Disabilities" and answers questions like how to create a support network to help you in an emergency and how to develop an evacuation plan.

"The Department of Homeland Security has declared September National Preparedness Month. It would be shameful if they could not get Ready.gov into shape before then," said Michael Stebbins, Director of Biology Policy at FAS. "It took an intern two months to make ReallyReady.org, DHS should be able to make a useful site in less than a month."

Sources at DHS say the Federation of American Scientists is woefully misinformed and the Really Ready website is likely to confuse the public.

Which disaster preparedness webiste do you think is better?

www.ready.gov or www.reallyready.org

Canadian Municipalities Missing From Disaster Planning

2006-07-31T15:48:00.000-04:00

A report on the impact of federal government activities related to public safety and emergency preparedness on municipalities was recently published by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

Here's the backgrounder:

Municipal governments need a voice in decision-making if they are to ensure the safety and security of their communities, according to “Emergency: Municipalities missing from disaster planning,” a new report commissioned by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM).

The report, prepared for FCM by the National Security Group (NSG), focuses on the roles municipal governments play in managing emergencies.

The report says it is imperative for municipal governments, the first responders in more than 90 per cent of all emergencies, to have a voice in shaping the policies that legislate and regulate security and emergency preparedness.

Additionally, the report calls for a plan to guide the allocation of all funding for public security and emergency preparedness. Such a plan would require that municipal governments be recognized, consulted and properly funded so they can fulfill their responsibilities as first responders.

The report says there has been a serious increase in threats facing Canada and its municipalities and that little of the $9.5 billion spent by the federal government on security since 2001 has gone to municipalities.

Although municipalities have received some funding through federal programs, including the Joint Emergency Planning Program (JEPP) and the Heavy Urban Search and Research (HUSAR), this funding has been limited.

The NSG report updates an earlier report by Global Change Strategies International for FCM in October 2004. The earlier report demonstrated the critical role municipal governments play as first-line responders in emergencies and outlined the challenges they face in ensuring the security of Canada’s cities and communities.

The NSG report confirms many of the earlier findings and examines trends in potential hazards as well as the escalating costs resulting from them. The report takes an in-depth look at the 2003-2004 operating budgets of 12 municipalities and the proportions dedicated to emergency management and protection.

The 12 municipalities dedicated 19 to 20 per cent of their budgets to protection, with the proportion of overall expenditures dedicated to protection predicted to continue increasing.

The report makes a number of recommendations, including the need for better cooperation and coordination among governments on planning and response capabilities; municipal involvement in setting the policies and programs for emergency response; and appropriate funding.

The report is available here in pdf from the FCM website.

Katrina: What Went Wrong?

2006-07-27T14:04:00.000-04:00

The Wall Street Journal reports on what went wrong, and publishes a free chapter of Chris Cooper and Robert Block's new book on the subject, Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security. "Cooper and Block's reporting does seem to suggest that this column may have been right about the focus on terrorism and its effect on our ability to respond to natural disasters," adds Glenn Reynolds.

Video iPod

2006-07-26T10:19:00.000-04:00

Now that I'm turned on to Video iPod, it probably won't be long before we're podcasting and vlogging here on the Gill Blog, er, vlog. Stay tuned.

While we're disovering the secrets of videoblogging, you might enjoy the latest Rocketboom video.

9/11 at the Movies

2006-07-25T14:49:00.000-04:00

I just watched the movie trailer for World Trade Center, directed by Oliver Stone, which opens on August 9th. Don't know if the trailer's one to download to my iPod, but the movie reviews are encouraging:

Movies like "World Trade Center" - and "United 93," which preceded it - don't come along very often. More should.

There are many scenes that will cause audiences to reach for the tissues, but the last one is a true resurrection moment. As Jimeno, first, and then McLoughlin are lifted out of what could have been their graves, they are passed from hand-to-hand along a gauntlet made up of their colleagues, more than 50 of whom are real-life members of the PAPD, the NYPD and FDNY who were flown to Los Angeles for the scene.

Whatever one thinks of Oliver Stone, the man knows how to make movies. This is one of his best. It deserves an Oscar in so many categories. It also deserves the thanks of a grateful nation. Go and see it beginning Aug. 9 and make him a large profit so he might consider inspiring us again, as his predecessors so often did during Hollywood's Golden Age.

I'll be seeing both United 93 and World Trade Center in the next few weeks, and will collect my own thoughts here on the blog.

Comic Book Adaptation of 9/11 Report

2006-07-24T11:08:00.000-04:00

Comic industry veterans have turned The 9/11 Commission Report into a graphic novel, hoping to get the information contained in the government report out to a younger readership.

According to this review in the Washinton Post:

The book condenses the nearly 600-page federal report released by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States to fewer than 150 pages, and the creators say they hope their book will help attract young readers and others who might be overwhelmed by the original document. With sans-serif captions, artist renderings, charts and sound-describing words such as "Whooom!" and "R-rrumble," the adaptation recounts the attacks with parallel timelines of the four hijacked planes.

But can a topic as massive and sobering as Sept. 11 be dealt with effectively in the pages of a comic book?

The comic book is aimed at the "kids, teenagers and adults" unlikely to read the government's nearly 600-page version, says illustrator Ernie Colón.

Creator Sid Jacobson, publisher Thomas LeBien, 9/11 Commission member Slade Gordon and others were on hand at Comic-Con on Friday to discuss the 9/11 Report, the adaptation, and another potential 9/11 movie. Here's the video of their press conference.

Blog Censorship in India

2006-07-20T11:11:00.000-04:00

We're saddened by press reports that Gill Blog, our business blog concerning disaster planning and workplace continuity, may be blocked in India inadvertently as a result of governmental censorship in a democracy.

The country's 153 internet service providers (ISP) have blocked 17 websites since last week on federal government orders.

Some of these sites belong to Google's Blogspot, a leading international web log hosting service.

Indian bloggers say that the decision is an attack on freedom of speech.

A number of them have started filing petitions under the country's new landmark freedom of information law which gives citizens the right to access information held by the government.

Bloggers say the ban has meant that people do not even have access to blogs like the one set up to help the relatives of the victims of the recent train bombings in Mumbai (Bombay), www.mumbaihelp.blogspot.com.

We might be back online for our readers in India soon, according to India Times:

The Internet Service Providers Association of India, the body representing all internet service providers, on Wednesday instructed all its members to lift the blockage at the domain level.

This means that if you have a blog where the domain level is Blogspot or Typepad, this blockage will no longer apply to all users, but only at the sub-domain level. At the sub-domain level, only those 17 blogs which have been blacklisted by the government will continue to be inaccessible.

Hopefully then, blog readers in India will be able to read posts on Gill Blog, like "Mumbai Bounces Back After Blasts" our most recent post concerned about India.

Mumbai Bounces Back After Blasts

2006-07-16T18:12:00.000-04:00

I've really been giving a lot of thought to the Mumbai bombings over the past few days, and have been principally pondering what type of effect the bombings will have on its white hot economy. Already, there are many who are predicting that this event could create a serious setback for India's outsourcing community and questioned how well outsourcing partners in India can maintain the continuity of their operations:

In the wake of the attacks, outsourcing providers in Mumbai scrambled to make sure employees and customer data were safe and secure. Meanwhile, outsourcing customers sought reassurances that their Indian partners could handle future unforeseen events.

The terrorist attack in Mumbai—and conflict between Israel and Lebanon for that matter—raise a series of questions for companies sourcing technology globally.

Do you know the disaster recovery plans of your offshore services provider? Are their plans integrated with yours? And how prepared are these providers?

Despite such ominous predictions, and after weighing multiple scenarios in my head, I can still answer this in a word: little.

Surely, this is not the first time that India's financial capital has seen a terrorist attack, but it is the first time this has occurred during India's new period of being an economic powerhouse. In the past these types of incidents had much to do with terrorist factions, particularly from Kashmir who wanted to destabilize the country to the point where war became a distinct possibility. The underlying assumption that somehow the outsourcing industry in India will fly south as a result of the attacks has one crucial flaw: it assumes the economy will continue to be driven by low end service functions such as call centers, without recognizing the country's massive potential to move up the business value chain. It is for this reason alone that more measured analysts remain bullish about India's long-term prospects.

Despite the actions of scattered terrorists, my gut tells me that nobody's going to take the bait and undo all the good things that have happened - there's just too much going on to let this disruption get in the way of something that can rightly be described as an economic miracle. Since the last time terrorist bombs ripped through India, a middle class has been firmly established, multinationals are lining up to jump into India, and the India-Pakistan cloud that has been hanging over the continent for decades is dissipating, especially because their respective leaders, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and General Pervez Musharraf genuinely seem to like each other.

What are the lessons that can be learned from a business continuity perspective? In short, there is much to be learned from the resilience of the Indian people, who perhaps as a result of living through decades of turmoil, conflict and uncertainty have exhibited a striking ability to dust themselves off and continue to move forward. Although there are some who believe its not enough to laud the efforts of the residents of Mumbai, we in the west should pay particular attention to it.

Given the state of fear that we have become accustomed to accepting, there is much to be admired from the resolve the Indian people. Little wonder they are doing as well as they are.

Urban Telecommunities

2006-07-10T15:47:00.000-04:00

Urbanization is a feature topic in the Harvard International Review this month. The lead article, The Future of Urbanization, is written by N.J. Slabbert who, among other engagements, is an advisor to the Telework Coalition, a Washington DC-based ressearch group.

Urban Telecommunities As Regional Growth Engines

A good microcosmic example is an initiative to develop the town of La Plata, Maryland, into a pioneering telecommunity (E-Burb or wired suburb), presenting significant implications for the future of greater Washington, DC, as well as for urban regions throughout the United States, for which the La Plata project offers a growth engine model. The project envisages a telework community in which many residents will remain physically in La Plata while working virtually in DC or elsewhere, linked around the clock by fiber-optic internet and video. The project's controlling idea is a telecommunity concept developed by Dr. J.J. Hellman.

This "urban telecommunity" is not telecommuting as commonly understood—employees working from home occasionally or a loose network of geographically separated people linked periodically by the internet—but a formal group of substantial size, whose members, both remote and proximate, are continuously connected via a combination of on-screen and other contacts for public or private purposes of collegial cooperation, with most members sharing a common geographical locale. The idea of a dedicated social organization using teletechnology in this way to support a widely distributed urban workforce, metropolitan services infrastructure, and rurally located small community is an innovation of far-reaching practical and theoretical importance. It brings into useful illustrative convergence a cluster of concepts that together portends a new era in urban philosophy, embracing information technology as a positive and crucial contributor to both the social and infrastructural architectures of community.

Read the whole article to learn more about how teletechnology is shaping a new urban order.

Is Your Business Ready for a Flu Pandemic?

2006-07-08T19:53:00.000-04:00

Ford & Harrison attorneys, and F&H Solutions Group, have an interesting article posted on the firm's website as a Legal Alert:

In light of the extensive news coverage given to the possibility of an Avian flu pandemic, many employers are concerned about their operations as well as potential legal obligations should such a pandemic occur. This Alert provides guidance for developing a plan to help ensure the safety of the workplace should a pandemic occur. Having operational as well as communication plans may also prepare the organization in the event of other emergencies...

6. Identify your company policies and how they would be affected by a pandemic.

What is your company's policy on sick leave? To what extent are employees able to carry over or share/bank accrued sick leave? What are the implications of such a policy under wage payment and benefits laws?

What is your company policy on medical leave? Have you considered developing leave policies to be used in a pandemic situation that encourage employees to remain at home if they are sick or are caring for sick dependants? Such policies should be clearly worded to apply only in situations that implicate the use of your emergency management plan, to ensure they do not affect your day-to-day policies. Limit the contours of your plan to prevent it from working against you .

Do you have a telecommuting policy or at least an emergency telecommuting policy? Have you addressed any possible security concerns (through technology and through agreements creating binding legal obligations) if more employees are forced to work remotely?

Do your company policies address issues that may arise in a possible pandemic, such as: quarantine policies, social distancing policies, and increased sanitation policies to ensure a healthy work place?

You can find the complete article here. This is a very clearly written article that would be a good outline for discussions about company preparedness amongst any corporate executive group.

Lucknow Flood Evacuation Relief Efforts

2006-06-30T13:15:00.000-04:00

A mouse rides on the back of a frog in floodwaters in the northern Indian city Lucknow June 30, 2006. REUTERS/Pawan Kumar

Pandemic Planning Websites

2006-05-10T12:24:00.000-04:00

As governments and private enterprise are becoming more aware of the urgency for pandemic plans to be put in place, many are now setting up dedicated websites to not only provide up to date information on planning, but setting out specific guidelines to follow. A good example of this can be found at Mercer Consulting's dedicated site.

I came across two government-sponsored sites as well this week that are worth a closer look. The first was put up by the State of Pennsylvania and it provides a number of useful links that might help planners organize resources and begin mapping out a plan. Similarly, the Province of Ontario has undertaken a similar strategy with its own site (you may want to download the 15-page PDF which provides a very good summary).

It's good that everyone's now getting on board with this issue. The challenge now is to take the concepts that are presented from a 40,000 foot view (such as the information offered on these sites), and take it down to a level where the rubber actually hits the road.

David Letterman Weighs in on Avian Flu

2006-04-24T12:08:00.000-04:00

As more people start to understand the importance and urgency of a potential avian flu pandemic, it's little suprise that the whole notion of what to do should emergency strike is being tackled on several fronts. Here's David Letterman's take on the subject.

A Global Alliance for Survival

2006-04-15T02:42:00.000-04:00

Next month, I'm off to Las Vegas to attend a conference on business continuity, security and emergency management planning. The event, CPM 2006 West, is organized by CPM Group, whose website at www.ContingencyPlanning.com is on our list of important business continuity planning links in the sidebar on the right of this weblog.

Subscribers to the CPM-Global Assurance newsletter got a special introduction to the upcoming conference that includes discussions by some of the presenters, including an article of mine on the importance of pandemic planning. "Learning from the Past: How SARS can create a valuable planning proxy for avian influenza" is an introduction to my presentation on Workplace Continuity, a subject we focus on and discuss often on the Gill Blog. But there's nothing like getting together face-to-face with experts from other disciplines and catching up with many of the interesting folks I've met through this weblog and at other industry functions.

So, it's off to Las Vegas next month for some fun work and serious play. Make a note in your calendar to attend CPM 2006 WEST and form a Global Alliance for Survival. Come together with your peers to interact in an educational forum and take away the knowledge to save your organization. Gain a new network of support from the industry experts, thought-leaders and professionals who attend. Please give me a call, or drop me a note in an email, if you'd like to meetup at the conference in Vegas.

Journal of Facilities Management

2006-04-14T21:57:00.000-04:00

Journal of Facilities Management is a strategic level journal for Heads of Facilities and Corporate Real Estate. The journal features a combination of theoretical and practical articles, complemented by a wide range of case studies and regular features, identifying key implications for senior practitioners in Facilities Management.

"Workplace continuity: how risk and technology will affect facilities strategy," an article of mine published in the latest issue of the Journal of Facilities Management, has just been made available online from the publisher, if anyone who is not already a subscriber to the journal is looking for nicely printed copies. Here's the gist of it.

Abstract: Purpose – To provide a summary of factors contributing toward the movement toward decentralized workplaces; this will largely be driven by the need to principles of business continuity, as well as the increasing ubiquity of broadband.

Design/methodology/approach – This takes a chronological approach to the development of a few previously separate organizational movements (i.e. business continuity, telework, advances in remote technology, facility strategy) and demonstrates how recent events have caused a collision of these factors. The result of this has been to energize the movement to alternative workplace models.

Findings – The paper demonstrates how the concepts presented move from a theoretical construct to a practical one based on factors including reduced implementation costs, a greater need to protect human and physical capital, the need for organizations to remain competitive, as well as the need to address work and lifestyle balance needs of employees.

Research limitations/implications – Enterprise-wide applications of business continuity are still relatively new, and the penetration levels of broadband are not quite at the point where change will occur immediately.

Practical implications – Real estate professionals can effectively redefine their responsibilities and enhance their strategic profiles within the organizations they represent by understanding and integrating basic principles of workplace continuity.

Originality/value – This provides a blueprint for planners considering fundamental changes in workplace configuration.

The publishing policy here at the Gill Blog has always been to give away our ideas for free, leveraging the efficiency of the Internet. Please help yourself to our previously published work here, and feel free to come back as often as your like for more.

Managing Mobile Technology

2006-04-10T08:19:00.000-04:00

How much is too much? This is the theme of this recently published article that highlights some of the downsides associated with being too plugged in to the gadgets that create the anywhere, anytime office. Just how many options do we have today? Consider the following:

Consider how many devices and technologies are used to stay in touch: wireless e-mail devices; Wi-Fi laptops loaded with e-mail, office suite, time entry and various practice applications; cell phones; hands-free headsets; a lot of cables (laptop power brick, modem, Ethernet, universal serial bus, FireWire, audio, iPod charger, cell phone charger and personal digital assistant charger); home, office and cell phone voice mail accounts; professional and personal e-mail accounts; office, PC and Internet faxes; text messaging; instant messaging; replicated e-mail account on your laptop’s hard drive for offline reading; Virtual Private Networks, Citrix or other remote access software; camera phones, digital cameras and portable scanners; and a prepaid Starbucks card (for a liberal dose of Wi-Fi and caffeine).

Inevitably, we will move toward a more mobile office, but as this happens, it is important to manage the transition. This piece provides an excellent roadmap.

Is Business Ready for a Flu Pandemic?

2006-03-16T11:12:00.000-05:00

That's the big question raised in an article in the New York Times today that looks at the impending bird flu pandemic from a different perspective.

Governments worldwide have spent billions planning for a potential influenza pandemic: buying medicines, running disaster drills, developing strategies for tighter border controls. But one piece of the plan may be missing: the ability of corporations to continue to provide vital services.

For the past few years, ever since SARS arrived in North America via Toronto, we've been looking at ways companies can prepare for the next flu pandemic.

If you have been following the blog, you know that we have been discussing this for over a year. However, since we did our December webcast specifically on this topic, the reality of the effect of pandemic on business is really starting to sink in.

The official US Government website for information on pandemic flu and avian influenza can be found at birdflu.gov, which is an indication that this is not just media hype, and should be taken seriously by corporations. Get informed. Be prepared.

Professional Services Megatrends

2006-03-10T14:10:00.000-05:00

Ross Dawson is a business futurist, bestselling author, keynote speaker, and CEO of Advanced Human Technologies.

His weblog, Trends in the Living Networks, offers high-level commentary on developments in our intensely networked world, and how it is coming to life, and in a White Paper and a recent series of excellent posts he discusses:

Seven Megatrends of Professional Services

#1 Client Sophistication

#2 Governance

#3 Connectivity

#4 Transparency

#5 Modularization

#6 Globalization

#7 Commoditization

Great stuff. Ross Dawson's business blog has been added to the list of blogs we read regularly.

Bird Flu and Pets: Cat Carrier

2006-03-01T22:19:00.000-05:00

"Cat curfews imposed amid bird flu scare" warns the headlines of European news media after a cat was found dead of the Avian Flu virus H5N1.

Four European countries today imposed restrictions on the movements of cats after a dead cat in Germany was discovered to have been infected with bird flu.

The dead animal was found yesterday on the Baltic island of Ruegen, where more than 100 wild birds have died of the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus. Experts say that the cat probably fell ill after eating an infected bird.

As experts in many European countries took to the airwaves to offer advice to animal owners, alarmed that they might catch the human form of the virus from their pets, the German Government announced that all cats must be kept indoors in bird flu-affected zones. In addition, dogs must be kept on leashes, and all animals watched for signs of strange behaviour.

If you think for a moment that human behavior won't get strange if the avian flu virus mutates to a human-to-human transmissible strain and spreads to North America, you only have to observe the panic among pet lovers in Europe. As much as we love our pets, things could get really crazy in the workplace.

"Businesses need to plan on having 40 percent of workers out" warns the headlines of American news media. No one can say if the virus will evolve into a form that passes easily among humans, but WHO and other experts say a pandemic of some disease is inevitable and that planning now will not be wasted.

“We have seen, in the past several weeks, a remarkable acceleration of the pandemic in birds,” Dr. Rajiv Venkayya, special assistant for biodefense to President Bush, told the conference.

“It’s something short of inevitable that we will see a case of H5N1 here in the U.S.”

...

“At the peak of the pandemic each company must be prepared to sustain absenteeism of up to 40 percent,” Venkayya told the conference, sponsored by the Trust for Americas Health and Fleishman-Hillard public relations.

Some businesses will be able to get by with letting employees work from home. “We need to understand the role of telework,” he said. But others will have to be encouraged to stay home.

“We need to change our approach to absenteeism,” Venkayya said.

This may be tough, others told the conference. “Half of America’s workers have no sick leave,” said Jeffrey Levi of the Trust for America’s Health.

“We are going to ask people to stay home.” But if workers face losing pay if they do not show up, they will come out while sick and will spread influenza, Levi said.

“The approach of most organizations is you go to work whether you have a cold, whether you are half dead,” said Dr. Myles Druckman of International SOS, an international medical assistance firm.

“They are going to have to change their whole corporate culture.”

Companies should make permanent infection-control measures that can reduce absences from illness in any year, not just a pandemic, Venkayya said.

Pandemic Plan points us to this month's issue of Inside Counsel magazine which quotes Laura Franzke, business development director of Logistics Health Inc., a Wisconsin company that provides governments and businesses with medical readiness services, who expresses concern about corporate America’s laissez faire attitude toward the avian flu. Franzke outlines a Canadian case study in preparedness at the corporate level.

The Alcan Way

The risk to employees and a company’s operations, however, is far too great to ignore. “If the pandemic occurs, you need a plan on the shelf that addresses how to handle it at both the employee and customer level,” Fanzke says. “Some companies—mainly in Europe—have already stockpiled basic supplies, such as respirators, gloves and face masks. We should be doing it too.”

Fortunately, such plans aren’t hard to put in place, and a company can implement them within a matter of months. For instance Alcan Inc.—a $20 billion Canadian aluminum manufacturer with approximately 70,000 employees in 55 countries around the globe—developed and implemented a detailed, global response program in just two months. The company began the process in September 2005 when it convened a committee comprising corporate security, environmental health and safety, and communications representatives from Europe and Canada. In November the committee introduced a companywide program that covers everything from stockpiling medical supplies and quarantine procedures, to telecommuting and foreign travel policies.

The company’s travel policy includes daily avian flu status reports that inform employees of the current situation by country and, if necessary, tells them what areas to avoid. At the plant level, the company has developed flu-screening processes including procedures to backtrack and identify anyone who came in contact with an infected individual.

Should the virus begin to spread, the company will implement the plan in stages according to four color-coded alert levels: green (non-contagious); yellow (spreading remotely in other countries); orange (spreading locally); and red (infecting employees). Each stage triggers specific instructions for employees.

“Right now we’re at the green level, so we wanted to provide basic medical advice to employees without scaring anyone,” explains Manoel Arruda, Alcan’s EHS director. If conditions reach the red level at any facility, the company will shut down and send employees home.

“At some locations, shutting down will only take a few minutes,” says Mivil Deschenes, Alcan’s chief security officer. “But with an aluminum smelter, it could take four days to ramp down to a complete stop. We’ve conducted drills with crisis management teams from all five business units.”

What's your company's plan?

Birdflu, the Avian Flu H5N1 Virus

2006-02-27T10:36:00.000-05:00

A recent issue of SEED magazine reflects on sobering advice on public health—from bankers.

An Investor’s Guide to Avian Flu: It is perilous to forecast the economic implications of an unprecedented event, though economists at BMO Nesbtitt Burns are obliged to do so....[PDF] Dr.Sherry Cooper, of BMO Nesbitt Burns, offers an economist's view of pandemic flu. [PDF]

Faculty at the Wharton School have recently published yet another interesting article "Avian Flu: What to Expect and How Companies Can Prepare for It" about the risks of an avian flu pandemic.

With the news over the past few weeks that the flu has moved into a number of additional countries, faculty members at Wharton, health care professionals and risk consultants say it is important that companies assess how their organizations could be harmed by a pandemic and take preventive measures to mitigate the damage and keep their enterprises operating. Indeed, experts say companies should actually be planning for all sorts of risks and include efforts to prepare for a possible flu pandemic within that broader strategic plan.

In the months ahead, we'll continue these conversations about the impact of a "potential" flu pandemic on workplace continuity.

Naked Conversations

2006-02-26T14:59:00.000-05:00

How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers—a book by Shel Israel and Robert Scoble, provocatively titled Naked Conversations, is virtually flying off the shelves of Amazon.com.

One of our favorite business bloggers, Richard Edelman, bought 243 copies online to give to his senior managers. Edelman is the president and CEO of the world's largest independent public relations firm, with 1800 employees in 40 offices worldwide. And he's one of a growing number of C-level executives who appreciate the benefits of corporate blogs and company bloggers.

Here's an excerpt from Naked Conversations quoted on Amazon.com:

These are the Six Pillars of Blogging:

1.Publishable. Anyone can publish a blog. You can do it cheaply and post often. Each posting is instantly available worldwide.

2.Findable. Through search engines, people will find blogs by subject, by author, or both. The more you post, the more findable you become.

3.Social. The blogosphere is one big conversation. Interesting topical conversations move from site to site, linking to each other. Through blogs, people with shared interests build relationships unrestricted by geographic borders.

4.Viral. Information often spreads faster through blogs than via a newsservice. No form of viral marketing matches the speed and efficiency of a blog.

5.Syndicatable. By clicking on an icon, you can get free "home delivery" of RSS- enabled blogs into your e-mail software. RSS lets you know when a blog you subscribe to is updated, saving you search time. This process is considerably more efficient than the last- generation method of visiting one page of one web site at a time looking for changes.

6.Linkable. Because each blog can link to all others, every blogger has access to the tens of millions of people who visit the blogosphere every day.

Should you read Naked Conversations? Michael Mclaughlin, of Mill Valley, CA USA, reviewing the book on Amazon.com, says,

The short answer to that question is yes.

Don't miss this book even if you and/or your organization haven't yet jumped into the blogosphere.

Scoble and Israel hammer home the point that blogging and other forms of social media are transforming how businesses communicate with customers, suppliers, and all their constituencies.

But this isn't a one-sided, navel-gazing tome on the virtues of blogging. This book is full of hard-hitting advice from dozens of successful bloggers on what makes some blogs work and others flame out.

The book itself is like a blog on steroids, but with a natural thread through the topics that leads the reader easily from one subject to the next. It's more of a conversation than a traditional book.

Throughout the case studies, the authors let the voices of the bloggers shine through, giving the reader a sense of the issues each company faced. When the authors agree or disagree with how a business handled a situation, they let you know-in a civilized way.

Scoble and Israel boil down their research and experience to help businesses understand the nuts and bolts of blogging without going geeky on the reader. They've got eleven tips for a successful blog, how to blog your way through a crisis, and an update of Scoble's Corporate Weblog Manifesto.

Make no mistake-this is a business book. If you're blogging now, read it for the hundreds of insights you'll uncover. If your organization isn't blogging, use this book as a discussion starter for deciding whether blogging is right for your company.

Does your company belong in the blogosphere? Katherine Heires, in an article on the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge website, says blogging helps a company and its executives:

Influence the public "conversation" about your company: Make it easy for journalists to find the latest, most accurate information about new products or ventures. In the case of a crisis, a blog allows you to shape the conversation about it.

Enhance brand visibility and credibility: Appear higher in search engine rankings, establish expertise in industry or subject area, and personalize one's company by giving it a human voice.

Achieve customer intimacy: Speak directly to consumers and have them come right back with suggestions or complaints—or kudos.

The article goes on to recommend that companies maximize the use of blogs by having a distinct focus and goal, and an "authentic" voice that doesn't smack of a PR department, creating a "conversation" that allows readers to comment.

Provide Mobility, Not Just Mobile Homes

2006-02-23T00:34:00.000-05:00

Hindsight is 20/20, so it's easy for the news media, even the most fair and balanced, to see the problems with FEMA's expenditure of $300 Million on more than 10,000 mobile homes being stored in, of all places, Hope, Arkansas.

This past week, Anderson Cooper was "keeping them honest" by airing segments on CNN about the response to Katrina, and now a few hundred of these mobile homes are en route to Baton Rouge. On his 360 Blog this week, Anderson Cooper asked readers,

"What could you do with $300 million? That's how much money the federal government has spent on a ghost town of empty mobile homes sitting in Arkansas."

A prescient article that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 18, 2005 raised this important question, "Could the government's main plan for housing the victims of Hurricane Katrina—the creation of a vast network of rapidly constructed trailer parks in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi—actually delay survivors' return to normality?" Bruce Katz and Mark Munro of The Brookings Institution saw the problem with mobile homes well in advance.

The problem with FEMA's trailer camps is that they are a slow-moving, geographically fixed response to the diverse, changeable needs of human beings who are beginning to want above all to reintegrate into mainstream life, wherever they can find it.

Along with a roof over their heads, Katrina's victims will soon crave more than anything family and community, stable employment, and a shot at salvaging the rest of the school year for the kids.

They are in a hurry to rebuild their lives and already fanning out—many of them—over a dozen states and hundreds of cities to do it.

However, don't expect huge convoys of double-wides and RVs to immediately roll down the interstates to Gulf region and immediately line up in new cities to provide shelter. It will take time to manufacture, assemble, and install the new units.

Moreover, by their very nature, the coming encampments—whether in state parks or military bases or adjacent to existing mobile home facilities—will cluster the homeless in dedicated new congregations that could well prolong their isolation from family ties, job networks, and good schools. Such clustering, ironically, could well delay some families' progress into a more settled life by plunging them into make-shift new zones of concentrated destitution.

Read the whole article.

A Failure of Initiative

2006-02-19T19:19:00.000-05:00

A Failure of Initiative: The Final Report of the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina found a "litany of mistakes, misjudgments, lapses, and absurdities all cascading together, blinding us to what was coming and hobbling any collective effort to respond."

5 Years Later: A Return to Where it all Began

2006-02-11T19:25:00.000-05:00

Business development plays an important role in any enterprise. Over the past three years, I am often asked what the spark was that ignited my interest in business continuity and risk management. More times than not, I will tell the same story about being outside New York in a Connecticut coffee shop a day after the 9-11 terror attacks where displaced workers from Manhattan were trying to make heads or tails not only of what had happened the day before, but of what their futures would hold for them in an era of uncertainty that instantaneously dawned. I won’t repeat the whole thing, but if you are so inclined you can read the full details here.

As my trip up the Bosnywash corridor concludes, I thought an appropriate place to gather my notes and collect my thoughts would be in that same coffee shop where that first spark took place. On September 12, 2001 – the last time I was in Koffee? there were tables, chairs, condiment stations, and a bunch of confused people. On that day, the degree of on-site infrastructure required to carry out work remotely consisted of a laptop or two where someone may have been working on a Word document, a few cell phones, and for the really technologically-savvy, a Palm Pilot.

Five years later, I walked into a place that had been transformed into a place than not only oozed with atmosphere, but had now assumed another function that had clearly developed after I last visited: Koffee? had become a very efficient and productive workplace. More than half the customers were enjoying their latte or coffee while working on their computers, but almost all were working on web-based applications. The coffee shop has become a Wi-Fi hotspot, and now draws all sorts of people – students, business owners, salespeople – pretty much the whole spectrum.

Near the front of the shop, there was a gathering led by a casually, yet confidently dressed woman who was making a presentation to two others, whose interest was palpable given how feverishly they were taking notes. This meeting wasn’t taking place in a boardroom, but in leather chairs positioned right by a window with a decorative coffee table placed in the middle. On the other side of the window, another woman with a briefcase was tying her dog to a hitching post where it could have a drink while she came in for a brief meeting.

When I walked to the back of the shop where a large south facing atrium floods the brick and beam structure with light, there was a law student who seemed to be taking a break from reading a fairly substantial body of reading, to sit back turn on his iPod, and sip a coffee. Two tables over from our lawyer to be, I saw something that really caught my attention: a thirty-something knowledge worker conducting a live videoconference using a webcam and connected with three other participants. He was composed, mellow and appeared to be someone very much in control. It was truly an awesome site.

The last time I visited Koffee? nobody had any tangible idea of how the world would evolve particularly in light of what had happened the day before. It seemed somewhat ironic that this place, the place where many people shared a common experience of horror and chaos not so long ago, and wondered where the future would take us actually would deliver us this very place. What became a safe haven for people requiring human contact on a trying day actually was where the dust would end up settling. Making my return to original scene of the crime vividly showed how much actually has changed, and how resilient and resourceful we as human beings actually are.

The Real Heroes of Katrina

2006-02-09T20:40:00.000-05:00

I have had an excellent trip this week to Washington and New York to glean some of the latest perspectives on risk management, business continuity and emergency management. This morning, I took in the keynote address at the International Safety and Security Conference in New York, where I heard Rich Cooper, a Senior Official at the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. Cooper provided a blunt assessment of the agency's role today and the measures that will need to maintain it's relevance on a going forward basis. One of the key messages in his speech was simply this: the effectiveness of Homeland Security will only be realized if close partnerships are formed with innovative firms in the private sector. In fact, when describing the response to Katrina, Mr. Cooper was unequivocal in his praise for private sector participants such as Wal-Mart, Target, Rite-Aid, Home Depot and FedEx.

In fact, he said, despite the occasional toxicity of the mere mention of the word Wal-Mart in some communities, they were in fact responsible for saving thousands of lives by providing food, shelter, water and medical supplies to displaced residents of the Gulf Coast before federal officials could make it to the scene. In addition to providing these needed staples of life, Wal-Mart also used its global distribution channels to amass millions of dollars in relief funding before such funding came in from the Federal Government.

It was an illuminating discussion and one that I will try and deconstruct over the next few posts.

Integrating Risk, Continuity, Preparedness at ISSC 2006

2006-02-05T20:07:00.000-05:00

As I have been feverishly preparing for a trip this coming week to Washington and New York, I was notified by the main organizers of the upcoming International Safety and Security Conference in New York (where I will be speaking this week about connection points between business continuity and real estate strategy), that one of the main themes of the gathering will be integration. By this, they are intending to take preparedness and continuity planning to a level where many functional areas are connected on a uniform platform.

This seems to be the direction where things are headed in this space. Before too long, planners will have a much better understanding about tangible connection points between business continuity, emergency preparedness, disaster recovery, risk management, and even real estate policy converge in one plan.

Should be an interesting gathering and I'll be sure to provide some highlights upon my return.

TRIA Resolved - For Now...

2006-01-24T15:48:00.000-05:00

While we find ourselves busily engaged on a project that addresses the operational risks associated with a potential outbreak of avian flu, we need to step back and provide a progress report on an old subject. TRIA, or the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, was to expire at the end of this past December. Had this issue not been resolved (which it was just two weeks prior to its expiration), insurers would have lost their last valuable resort to protect against the risk of a catastrophic terror attack. Indeed, many insurers who had to have collectively been holding their breath before this issue was resolved were openly grateful when President Bush put the issue to bed. Sentiments such as these expressed by The Hartford Financial Services Group were pretty common:

The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. (NYSE: HIG) , one of the nation's leading providers of investment and insurance products, commends Congress and President Bush for enacting critical legislation today that will extend the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 (TRIA).

Soon after the euphoria settled down, the question soon became, what exactly was accomplished? Seems that this is not as much a case of putting this issue to bed, as much as it is creating an interim solution until a more permanent solution can be found. Make no mistake about it, this is an interim solution, and far from being resolved. Why has this become so complicated? Much of it has to do with the fact that when TRIA was first signed, it was supposed to be nothing more than a stop-gap solution until something more permanent was found:

Three or four years ago, recalls Leigh Anne Pusey, senior vice president for government affairs for the American Insurance Association, Washington insiders used to joke that President Bush ended every speech with "God Bless America and pass the terrorism bill."

However in 2005 when it came time to renew TRIA, that full backing of the Bush Administration was missing. Why?

"…(B)ecause they bought this program thinking it was temporary, a three-year program, a bridge…," says Pusey. When the industry came back and said it needed the government program renewed, conservatives with power in Washington balked.

Policy makers now have two years to hash this out and come to a final conclusion as to where this policy will go. If it does have a future, it will probably have to take on a new form, and this might very well require more involvement from the insurance industry itself:

Arguing that the federal government can't take sole responsibility for guarding against terrorism, some homeland security experts want another entity to contribute its clout and expertise: the insurance business.

Insurers should offer chemical plants, utilities and other at-risk businesses lower premiums in return for tighter security, experts said. The idea borrows from the successful use of insurance-based incentives to cut down on car accidents, fires and smoking-related deaths.

A common set of standards to prevent terrorist attacks would be developed, with insurers rewarding clients who comply, said Frank Cilluffo, who served as a top aide to former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.

This whole discussion seems to be traversing the same path as a boomerang.

HSBC Projects Avian Flu Absenteeism Rates to top 50%

2006-01-11T15:17:00.000-05:00

Seems as though the initial estimates we discussed in our December webcast on economic effects of a pandemic outbreak were conservative. During that event, we projected employee absenteeism to be anywhere between 25 and 40%. HSBC has gone even further. In a report released yesterday, the world's third largest bank sees this number exceeding 50%:

HSBC, the world's third largest bank, is estimating that up to half of its staff could fall ill or be absent from work at the peak of the next flu pandemic, as Europe began to come to terms with the first human cases of the H5N1 bird flu virus on its doorstep.

The 50 per cent figure is double the rate forecast in draft guidelines for businesses being drawn up by the World Health Organisation. They will advise planning for 25 per cent absence, and the HSBC estimate is the most explicit warning yet that governments may be underestimating possible disruption.

As we start hearing about more cases sprouting up in Europe, we are bound to read more about not only how these numbers might be expected to change, but about what companies are doing to prepare. Indeed, the economic effects are where the discussion is moving - a noticeable change in position from earlier when it seemed like a far-away problem.

The magnitude of these numbers cannot be minimized as the article points out:

The figures are important as a rare public insight into estimates made by a top company – one that has considerable experience, given its activities across 77 countries including those in Asia and Canada affected by the Sars crisis in 2003.

They stand in sharp contrast to official calculations, with the UK government recently downgrading its estimate to an average of 8 per cent of the workforce absent at any one time and 25 per cent cumulatively throughout the pandemic.

Only time will tell what the next phases of this outbreak might be.

BCP Strategies for 2006: Swapping Fear for Logic

2006-01-09T23:01:00.000-05:00

Okay, okay I know I've been a tad lazy over the last week getting over the fact that the holidays are actually over, so in order to get the old wheels greased again, I thought why not make a prediction about where business continuity and emergency management will be going in the new year.

In order for things to move along in a productive way, I believe planners will begin to make fundamental ways in which they approach continuity-based issues. We will see a move away from an orientation that is skewed toward a security guard mindset (i.e. "okay everyone, this is how we evacuate the building, and where we meet for a headcount"), to one that is positioned more like a CFO (i.e. "the return on investment if you opt for this strategy is $x"). When it comes down to it, the sale is always predicated on the return. Selling an idea based on fear does very well when the fear factor is spread all over the front page, but becomes challenging when people move their minds in other directions.

Let's see how this prediction pans out, shall we?

Happy New Year

2006-01-01T13:47:00.000-05:00

Click on the image to see how our kids created this message.

Disaster Remembrance Week

2005-12-29T23:47:00.000-05:00

The WorldWideHelp Group is promoting this week on the internet as Disaster Remembrance Week.

As regular readers of Gill Blog know well, thinking ahead about disaster preparedness is a full-time business. On a worldwide scale, this past year has been especially disastrous.

Parts of South Asia have still not recovered from December 26th, 2004. In the USA, normalcy hasn't returned to New Orleans. In Pakistan, thousands are still homeless, and may not survive the harsh Himalayan winter.

They need your help.

Last December and this January, the online community came together as never before to help in the aid efforts in South-East Asia. The lessons learned there were put to use, and improved upon, when the other tragic events of the year unfolded.

Can we harness that goodwill, that togetherness, that willingness to help once more?

In the cases of the disasters of last year, reconstruction is now the priority.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has unveiled its revised plan of action for 2005-2010 to assist victims of the devastating tsunami which left at least 227,000 people dead and affected more than 2.2 million in countries bordering the Indian Ocean on 26 December 2004. With a total budget of nearly 2.4 billion Swiss francs, the five-year plan will concentrate on the reconstruction of housing and rebuilding livelihoods, with 54% of the funds earmarked for these fields.

Please continue to give generously to the charity of your choice.

Tsunami Warning System

2005-12-25T00:45:00.000-05:00

We interrupt our holiday celebrations to remember that a year ago today the world was shocked by news of the greatest natural disaster in modern history—the Southeast Asia Tsunami.

The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, known by the scientific community as the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, was an undersea earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC (07:58:53 local time) on December 26, 2004. Here, in North America, most of us were still having a Merry Christmas at the time.

The earthquake originated in the Indian Ocean off the western coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The resulting tsunami devastated the shores of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, South India, Thailand and other countries with waves up to 30 m (100 ft). It caused serious damage and deaths as far as the east coast of Africa, with the furthest recorded death due to the tsunami occurring at Port Elizabeth in South Africa, 8,000 km (5,000 mi) away from the epicentre.

At least 216,000 people are thought to have died as a result of the tsunami, and the true final toll may never be known due to bodies having been swept out to sea, but current estimates use conservative methodologies. Relief agencies warned of the possibility of more deaths as a result of epidemics caused by poor sanitation, but the threat of starvation seems to have been largely averted. The plight of the many affected people and countries prompted widespread humanitarian response.

A year later, the effects of the tsunami are still apparent in the region, and The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog has continued to focus attention of the world on the relief efforts.

Evelyn Rodrigues, who found herself caught in the tsunamis in Thailand, and had live-blogged her experiences thus bringing the pain and suffering closer to people all over the world, goes back on a Tsunami Anniversary Trek, and once more shares with her readers, a first-hand account of her trip. Worth a read for those interested in looking into the lives of people, their pain, and fears that still haunt them, one year after the terrible disaster.

In the aftermath of the disaster, scientists and governments, under the auspices of the UN, began working on an early warning system for the region. One year on from the tsunami, the BBC reports on what is planned and what is already in place with the Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami (Dart) system.

But in North America, most people's attention has turned to this year's hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, that ravaged the U.S. gulf coast. When asked about the tsunami, many Americans might ask, "Was that last Christmas?"

What's for Americans to be concerned about? We're safely across an international date line and a world away from tsunamis, right?

The California Seismic Safety Commission has just released a new report: The Tsunami Threat To California Report (pdf). California isn't any better prepared for a tsunami than the Gulf Coast was for the hurricanes—probably less so.

The Report makes seven main findings:

1. tsunamis are a real and significant threat to life and property along the coast;

2. risks to our major ports are most significant given the concentration of jobs, imports/exports and the potential to affect the nation;

3. we're not educated about what to do in the event of a tsunami;

4. the warning system is inadequate;

5. building codes in areas potentially affected by tsunamis are insufficient;

6. federal mapping resources are underutilized by planners to coordinate an evacuation; and,

7. the Governor's Office of Emergency Planning has stepped up since the Southeast Asia Tsunami and the more recent tsunami warning for California on June 14 and has made efforts to get ready.

But more needs to be done. The report, available on the website of the California Seismic Safety Commission, has detailed recommendations that call for more funding, better education, and more cross-jurisdictional cooperation among government entities.

On the eve of the anniversary of the Southeast Asia Tsunami, the White House released a plan Friday directing federal agencies to increase earthquake and volcano monitoring systems, deep ocean buoys and other high-tech means of alerting oceanside communities, according to a report by the Associated Press.

Specifically, the plan written by the president's National Science and Technology Council directs federal agencies to:

•Develop risk assessments of the potential tsunami hazards for all U.S. coastal regions.

•Increase the number of tsunami buoys, tide gauge and seismic sensors feeding real-time data into computer models to improve tsunami forecasting and warning systems along Pacific, Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico coastlines.

•Give technical help to improve warning systems for tsunamis and other hazards in the Indian Ocean.

•Encourage communities to develop tsunami response plans, and to build and plan in ways that can reduce the impact of a future tsunami.

John Marburger, who directs the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said U.S.-led improvements in tsunami detection and warning since a year ago made people safer at home and work, and the new plan will further reduce risks to life and property. Congress appropriated $24 million in May for a better U.S. tsunami system.

An international tsunami expert, however, said more high-tech warning buoys won't make a difference unless more cities and towns prepare, so that people know where to seek shelter. He also urged more land-use planning to avoid building schools and hospitals near ocean shores.

With the time between the earthquake event and the tsunami reaching shores being measured in minutes or hours, compared to days and weeks in the case of hurricanes, it seems that planning ahead and preparedness are at least if not more important than warning systems.

Alvaro Morales Katrina Photographs

2005-12-22T06:14:00.000-05:00

Here's a new link to "Five Days With Katrina" the Alvaro Morales slideshow that is hosted again on the Kodak Gallery. These extraordinary photographs, taken by Alvaro R. Morales Villa, a Nicaraguan who worked in the Chateau Sonesta hotel in the French Quarter of New Orleans, were first linked on the Gill Blog on September 10th but the photo gallery has moved to a new site.

Our original post included links to other excellent photoblogs, too, that were specifically started in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and are still maintained as active blogs today. Two of the best Katrina photo blogs are Eye of the Storm and Operation Eden. Nearly four months after Hurricane Katrina hit, it's worth checking back to these extraordinary weblogs to see what's been happening on the ground in the Gulf Coast communities since the mainstream media turned our attention to more recent news.

As a Christmas tree and a stove sit outside of a trailer parked in front of a home gutted by Hurricane Katrina in Chalmette, Louisiana, on Tuesday, Dec. 20, Hurricane Katrina is the overwhelming choice for 2005's Top Story, editors and news directors say, according to a recent media survey by the Associated Press.

The Carnival of Hurricane Relief was hosted on Gill Blog as a small antidote to "relief fatigue" and we hope you'll check it out again, or for the first time if you're new to Gill Blog and missed our presentation on November 30th, the three month anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans.

Telecommuting Eases New York City Transit Strike

2005-12-20T21:19:00.000-05:00

NYC has an Alternative Transportation Information Center online to help commuters cope with the disruption caused by a strike by transit workers. The workable alternative could be telework.

New Yorkers have come a long way since the last transit strike 25 years ago, according to a report by internetnews.com:

Today, the strike by 33,000 transit workers that left nearly the 7 million people who use mass transit out in the cold, can't grind commerce to a halt in the "old-fashioned" way it did back in 1980.

At least, online it can't. Above ground is another story, as New York-based workers who had to be in the office hoofed it, pedaled bikes in sub-zero temperatures, or otherwise cajoled spots in commuter cars and available taxicabs in order to get to where they needed to be today.

The continued growth of broadband throughout the Untied States, plus the development of remote corporate networks, has made working from home as efficient as video conferencing with colleagues on a different coast.

And that access has become big business, as evidenced by the number of Web services providers jumping in to help local business today.

Torrance, Calif.-based LiveOffice, a provider of Web services, said today it is offering free Web conferencing and teleconferencing services to any New Yorker affected by the strike.

"We want everyone in New York to have access to conferencing technologies so that they can effectively conduct business from home without commuting," Ted Heieck, product manager for LiveOffice, said in a statement. "Our Web-based services are easy to use and perfectly suited to help New Yorkers stay productive during the transit strike."

Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, had something to say about telework in an article recently published on Tech Central Station about Some 21st Century Ideas on Energy and Employment:

One suggestion that does make sense to me is to encourage telecommuting and work at home. Managers and unions don't like this much: Managers because they like to have workers in plain sight (which also makes managers look more important), and unions because it's harder to organize workers who aren't all in one place. But while there's still plenty of work that can't be done at home, there's a lot more these days that can, and people who work at home use a lot less gas. On days when I don't have to go to campus, I sometimes stay home all day, and even when I go out to run errands, I tend to log a lot fewer miles than I do on days when I go to the office. There have been a few moves to make tax laws and workplace regulations more friendly to telecommuters and home-based businesses, but this is a subject that should get another look. The shift to cottage industry is already underway, for lots of other valid reasons, and its energy efficiency is just another attraction.

What's more, the federal government, which has lots of employees, and lots of jobs that can be done from home, should take a very aggressive role in promoting telecommuting internally. If this shrinks the demand for new federal buildings, so much the better. It also occurs to me that once "working" doesn't come to mean "being in the office for eight hours regardless of whether anything gets done," people might start looking for output-related metrics, which might allow us to shrink the number of federal employees -- something sure to make both managers and unions unhappy, but something also likely to be good news for taxpayers.

And that's where the telework initiatives of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) presented on their Interagency Telework Site are right on point:

Telework (also called telecommuting) is the ability to do your work at a location other than your "official duty station." With portable computers, high speed telecommunications links, and ever-present pocket communications devices, many employees today can work almost anywhere at least some of the time. Using the flexibility to work in a home office or telework center when it is effective to do so is clearly the wave of the future, and for many of us the future is already here.

If you're stranded at home or can't get much done at the office because coworkers can't make it in on account of the transit strike, this might a chance to read the OPM Telework Manual.

As long as workers are at home, this is probably as good a time as any for office managers to consider the benefits of telework as a matter of corporate policy, and to make plans for business continuity during the next workplace interruption.

Planning for a Silver Lining

2005-12-16T13:16:00.000-05:00

If you don't have a business continuity plan in place for your company, maybe you should get one of these new high-tech portable inflatable meeting rooms...because you're gonna have to call a meeting to find out who's to blame.

The Public Manager

2005-12-15T00:23:00.000-05:00

The only journal of its kind presents opportunities for public managers and executives to write and share ideas about critical public management issues.

Gill was introduced to the publishers of The Public Manager through our collaborations on the telework initiative with officials at the U.S. General Services Administration, the GSA, who recommended we publish an article on the subject of how natural disasters have impacted not only discussions of disaster preparedness but also business continuity planning.

The Public Manager is a quarterly journal published by The Bureaucrat, Inc., a not-for-profit organization chartered and devoted to furthering knowledge and best practice at all levels of government.

Our paper, Continuity Planning in a Post-Katrina World, is published in the Fall 2005 issue of The Public Manager, which is already in the hands of subscribers. And now the good news for our readers. As a special service to everyone interested in the topic of business continuity planning and telework, The Public Manager is now offering full access to the complete unabridged article free to download here.

The time has come for the federal government to integrate standard principles of business continuity, emergency management, and risk management into a common template and include telework as a key component of workplace continuity strategy. This article examines how the times ahead will inevitably force private-sector participants to assess the strategic value of telework in maintaining critical operations, and public-sector organizations will be expected to provide leadership.

Thanks to the publishers of The Public Manager for contributing free access to our recent article for those interested in our special webcast dealing with business continuity planning and teleworking. This particular multimedia session examines the economic impact of pandemics, which can be mitigated by integrating telework into business continuity planning. Discussions include strategies for addressing absenteeism and maintaining corporate operations in such an environment, with contibutions by officials of the GSA describing the interagency telework site and its special features.

For more information about this special webcast, you can review our posts here, here, and here, or go directly to our webcast.

Pandemic Preparedness

2005-12-14T01:45:00.000-05:00

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office estimated Avian Flu could impose a $675 billion hit to the U.S. economy, underscoring the need for businesses and other organizations to adequately plan for the continuity of operations.

Gill Advisors Inc. and Streamlogics Inc. will conduct a webcast tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m. to discuss how the economic impact of an outbreak might be better managed by integrating telework as a core component of a business continuity plan. They will be joined by a Senior Official of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) discussing GSA’s telework initiative.

For Gill Advisors Managing Director Tony Gill, it's a case of déjà vu all over again. The 2003 SARS outbreak in Toronto began in a hospital located within two miles of his home where he had been taking his father for physiotherapy after knee replacement surgery. The first significant business casualty was the Canadian operations of a global IT firm, whose headquarters were visible from the window of his daughter’s pre-school classroom. The proximity to the outbreak’s epicenter forced him and his wife to remove their daughter from school, stay home, and try to maintain work productivity using a home broadband connection when deadlines were looming.

"The company where I worked was trying to meet an end of the week deadline on a major proposal," Gill recalls, "I was one of the point people one a team of seven, and the thought of being away for an extended period would have been inconceivable a week earlier." The team quickly went into improvisational mode using broadband to exchange emails and documents that required constant revision. “We were on the phones constantly” he continues "but within a short time we set one rule: if you leave your desk, have your cell phone on so if we need you, you’re no more than a call away."

The experience was illuminating as it showed that an improvised adaptation of telework could be used to carry out work. It also proved telework wasn’t necessarily the exclusive domain of IT firms, but could be applied within a broad spectrum of industries.

"Broadband’s here, but there are so many more tools that actually replicate face to face contact," Gill says enthusiastically, "the key is identifying tasks, systematizing them, and incorporating more robust telework tools like webcasting and desktop sharing."

The webcast will discuss tangible ways in which telework can be integrated into a wide range of industries to mitigate the economic hit associated with a potential outbreak. The webcast is available by registration and can be accessed at this link. Anyone unable to attend the live webcast may access the archive by clicking the above link.

By the way, if you're wondering how our improvised team fared with its proposal during that trying week, we won the business.

Video Games Simulate Disaster Response

2005-12-13T02:14:00.000-05:00

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is funding a series of computer games to help prepare health workers and other first responders facing bioterror attacks, nuclear accidents and pandemics, according to this report in Wired News

Backed also by Chicago's Department of Public Health, a University of Illinois at Chicago research team is developing a series of games that simulate health-related emergencies as well as biological, chemical, radiological and natural disasters.

"These games let people train on their own schedules," said Eric Holdeman, an expert in disaster relief and director of Washington state's King County Office of Emergency Management. "And it gets us away from death by PowerPoint in the typical classroom environment. It's also cost-effective."

The first game, which took three months to develop, trains health workers to respond to an anthrax outbreak. A massive flu pandemic simulation is in the works.

Players learn how to set up MASH sites, evaluate patients and dispense drugs. They also are trained to distribute medications to health-care sites and notify the public, instructing people on what to do -- without instilling panic.

Throughout the game, trainees' responses are scored for speed and appropriateness.

The game also helps health workers and volunteers cross-train for more than one job. Crisis teams are typically understaffed. The scoring helps players determine what they are good at and what skills they need to sharpen.

There are about 23 different roles for each crisis, and each scenario requires different training, explained Dr. Colleen Monahan, an epidemiologist and the simulations' lead programmer.

"Avian flu is a real challenge, because people will be really scared," she said. "Fifty percent of people who get avian flu die, regardless of age. Quarantines, keeping people away from each other, will be difficult. Our approach helps people train for multiple tasks and role-play with each other without the cost and on their own schedules."

Traditionally, health-care workers are trained by role-playing or watching videos. The simulations won't entirely replace conventional approaches, Monahan said, but they will shorten and focus the face-to-face training.

Stowe Boyd, a well-known "media subversive" as he calls himself, is an internationally recognized authority on real-time, collaborative and social technologies, and President/COO of Corante. Stowe has sussed out this video game, and presents some screen captures on his weblog column, as well. His take on disaster planning by video game role playing?

This is the sort of thing that I think is essential for preparing for the inevitable Disaster 2.0, like a bird flu pandemic, biological terrorism, or a 100 year storm hitting Manhattan. Instead of overbred bureaucrats holding endless planning sessions and writing voluminous reports about our lack of preparedness, the US Government or Bill Gates should throw a few tens or hundreds of millions of dollars into a massively parallel online game system where those who get to level 100 will get their college paid for, or $50,000/year, or some other NBA-level inducements. We could have millions of people learning what to do in an emergency, and the top 10% or 15% could make serioius coin.

And in the case of an emergency, when you are standing knee deep in the rising water in a New York City subway, and someone starts telling everyone what to do, you'd be much happier knowing that she is a level 100 adept of the Disaster 2.0 game instead of some political appointee with a flair for office politics.

Not unlike the military using video game simulations to prepare young men and women to respond in real time to unfamiliar situations and strange places under stressful circumstances.

Mitigating Economic Impact of Pandemics

2005-12-08T15:05:00.000-05:00

A human outbreak of bird flu in the United States could deal a $675 billion blow to the economy, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said today, citing a new paper by the Congressional Budget Office, according to the latest press reports.

Frist said the study assumed a 2.5 percent mortality rate, that 30 percent of the population would be infected and that employees would miss three weeks of work. "A nearly $700 billion hit to our economy -- almost half of which is brought on by fear and confusion -- gives us every reason to begin preparing a prescription and implementing a course of action today," Frist said in a statement.

Our upcoming December 15th webcast provides strategies to address absenteeism and maintain operations. Here's a copy of the press release we've issued today, announcing the upcoming webcast.

Mitigating Economic Impact of Pandemics by Integrating Telework into Business Continuity

~Upcoming Webcast Provides Strategies to Address Absenteeism, Maintain Operations~

The potential economic impact of a pandemic outbreak has been estimated at $166 billion in the US alone, with a chief cause being prolonged periods of large scale employee absenteeism.

Discussion about the potential outbreak of the H5N1 Avian Flu focuses largely on public health strategies but, public and private sector organizations need to assess their options to maintain the continuity of their operations.

Gill Advisors Inc. and Streamlogics Inc. will conduct a live webcast on Thursday December 15th at 9:30 AM EST discussing how the economic impact of an outbreak might be better managed by integrating TeleWork as a crucial component of a business continuity plan.

The webcast focuses on several concerns being faced by organizations today, and offers solutions to better manage operational impact. Tony Gill, Managing Director of Gill breaks the session down into the following components:

"We begin by demonstrating how the variables associated with pandemics differ markedly from those of known events. We describe how TeleWork logically aligns with core business continuity principles – especially under a different set of circumstances. We’ll be joined by a Senior Official of the US General Services Administration (GSA) who will show how GSA's TeleWork initiatives provide valuable planning templates."

Gill, whose work in this field has appeared in journals in the US and UK, recently had his article Continuity Planning in a Post-Katrina World published in the most recent edition of The Public Manager, a prominent Washington DC-based public policy journal.

TeleWork has clearly evolved and today encompasses so many more elements like webcasting and desktop sharing, all made possible by the proliferation of broadband services. Join us on the webcast and learn more.

Click here to register for free access the webcast.

Anyone who is unable to schedule themselves for this webcast on Thursday, December 15, at 9:30 AM EST may access the archive afterward at their convenience by clicking this link.

The Value of Telework in Business Continuity

2005-12-05T23:35:00.000-05:00

Telework Exchange, an online community focused on eliminating "telework gridlock" in the Federal government, today announced the results of a continuity of operations (COOP) study - "COOP: A Wake Up Call."

The study reveals Federal employees' level of continuity of operations planning awareness, and underscores the value of telework in business continuity. Results of the study indicate that 45 percent of Federal employee respondents do not have personal guidance from their agencies on how to handle a disaster, and more than 40 percent feel their agency is not prepared to continue business operations in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.

"The findings of 'COOP: A Wake Up Call' study demonstrate the value of telework programs as well as the need to increase awareness of business continuity preparedness," said Stephen W.T. O'Keeffe, executive director, Telework Exchange.

"With the recent hurricane season as well as the threat of an avian flu pandemic, telework is a critical component in disaster preparedness for the United States government. Telework can provide better inter- and intra- agency communications with minimal to no business interruption. The Telework Exchange is committed to enabling public-private sector dialogue to accelerate telework adoption and awareness in the Federal government."

A copy of the study is available to download free with registration at the Telework Exchange website, which offers a lot of other free resources and news articles related to teleworking.

According to an article in Network World magazine, lawmakers in Washington DC have been making noise on the telework front lately, with legislatures convening to discuss what government agencies and corporations are doing to help the U.S. workforce deal with volatile gas prices.

And recently, here on the Gill Blog, we wrote about a short post also connecting telework to broadband, BCM and gas prices.

Pandemic Flu a Threat but Few Prepared

2005-12-02T17:01:00.000-05:00

A survey presented today in Washington DC at a roundtable at the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions found concern and uncertainty among U.S. employers about preparedness for any pandemic flu outbreak affecting the workplace.

Deloitte, ERIC Survey Finds Concern, Uncertainty Among U.S. Employers

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. companies view an influenza pandemic as a real threat to the nation, but two-thirds believe they have inadequately planned to protect themselves in the event of an outbreak, according to a survey released today by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions and The ERISA Industry Committee.

Conducted in the weeks after the federal government released the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, the survey of U.S. employers was presented at a roundtable discussion on business preparedness sponsored by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. The survey found that:

-- 66 percent of respondents said their company had not adequately planned to protect itself from a pandemic flu outbreak, while 14 percent said they had adequately planned, and 20 percent were undecided.

-- 58 percent said they are not confident their company is prepared to manage a pandemic flu outbreak, while 18 percent said they are confident they are prepared, and 24 percent were undecided.

-- 73 percent said their company could use help understanding what it should do to plan for a pandemic flu outbreak, while 14 percent said they did not need help, and 13 percent were undecided.

-- 39 percent believed there wasn't much a company could do to prepare itself for a pandemic flu outbreak, while 41 percent disagreed with that statement, and 20 percent were undecided.

"American businesses are beginning to recognize that a pandemic flu outbreak would present a clear and present danger to their employees, their operations and their bottom lines," said Tommy G. Thompson, the independent chairman of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. "All segments of society have a role to play in making sure we are prepared to cope with a pandemic flu or any public health emergency, and that includes the business community."

"Major employers are concerned at the destructive potential of disasters and pandemics, and want to protect their workers," said Edwina Rogers, Vice President for Health Policy of The ERISA Industry Committee. "If the private sector experiences that kind of crisis without proper planning, there could be major implications for the U.S. economy."

While respondents to the survey believed their company is concerned and that a pandemic would be a threat to the nation as a whole, they were less certain that it would adversely affect their business:

-- 57 percent of companies surveyed believe a pandemic flu presents a real threat to the United States, while 9 percent disagreed, and 34 percent were undecided.

-- 43 percent said their company is very concerned about a pandemic flu outbreak, while 25 percent said they weren't very concerned, 31 percent were undecided.

-- 40 percent said there is a high probability that a pandemic flu outbreak would adversely affect their business, while 17 percent said it would not, and 43 percent were undecided.

When asked about potential options for coping with pandemic flu, 60 percent agreed that allowing employees to telecommute would be one effective way to address an outbreak, 11 percent disagreed and 29 percent were undecided. Companies also were largely undecided on whether they would waive sick leave restrictions in order to encourage sick employees to stay at home. Sixty-three percent said they were undecided, 27 percent said they would waive the restrictions and 10 percent said they would not.

A pandemic influenza is a global outbreak of the flu that occurs when a new virus emerges for which there is little immunity among humans. In the 20th century, there were three pandemics: 1918 (500,000 deaths in the United States, and up to 2 million deaths worldwide), and 1968 (34,000 deaths in the United States, and 700,000 deaths worldwide).

The survey was conducted Nov. 14-23. Results were presented on December 2 at a roundtable at the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions in Washington, D.C.

Next week, the government will release a checklist of pandemic preparations that companies should take. We'll post the checklist from the government here, and add our own thoughts.

Also, Gill Advisors Inc. will be offering a free webcast here with Streamlogics on the subject of telework, with contributions by the GSA, the General Services Administration of the U.S. Government.

Carnival of Hurricane Relief

2005-11-30T05:00:00.000-05:00

Hurricane season is officially over. Hurricane relief is continuing.

This season brought 26 named storms, compared to 11 in an average year. And, this season, 13 storms became hurricanes, compared to the seven hurricanes seen in an average season.

Perhaps most ominous, Katrina, Rita and Wilma were three of the six strongest hurricanes on record.

It has been four months since Instapundit joined with NZ Bear announcing Hurricane Relief Blog Day: 9/1/05, an idea suggested by Hugh Hewitt. The quick response by bloggers was remarkable.

Continuing to focus on the need for relief, and documenting the response and recovery,Carnival of Hurricane Relief presents weekly updates from the blogs as an antidote to hurricane relief fatigue.

Rebuilding Hope and Habitat
Operation Eden, an inspirational photoblog, is a personal chronicle of what Hurricane Katrina has done to these poor proud people.

I've donated my photographs to Habitat For Humanity to use in money-raising efforts to aid Hancock County, Mississippi, where my mom's little town of Pearlington is. There was no established Habitat chapter in Hancock before Katrina, so the efforts are actually being led by the chapter in Walton County, Florida. They hope to build 100 homes for displaced people in Pearlington, and are trying to get them up as fast as possible as we get deeper into winter.

I'll have a blue, blue roof for Christmas
Ernest Svenson, who practices law in New Orleans and blogs as Ernie the Attorney, reports that by a herculean effort the Lakeside Mall managed to open for the day after Thanksgiving.

I don't think all of the stores are up and running but apparently they've at least managed to get the Christmas village and train display up for the kids. Notice that wonderful little detail on the roof of the house. What would a toy village be without little blue roofs?

It's heart warming to see that the Army Corps of Engineers' Blue Roof program is helping protect all kinds of houses here in the hurricane ravaged Crescent City.

Hurricane-Ravaged Region Needs Volunteer Doctors
Leslie Champlin, writing in AAFP News Now, reports that nighttime temperatures have plunged into the 30s, forcing Hurricane Katrina survivors to abandon their tents in favor of heated shelters that reopened in mid-November.

Volunteers at free health clinics throughout the hurricane-devastated region have begun to worry about not having enough doctors to treat respiratory infections and other winter ailments.

One such volunteer is Dawna Howell, coordinator for medical services at the Christus Victor Lutheran Church disaster response center in Ocean Springs, Miss. The center serves hurricane survivors from Pascagoula on the eastern Mississippi coast to Biloxi on the central Mississippi coast.

"We still need volunteer doctors starting in December and going through March," said Howell..."Most people are living in tents and waiting for trailers," said Howell on Nov. 16. "With colder weather, we're going back into the (emergency response) process again. Eight shelters reopened last night so people could get out of the cold. The church boxes up food for the families, and people are still lined up around the building to get them."

National Bar Association Aids Hurricane Victims
Reginald M. Turner, at blackprof.com, reports that the National Bar Association (NBA) is protecting the civil and political rights of Gulf Coast residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

There are still staggering numbers of gulf coast residents that are not receiving sorely needed federal, state and local recovery assistance, and this situation must be immediately rectified. Nearly four weeks after the hurricane, FEMA is still stumbling in its efforts to get relief aid to victims. Additionally, immediate measures must be taken to protect the elderly in shelters. We also call upon NBA lawyers and other national law groups to step up to serve as representative payees for social security and other beneficiaries of government assistance programs.

The Oldest Black Neighborhood in the U.S.
New Orleans Renovation hopes to bring a blighted home back into commerce to preserve the vitality of an important neighborhood, but faces challenges.

I was approached by Mercy Corps to help salvage my item of desire from the home, then let them keep some wood for reuse through the Green Project here in the city. In this deal, they would do the excavation for free.

However, they can't touch the asbestos shingles. This is so ridiculous and it causing a lot of problems for many homeowners. As one person put it, "asbestos shingles are eating the lunches of a lot of contractors right now." If I could get up there I would pick them off myself. The whole thing is utterly stupid. The absurdity makes me just want to leave it. No one cares.

This Week, I'm an Electrician!
New Orleans :: Metroblogging has an interesting story by Chris Martel.

For those of us in this city with flooded houses, there are a lot of difficult decisions being made. The first of which was the eternal “should I stay or should I go?” And for those of us who have chosen to stay, many of the decisions that follow hinge upon “can I do this myself, or should I call a professional?” For me, so far the answer to that question has been “Baby, I am a professional!”

You see, getting a ‘professional’ out to your house these days is just not an easy task. Actually, that is purely speculation, because I haven’t even tried getting someone out. I know already that it would be an exercise involving patience that I don’t have, money that I don’t have, and results that I probably wouldn’t be satisfied with. Therefore, this week, I am an electrician.

Tourism Takes a Back Seat to Construction
Construction Owners & Builders Law Blog refers to an article in the Sun Herald that reports, ""Hurricane Katrina has changed the Coast's economy from a tourism to construction, but the real rebuilding hasn't even begun," adding that the absence of skilled workers may slow down re-construction.

The Politics of Hurricane Relief
Independent Weekly has a cover story on the politics of hurricane relief: "Best intentions and promises of unity preceded the recent special session, but even two hurricanes couldn’t shake politics-as-usual from the Legislature."

People Get Ready
People Get Ready is one of the most comprehensive Katrina info blogs that merits a good look and listen up.

I am in a rage! I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe that Americans would allow this to happen. I can't believe that New Orleans will become nothing more than a strip of land along the river, with scattered little shanty towns where people wager their homes and livelihoods against another disaster, and the whole city at risk of being completely destroyed in the inevitable direct hit Category 5 storm, after the busiest and most powerful hurricane season on record showed us its fury, and with many more future hurricane seasons anticipated to be just as active.

Wee Mini Highland Games
Eye Of The Storm, a remarkable photo blog that has stories and photographs, is worth a visit. Here's an excerpt from the entry for November 12, based on a story from the Sun Herald that sets up a series of photographs.

The crowd let out a cheer and the welly boot toss competition ended just as it began, with smiles all around.Welcome to the first and possibly last Wee Mini Scottish Highland Games,hosted by Karen and Jeff Green at their Long Beach home on Country Farm Road Saturday afternoon.

These games were the substitute for the 20-year-old Celtic Games normally hosted by the Highlands and Islands Association, a Scottish heritage group made up of expatriates, Scottish descendents and general Celtic enthusiasts from all over Mississippi.

The official games (which draw up to 3,000 people annually) were canceled because of "tha’ wee storm," so Scotland native Karen Green decided to host a smaller version in her expansive backyard for 50 or so friends, relatives and anyone who managed to hear about it.

Native American Communities
Real Reports of Hurricane Relief reports that the Native American tribes of the Biloxi Chitimacha, Houma, and Pointe-au-Chien of the southern Louisiana bayous continue to face a monumental struggle in channeling relief efforts to their tribal members devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Big River Hurricane Relief Concert
St. Louis Jazz Notes tells us that singer Dianne Reeves will join the previously announced lineup for the Big River Hurricane Relief Concert to be held at The Sheldon on Thursday, December 29.

Tim McGraw Kicks Off Fundraising Efforts
Amazon.com A-List For Hurricane Relief - a partnership between Amazon.com and more than a dozen celebrities and former president Bill Clinton - launched today to raise awareness and funds for non-profit organizations helping victims of Hurricane Katrina and Rita. The program will begin on Amazon.com on November 30, with the exclusive premiere of a recently recorded unreleased song entitled "Louisiana" by superstar Tim McGraw and will continue every weekday through December 20 with a new celebrity partner's gift of exclusive content. Amazon.com customers will have the opportunity to make donations to the hurricane relief non-profit organization selected by each celebrity.

"People in my home state of Louisiana still desperately need our help after their lives were changed forever by Hurricane Katrina. To help us all remember that the losses caused by the hurricane remain, me and some of my fellow artists have partnered up with Amazon.com," said McGraw. "As a special way of saying thank you for making a donation to one of the many worthy causes in the affected areas, each of us is making something special available. I just ask that people find it in their hearts to help any way they can. It is very much needed and will be appreciated."

Additional participants include former president Bill Clinton and celebrities Clay Aiken, David Beckham, Blondie, Bon Jovi, Kelly Clarkson, Faith Hill, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Carly Simon, Rob Thomas, Christy Turlington, and Trisha Yearwood.

Getting Restless
World Class New Orleans, a blog dedicated to the resurrection of New Orleans, says that "our rich culture, care for one another, and roll-up-our-sleeves tenacity will lead New Orleans into a new golden era." Chris Wiseman is trying to stay calm when he hears this:

"We want to see them helping themselves before they ask us for help."

A Republican congressional aide (unnamed) said this to Time magazine in an interview for their recent November 28 cover story on New Orleans.

I'm going to type that sentence again because I need to see it again, and I need everyone to contemplate these words.

"We want to see them helping themselves before they ask us for help."

I'll try to stay calm, but it's not easy.

New Orleans: Proud To Call It Home
The New Orleans: Proud To Call It Home Tour is designed to bring the food, music, arts, and culture of New Orleans to the cities where most of our evacuees have landed, in order to remind them of home and encourage their return as soon as possible.

Legal Issues and Challenges
Louisiana Law Blog announces that on December 6th, Kean Miller is partnering with the national law firm of Hunton & Williams to produce a seminar on post-Katrina/Rita issues and challenges at the state and federal level. The seminar will be simulcast from Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and Baton Rouge. Listen in for updates and practical insights on federal and state regulatory, litigation and legislative issues arising from the Gulf Coast hurricanes and the challenges presented to those involved in the rebuilding effort.

We Will Rise Again
George Rodrigue presents a silkscreen benefiting the victims of Hurricane Katrina. As of November 22, 2005, Rodrigue has donated $200,000 to the American Red Cross (Southeast LA Chapter).

Those of us from South Louisiana grew up with the aftermaths of hurricanes Audrey, Betsy, Camille...and now Katrina. As with times before, "we will rise again." Tears and rising water threaten to drown us. But don't be deceived. The land may be under water, but the spirit of New Orleans and the culture of Louisiana hold their heads high.

We Will Rise Again shows the American flag covered with water. The blue dog is partly submerged, and its eyes, normally yellow, are red with a broken heart. Like a ship's S.O.S., the red cross on the dog's chest calls out for help.

Two Humbling Gifts
Raymond Ward, an attorney in New Orleans, tells us two stories about extraordinary gifts, and shares his new perspective on Thanksgiving:

Here are a few things that, after Katrina, I no longer take for granted:

* food
* electricity
* potable water
* sanitation
* a job
* neighbors
* friends
* living with my immediate family

If you have some of these things, you have something to celebrate today.

That Time Of Year Again
Letters From Little Rock has a final thought this holiday season.

Beginning with the Christmas tsunami and continuing on through the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to the recent earthquake in Kashmir, there have been so many major catastrophes over the last year that it is easy to become a little shell-shocked and inured to the suffering of the victims. While it is difficult not to become hardened to the near constant appeal for donations I’d like to remind everyone that there are still thousands of our neighbors and relatives in the areas affected by the hurricanes who are still essentially homeless and unemployed. In the past I’ve always been a little put off by the various agencies who hit us up on the holidays since all those images of saintly volunteers serving instant mashed potatoes and turkey loaf to vagrants strike me as somewhat self-serving and a trifle Dickensian. This year is a little different. The normal expenditures of the various relief agencies are understandably strained and while I feel certain most of us have made generous contributions to our favorite charities already this year, it is only right to do so again during the holiday season.

Carnival of Hurricane Relief is looking for bloggers who would like to host this travelling carnival. If you'd like to submit one of your posts or recommend an excellent blog post related somehow to encouraging long-term support of relief in the aftermath of the devastation of the Gulf Coast, just send an email to hearye at cehwiedel dot com.

If you'd like to help now, and would like some ideas how best to get involved in the ongoing hurricane relief effort, you might find some help here.

cohr flood aid hurricane+katrina hurricane+rita carnival+hurricane

Carnival of the Capitalists

2005-11-28T00:01:00.000-05:00

Katrina evacuees at home on Carnival cruise ship Holiday

Welcome to this week's Carnival of the Capitalists, which is sponsored by Gill Advisors Inc. where our work focuses on business continuity and risk management.

Recently, on the Gill Blog, we’ve discussed natural disasters that have caused disruptive slowdowns for business, including these posts about Hurricane Katrina.

"Continuity Planning in a Post-Katrina World", our most recent article, is published in The Public Manager, a Washington-based public policy journal. Ours is one of four articles in the Fall 2005 issue providing a new view on the potential direction of Homeland Security.

But enough about us, let’s get on with the show of shows, the Carnival of the Capitalists, a weekly roundup of some of the best business blog posts. This week, we start with discussions about disaster planning and business continuity.

FEMA Pays $236M For Cruise Ships!
Wonkette says, "FEMA's Ship of Fools Sails Onward." The author of Strange Women Lying in Ponds writes, "Perhaps FEMA made an error in negotiating this deal. But don't blame the cruise line for making the decision." Douglas Shaftoe at Big Brass Balls gets credit for having the balls to tell it like it really is.

Scary Stuff
The flawed response to Hurricane Katrina by local, state and federal officials has experts worried that the nation is unprepared for another major disaster. Legal Redux has gathered information, graphs, and charts, from an article published in CQ Researcher, an academic journal that looks at current events.

Katrina Sparks Evacuation Plan Changes
W. David Stephenson, who blogs about homeland security issues, says, "the lesson for other states and municipalities (not to mention companies, which have their own business continuity issues to deal with) is that they've got to be going at this collaboratively, and that there's no room for 'not invented here' prejudice about some other area's ideas."

Business Continuity Planning Practices
Freedman Consulting's Law Practice Management blog reports that fifty-two percent of the 669 business continuity planning (BCP) professionals who participated in a recent survey said they didn’t think their plan would hold up in the event of wide-spread communications failures such as those following a Katrina-like or 9/11 event.

Not Walking the Walk
Chris Nerney at the Datamation IT Management Blog says that although there has been a resurgence of interest in "business continuity" since Hurricane Katrina, in too many cases, that interest isn't being translated into action in the enterprise.

Blowin' in the Wind
Insurance Scrawl has commentary on the law of insurance, the insurance business, and the business of insurance. "Seemingly in anticipation of the expected deluge of coverage disputes arising from Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, the Second Circuit released a careful opinion in a case where rain damage resulted from wind-caused openings in a building," notes Marc Mayerson.

Worse than a Murderer?
Warren Meyer, at Coyote Blog, writes about Jason McBride, arrested for selling gasoline at too high of a price during the shortages that followed Katrina, under an Alabama anti-price-gouging law.

The Price of Doing Business in New Orleans
Mises Economics Blog posts an email from a reader about price-gouging and the generally high cost of doing business in NOLA...comments ensue.

People Are Weird
Micha Ghertner of Catallarchy argues that people who prefer shortages from price controls to availability of goods at a high price in a non-price controlled market are "weird".

Buy Nothing Day Protest
Mad Anthony is mad at people protesting capitalism [consumerism?], who buy nothing on the day after Thanksgiving, and says, "If you want to protest against the consumer culture, join a commune, live off the land, and grow your own food while wearing homemade clothing made of burlap." [hemp?] But, yeah, I wish the lines at Staples had been even longer.

Shameless Commerce Weekend
Tom Hanna won't be joining the anti-capitalists from left and right who combine to decry the "commercialization of Christmas" and he's using his blog, Tom Rants, this week for a series of posts featuring lots of goodies for Christmas from lots of different places.

Will anyone be working, today?
Diane Pfadenhauer, the editor of Strategic HR Lawyer, says that today is Black Monday, the cyber-cousin to Black Friday, the mad-shopping day after Thanksgiving Day in the United States. Also, known as Cyber Monday, the first workday after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend is the biggest online shopping day of the year. Cyber Monday seems to be the better name for this day, as Black Monday is the name ascribed to Monday, October 19, 1987, which recorded the largest one-day decline in stock market history.

Small Businesses Anticipate Strong Sales
Anita Campbell, the editor of Small Business Trends, has posted a pdf of a recent survey of nearly 1,300 small businesses that indicates small businesses in the United States have confidence in holiday season sales in 2005.

Season's Greetings
James Howard Kunstler thinks the holiday frenzy will be as instructive as the hurricanes of late summer.

What is it?
Whatever it is, you can get it on eBay. Wordlab links to the leading online merchandiser's new marketing campaign.

Thanksgiving Lesson
Michael Cale, at Financial Methods, says they should teach kids in school that Plymouth Colony was founded with community property, where all pilgrims shared equally in the colony's production and, as a result the colonists nearly starved, and that only when the colony instituted private property did the colony flourish.

The Golden Age of Television
Mark Cuban, blog maverick, thinks we are entering the golden age of television; tv like we've never seen it before, and we will want more more more.

First take: XBox 360 Media Center extender
Chris Anderson, at The Long Tail, suspects that the release of the Xbox 360 is going to be one of two breakthrough events that take the Media Center concept mainstream.

Get Your Unclaimed Property Back
Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog has information about where you can go online to find out how to get unclaimed property that’s rightfully yours, and one of his commenters has already found something.

Relationship as Investment
Noah Kagan's Okdork.com devotes a week of posts to his special series about creating friendships and enjoying all the good things that go along with relationship management.

Partnerships: Handle With Care
Harshly Mellow has a discussion of the caution needed with partnerships, inspired by what became Pajamas Media, and the early involvement of Dennis the Peasant.

Rich versus King
Professor Noam Wasserman, in the Entrepreneurial Management unit at Harvard Business School, follows up with charts his original post in which he argued that most founders will have to choose between building valuable companies in which they are minor players (being "Rich") versus being major players in less-valuable companies (being "King").

Coyote and The Grim Reaper
Adrian Savage's blog on business life, The Coyote Within, presents a story to share insights and thoughts into how to survive and prosper in a harsh world.

The Traits of Slow Leaders
Slow Leadership contrasts slow leaders and traditonal leaders; it isn't what either believes, it's what they do that provides the contrast.

Niche Content Websites
Yaro Starak at Entrepreneur's Journey asks, "Does the idea of continuous passive income from websites you can set-up and forget about sound good to you?"

Scientology's Marketing Lessons
Andy Wibbels asks, "What can the Church of Scientology teach us about viral marketing and the sales cycle?"

Blue Law Insanity in Massachusetts
Rhymes With Right looks what happened when the state decided to protect consumers and employees from the evil of open grocery stores on Thanksgiving. Greg says, "Don't you love it when the governemnt decides to make economic decisions on behalf of the people, rather than letting market forces run free?"

Union Cars vs. Foreign Cars
Kevin at The Liberal Wrong Wing shares his opinion of the UAW and its influence in the American auto industry.

Foreign Investors Dig Japan Stocks
Steven Towns, at The Japan Stock Blog, takes a brief look at the numbers behind the Tokyo Stock Exchange's climb to five-year highs and why the bulls will keep running through '06 and into '07.

To Think or Not To Think
That is the question, asked at *Star In The Margin by Michael Chaffin. He thinks you should employ "thinkers" to ensure your organization moves forward, because passionate, imaginative, creative people have a natural tendency to prosper and to be successful.

Does Google plan to overtake Microsoft?
Or just take over the world. Gaurav takes a look at how the times have changed since Microsoft decided to take over the world in 1980 to how Google is planning to do it now.

Google Base Porn
David Jackson, on The Internet Stock Blog, notes that Google Base is gaining rapid traction with regular people and the porn industry, and thinks that's a bullish data point for GOOG.

Coke-Pepsi-Google Test
Will Crawford at The Integrative Stream points to Seth Godin's recent post about a blind taste test of search engines, and concludes that "a lot of perception is bound up in the branding."

Lie, lie, stinking, heaping, vile lie!
"Humans aren't paralyzed by choice," says Brian Gongol, adding that Barry Schwartz at Slate is "fundamentally wrong" to suggest that people are more free when they have fewer choices.

Communications for IPO
Steven Silvers at Scatterbox has six communications tips for young companies considering Initial Public Offerings.

Delphi & GM: a pledge and ruin is near
Capital Chronicle suggests that, fates inextricably linked, Delphi and GM may not survive the next five years - even with Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Will the United Nations spoil the party?
Jeff Cornwall at The Entrepreneurial Mind says, "If there is a wet blanket that could be thrown over the entrepreneurial economic boom that should follow the emergence of real convergence, it is the regulation and taxes that the UN is about to put in place."

Benzene Leak from Chinese Chemical Plant
An expat American is blogging on the Harbin disaster in China, as linked on Instapundit, where Glenn Reynolds also points to an excellent roundup of links on the disaster by Pajamas Media.

The Economics of Fear
Tony Gill looks at some recent news concerning avian flu pandemic fears having an effect on global markets.

Economics, Politics, and Psychology
Economist Gary Becker says, "Hurricane Katrina and now the danger of an avian flu pandemic--one an actual, the other a potential, catastrophe for which the nation failed or is failing to prepare adequately--underscore the need for institutional reforms that will overcome policy myopia based on inability to plan seriously for responding to catastrophes of slight or unknown probability but huge potential harm." Judge Richard Posner responds.

Starbucks Challenge, Part Deux
Peter Begley, of Credo Advisors, who blogs about business ethics and social enterprise, had an encounter at an independent coffee shop that has unfortunately sprouted a new batch of questions about Starbucks and their Fair Trade claims.

Watch People And You'll Know
Evelyn Rodriguez at Crossroads Dispatches presents Part 2 of a series on observing customers for consumer insight, the bedrock of innovation.

Save Endangered Species: The Middleman
Mr. Proteus at Liberate Wisconsin says the legislature can raise taxes, but how dare they mess with the price of our beer!

13 Ways to Live Well on Less
Free Money Finance has great savings tips, practical advice, and top-notch personal finance personalities -- all in one series of posts!

Are you Renting Your Customers?
David Daniels at the Business & Technology Reinvention blog offers 5 easy things you can do to enable long lasting customer relationships

Personal Finance, Pensions, and Politics
Ted, whose blog is chronicling an insane attempt to Retire at 30, tells the story of his father who was "forced into retirement" at 60 by an archaic FAA regulation (although wished to keep working) only to find the airline now in bankruptcy and trying to jettison their pension obligations.

Listing New Sites on Search Engines
Yaro Starak at Entrepreneur's Journey knows how to get a new site listed on search engines, and he shares some simple first steps toward Search Engine Optimization.

Discount Health Insurance Plans Debunked
Henry Stern at InsureBlog presents an assessment of the pros and cons of so-called "discount plans" for medical services.

Will the FDA kill Brian White?
Different River has a compelling post about people who are dying waiting, not for an organ transplant or a cure to be invented, but for a signature on a piece of paper.

Where's the Value in Digital Media?
Andrew Raff says, "With the variety of entertainment options available, copyright owners have to be very careful with deciding how to set prices. Digital delivery may create new services, but those services are competing for limited free time and entertainment budgets with existing media, so these prices are not set in a vacuum."

Eliminating the Mortgage Tax Deduction
Barry Ritholtz, at The Big Picture, is wondering what the economic ramifications of this would be of the President's suggested tax reform capping the mortgage deduction at significantly lower levels.

Hedge POG
Mover Mike discusses hedging and the future price of gold as it affects the hostile takeover bid for Placer Dome by Barrick.

Hedge Fund Risk
James Hamilton, at Econbrowser, discusses one way a hedge fund could earn outstanding returns over the period, and one reason you should be careful about investing your money in strategies that you don't fully understand.

Hedge Fund Crosscurrents
Abnormal Returns wonders, as hedge funds become more ubiquitous, raising issues for institutional and individual investors alike, should we prefer simple portfolios to the complexity of hedge funds?

Shareholder Activism
Professor Bainbridge thinks the importance of hedge fund activism is vastly overrated.

Reviewing a Proxy
George at Fat Pitch Financials discusses how he reviews corporate proxy statements. He walks though Microsoft's latest proxy statement as an example of what to look for in a proxy.

Process Thinking
Elisa at the Worker Bees Blog has read the latest thinking about the "end of process" and has some thoughts of her own.

Catscam
Joe Kristan at Roth & Company Tax Updates pauses to give thanks this year for a new and unexpected blessing from New York's other senator. Chuck Schumer has slipped a provision into the new tax bill that, while horrendous tax policy, may just finance Joe's retirement. Bonus photo of the InstaCat as digital art.

Sounding Board
Decibels, defects and the anecdotes of disgruntled customers are the take-aways of our warranty service reps. This is clearly not a job for everyone, according to Big Picture, Small Office.

Non-profit organizations: a blog can help
Wayne Hurlbert at Blog Business World says, "The value of blogs to any non-profit orgainzation is almost unlimited."

John Locke, Fearless Philosopher
Stephen Littau at Fearless Philosophy for Free Minds presents a biography of John Locke and an overview of his writings, concluding that the free world owes a debt of gratitude to this fearless philosopher for the clarity he brought to the cause of freedom.

Grand Theft Otto
Starling David Hunter, at The Business of America is Business, looks at the problems Germany's first female prime minister, Angela Merkel, and the economy faces in light of the legacy of Germany's first Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck.

Peter Drucker, 1909-2005
Rob May, at BusinessPundit, has a great tribute post with excerpts from Fortune magazine and a lot more on his main page, where Rob has temporarily removed his blogroll and replaced it with a del.icio.us dedication to Peter Drucker. There, we found a link to Bruce MacEwen's excellent post at Adam Smith, Esq.

Peter Drucker vs. Henry Kissinger
Jack Yoest compares the styles of Peter Drucker and Henry Kissinger when dealing with students or staff.

Horatio Alger, Asian Style
David Foster, at Photon Courier, recounts the story. From a tin-roofed hut in Malaysia to founder and CEO of a water treatment company, competing with GE and Suez.

More Space
Jackie Huba, at the Church of the Customer Blog, reviews a new kind of business book. More Space: Nine Antidotes to Complacency in Business, edited by Todd Sattersten of 800-CEO-READ and A Penny For, gives some of the leading business bloggers more space to ruminate about their passions than is typically found in short-format blog posts.

Five Hundred Dollars Cash Prize Offered
Noah Kagan is going to give someone with a great business idea $500 to pursue that idea. The cash might as well go to support one of your good ideas, or one of mine.

Business Blog Carnivals
Speaking of good ideas, look at the new Carnival of Marketing. And business bloggers might also be interested in Blawg Review, the carnival of law bloggers. For information how to participate in future editions of Carnival of the Capitalists, be sure to check out the spiffy new blog at thecotc.com, which has the complete list of upcoming hosts and much, much more.

Giving Thanks
Raymond Ward, a lawyer in New Orleans, has a new perspective on things to be thankful for in a post-Katrina world. For more blog posts and stories concerning hurricane recovery efforts, please visit this week's Carnival of Hurricane Relief.

The Economics of Fear

2005-11-27T18:14:00.000-05:00

As the news media picks up stories about bird flu, it's getting increasingly difficult for corporate executives and their workers to make critical decisions how to prepare for the next pandemic flu.

Determined to "cut through the noise" on avian flu and understand what U.S. animal and human health officials should be focusing on, U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, held a full hearing last week to get committee members up to speed on the issue.

Ron DeHaven, administrator of USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, served on the first of two panels during the 1-hour, 45-minute hearing. A researcher and several poultry industry representatives served on the second panel.

The link between animal and human health is important to keep in mind, Gerberding told the committee members, pointing out that 12 of the 13 emerging diseases in recent times have arisen from animals.

On the one hand, this is "first and foremost" an influenza that affects poultry, although a number of humans directly exposed to infected birds have died, primarily in far eastern countries. On the other hand, global corporations are learning firsthand the effects of a global pandemic on their operations. According to a report in the Business Standard:

Companies such as Wipro, Coca-Cola India and ICICI Bank have already started to prepare a plan of action. While most companies are still at an early stage of health-risk assessment, some such as Coca-Cola India have actually put in place a team to assess how the organisation needs to operate business in the case of a pandemic.

Whatever the impact of a global pandemic in the workplace, the effects of widespread apprehension about avian flu and other influenza pandemics are of real concern for global economics. As the virus spreads across Asia and Europe and the death toll mounts, investors are already placing bets on which companies will win or lose in the event of a global catastrophe, according to a recent report in the Globe and Mail.

"The human cost is terrible -- I'm not trying to diminish that -- but the economic cost will be huge as well," World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz told a conference in Helsinki last month.

In a worst-case scenario, global travel would slow to a crawl as countries tried to contain the virus, sending airline and lodging stocks spiralling downward. Restaurants, movie theatres and other public gathering places would be deserted, poultry producers would see their sales slashed and workplaces would suffer from crippling levels of absenteeism.

"The repercussions on global trade would be devastating," Sherry Cooper, chief economist with BMO Nesbitt Burns, said in a recent report. "Trade disruptions would shutter manufacturing plants and curtail global demand for most commodities."

According to the World Bank, an influenza pandemic lasting one year could cost the global economy $800-billion (U.S.). The World Health Organization has warned that the H5N1 virus, if it mutates into a form easily passed between people, could kill two million to 7.4 million. Some estimates of the death toll are much higher.

In Hong Kong this week, the government organized a preparedness drill, code-named Poplar, in view of the global threat of flu pandemic and human cases of avian flu in neighboring countries. More than 220 players from about 30 government departments and organizations took part in the drill.

Academia Provides Template for Telework and BCP

2005-11-18T10:54:00.000-05:00

I had a fascinating chat yesterday with our financial advisor, Ralph Gill. We began by discussing the costs and benefits of telework, as well as the same old institutional impediments that slow its rate of adoption – namely, the reluctance of middle management to embrace it fearing that it may somehow affect worker productivity. As we've discussed many times before, the common belief among middle managers is that in order for a worker to be productive, he/she must be within their superior's line of sight.

One of the challenges management often wrestles with is simply if a more decentralized work environment is created (regardless of the degree to which telework is implemented in this new structure), how will such a reconfiguration affect the productivity level of workers? Additionally, how will it be possible to measure worker performance when workers are out of sight? After thinking about this for a while Ralph provided an analysis I’d never previously considered, but one that really hit the mark.

He said that a corporate world that is the midst of substantial change needn’t look any further than the world of academia for guidance, as its underlying structure has been decentralized since the very beginning. Wait a minute here, are we talking about that fabled bastion of slackers and people who refuse to grow up? It’s time to engage in a little rethink on this one, for as much as we may perceive that environment through our own biases, it is actually one that counters its openness by imposing very strict deadlines. More surprisingly, it actually provides the model for more forward thinking organizations to emulate as they organize future work activities around telework. This becomes particularly important as our economy sheds its production-based past and moves toward one that is more knowledge-based.

Think this is wacky? Read on. Let’s begin by considering the concept of a term paper or a final exam. When assigned to students, there is an implicit message that goes along with it: choose to do whatever you want between now and then, but remember, this assignment has an absolute drop-dead date (with no exceptions) - fail to meet it, and you’re going to get an F, no questions asked. In a sense then, an academic environment is one that despite appearances to the contrary imposes a system that very effectively organizes work. Given the longevity of academia, as well as the innovation that springs from its hallowed halls, one sees that not only are deadlines a fundamental element of academic structures, but more importantly, it shows that people seem to respond to deadlines. Let’s not forget that it is also one that thrives on its decentralized structure (to get more information on the growing link between academia and corporations, you may wish to read this paper I wrote on this a few years back – a bit dated, but still relevant).

Consider for a moment what might happen if the structures used in a corporate environment are applied to academia. In fact, we have seen such applications, and one of the best examples of this is called Study Hall. The idea is fairly simple, make students come to a central location for 3-4 hours, have them sit and try and get some work done in carefully monitored silence. Now anyone who has actually been exposed to such a torture chamber knows very well that such a model simply doesn’t work on campus. If students needed constant supervision, the simple fact is that they wouldn’t learn anything. Innovation and productivity springs from a more flexible environment.

Now, let’s do a little bit of compare and contrast for a moment and analyze the standards that drive productivity in a corporation. How many times have you been in a meeting where the manager says: “we need more time on this, so let’s move the deadline back by a week”. In fact, this happens more times than not in many work environments, and unfortunately is emblematic of a pervasive culture of “letting things slide.” What this nakedly exposes is that institutionalized systems are in place that actually absolve people from responsibility. The whole notion of the “death by firing squad” structures that are firmly in place within academia, are foreign concepts in a corporate environment – a factor that removes or significantly reduces accountability. Instead of the judgment cast by the corporate world on academia, it might be argued that in fact someone who has spent a lifetime in academia could look at their corporate counterparts and quite correctly remark that, despite appearances, such workplaces are sloppy and undisciplined.

Now let's return to the thing that started today’s rant – that is the concern expressed by middle managers, namely, the difficulty in measuring worker performance in a decentralized environment. Our example shows that there are indeed very tangible ways in which performance can be measured. Surely, we're not suggesting that workers have to do term papers, but we are saying that there are an entirely new range of information-based products that can be used to efficiently monitor employee performance remotely – and when knowledge work becomes more prevalent, this can be regarded as nothing but good news!

Faculty and staff on a university campus can be likened to the original knowledge workers and operate within a very productive sub-culture. It may not be so apparent now, but the fact remains that as our economy shifts from a production-oriented model to one that is more knowledge based, the optimal management strategies will be those that best align to the nature of the work. One of the fundamental disconnects that exists today as we find ourselves in the midst of this shift between production-oriented activities to those that are knowledge-based, is that management still uses the old 9-5 centralized location management model to govern knowledge work, which is in fact a vestige of our production-based economic past. If we hope to compete in a global economy, one of last changes we need to make is to readjust ourselves to new management structures that better align with knowledge work. We could do a whole lot worse than looking to academia for some clues as to how this will be accomplished.

I’m well aware that some of our readers will question the relevance of this tangent I’ve gone on and wonder what connection this has to anything we’ve previously discussed. In my mind, the connection is crystal clear: telework – a strategy that is centered around the deconcentration of people – will become a key component of a business continuity strategy (just watch the buzz as we move closer to avian flu), but before it does, critics will argue that it will negatively affect worker productivity, thus slowing its adoption. It's time for us to question this line of thinking, for as far as I’m concerned, I left study hall behind long ago.

Bird Flu Prompts IT to Rethink Continuity Planning

2005-11-15T10:59:00.000-05:00

As a new day begins and the sun rises to the east, we often find ourselves falling into the same old daily routines, that seemingly repeat themselves in a perpetual loop (hey, sounds like a good premise for a movie). It appears, however, that our pre-programmed patterns of behavior will have to change, simply because of the pending arrival of some unwanted guests who will be winging their way toward us from that same eastern sky.

The potential impact of avian flu is gradually becoming the topic, and in the last few months we have seen a pronounced shift in the tone of the discussion. What was once being discussed solely in terms of public safety of people, has now caught the attention of businesses, specifically what the impact of this pandemic will be on national economies and the day to day operations of business. I came across the following article from Computerworld that more than anything, demonstrates the degree to which all of us like to compartmentalize fears especially pertaining to things that haven't happened yet - as the saying goes: "Out of sight, out of mind.":

...although the threat of a major outbreak is raising alarms among governments, it doesn't appear to be doing so for many IT managers.

Stephen Pickett, CIO at Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based Penske Corp. and president-elect of the Chicago-based Society for Information Management, attended a conference in Detroit last week with about 280 other IT executives. No one at the conference mentioned the bird flu threat, according to Pickett.

"The subject never came up, even though we were discussing various elements of disaster recovery," Pickett said. That may be because companies think their disaster recovery plans, in the aftermath of 9/11, already cover the possibility of significant employee losses and an inability to communicate, he noted.

In an ever-changing risk environment, risk managers can ill afford to become static in their tactical strategies simply because the dynamics of each event can be very different:

A pandemic could leave IT operations short of staff, especially if schools are closed or the federal government imposes quarantines. If a company is running multiple shifts and an IT worker on one becomes infected, "you could lose an entire shift," (Roberta) Witty (an analyst at Gartner Inc.) noted.

Computerworld reached a half-dozen CIOs last week to ask if they're concerned about the possible impact of the avian flu on operations both overseas and in the U.S. Some declined to discuss the issue.

But others took both sides. "We should be thinking about this, and I will be talking to my [disaster recovery] people this week," the CIO of a large university wrote via e-mail.

"It is not on our radar," said an IT executive at a building products firm, also via e-mail. "All of our operations and employees are U.S.-based, and we haven't discussed it in our company -- yet."

The time for businesses to take a new view on preparedness in anticipation of an event we have never seen before is now.

Historical Drainage Maps of New Orleans

2005-11-12T08:36:00.000-05:00

Ernie the Attorney writes about the practice of law, and life in New Orleans. His house survived Katrina and he and his family are okay, considering. Continuing his law business, post Katrina, has been a real challenge.

Of interest not only to lawyers is an upcoming seminar of the American Bar Association on insurance issues in light of Katrina but, for most businesses in NOLA, it's still all about jobs.

Ernie reports from New Orleans that, overall, the legal system is not doing too good, and neither are the Saints.

Among the Katrina stories told by Ernie, there's an interesting link to some historical maps of New Orleans that really caught our attention.

About a week ago the Times Picayune showed a 1879 topographical drainage map of New Orleans. Then they displayed the areas of New Orleans that had just flooded after the levees broke. The two maps were amazingly similar. In other words, if we had only built in areas that were deemed high ground on the 1879 map we would have been mostly okay. If you want to take a look at the map click on this link and then look at the T.S. Hardy map. There are other interesting maps at that link.

Ernie's anecdotal style of writing makes for a good weekend read, and puts a friendly face on the realities of disaster recovery—like the other day when he got a call from FEMA.

FEMA Graphic Disaster

2005-11-11T23:35:00.000-05:00

The FEMA website explains what they do, and uses a graphic to illustrate the process.

One way to look at what FEMA does is to think about the life cycle of disasters. Some of the functions involved are shown below.

The disaster life cycle describes the process through which emergency managers prepare for emergencies and disasters, respond to them when they occur, help people and institutions recover from them, mitigate their effects, reduce the risk of loss, and prevent disasters such as fires from occurring.

This chart, clearly depicts the agency's responsibilities in the event of a disaster. It begins with a response to a disaster, leads to recovery, mitigation, risk reduction, prevention, preparedness (dramatic pause) and ends up BACK IN DISASTER! In truth, FEMA did exactly what they said they were going to do. — Jon Stewart

Pilloried by late night television, mainstream media, and the blogosphere, former FEMA chief Michael Brown is no longer on the agency's payroll, the Homeland Security Department said Wednesday, ending nearly two months of compensation after he resigned under fire.

Michael Brown stepped down as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Sept. 12 after the government's sluggish reaction to Hurricane Katrina and questions about his own disaster response experience. He remained on the FEMA payroll until Nov. 2 to help the agency complete its review of the response to Katrina, officials said.

After learning that Mr. Brown's 30 day consulting contract to determine what went wrong with FEMA's response to Hurricane Katrina had been extended for another 30 days, Senior House Democrats demanded that his contract be terminated, saying it was "a gross waste of taxpayer dollars."

That ridiculous graphic can go, too.

Applying Business Continuity in a Campus Environment

2005-11-09T14:26:00.000-05:00

Connecting the dots seems to be a familiar theme around here. The more that organizations look at different ways business continuity can be applied, or different tools that can be used to increase the effectiveness of business continuity, the more we move these concepts along with our clients.

On this topic, I've been invited to speak at a small forum of business continuity professionals next Thursday, and the theme strikes a familiar chord:

Applying Business Continuity Principles
in a Campus Environment:

Applying new principles of business continuity to centrally-located operations presents ongoing challenges to business continuity professionals. The question becomes, how are these challenges magnified when the operations become decentralized in a "campus" environment? In this session we well discuss some anecdotes from the educational sector as an example of new challenges, and open the floor to discussion of how these issues can be constructively tackled.

If you'd be interested in finding out more about our work helping educational institutions apply business continuity in a campus environment, please drop me a line anytime.

International Safety & Security Conference 2006

2005-11-01T02:48:00.000-05:00

Noting our recent publication in the July/August 2005 issue of Facility Management Journal, the Fall 2005 issue of The Public Manager, and our upcoming publication in the early spring of 2006 by the Journal of Facilities Management in the U.K., Gill has been scheduled to speak and participate in a workshop at the upcoming International Safety & Security Conference in New York City, presented by Emergency Corps.

This gathering of professionals addresses advanced strategies and best practices for the development and ongoing maintenance of corporate emergency management and business continuity programs in the context of integrated risk management. Participants will learn both proven strategies as well as new and evolving trends. Proceedings will focus on how to prepare organizations for the future in a changing world. Professionals will share the strategies they have successfully employed.

The conference focus will be application-oriented insights from professionals, with presentations designed to go beyond the basic conceptual overview, and will address successful operational strategies, policies and procedures, and emerging trends.

Anyone planning to attend this conference next February who would like to meet with me to share ideas, while in New York City, is more than welcome to give me a call to arrange our schedules.

Halloween Treats

2005-10-31T11:26:00.000-05:00

My kids think I should take the opportunity, today, to say something on my business blog about Halloween, and maybe even post a cartoon. "C'mon dad," they're pleading.

I did see a Howell-o-ween Special for Blawg Review, today.

In the spirit of Halloween, readers of Gill Blog might enjoy the reference these lawyers make to Bobby "Boris" ("Monster Mash") Pickett's musical effort to combat global warming.

Kids, heh.

Eliminating Predatory Pricing in the Wake of Disasters

2005-10-27T21:15:00.000-04:00

As a follow-up to our post on public-private partnerships in disaster zones, and the session we heard via conference call from Islamabad, my friend Jim Finch brought up a very thought provoking question. We had been told that potential is always there for disasters to motivate suppliers to engage in predatory pricing (i.e. setting prices for needed goods far above market prices when supplies are temporarily cut off - a better definition is available here). Jim asked the group how this can be stopped.

Some suggested that legislation be drafted that makes such behavior a criminal offense, others talked about public-private partnerships pooling resources to provide an inventory of critical items that can be accessed during a disaster. I thought about it and remembered the first time hearing about predatory pricing was in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. I just remember that being a very big story in the days that followed.

Since that time, the media has played a very important role in disuading potential pricing predators from acting, simply by using the public airwaves to identify and publicly punish those who do (identifying perpetrators can significantly damage their reputation and brand).

It also seems that we have entered a period where our collective antennae are far more attuned to the idea that large disruptive events will occur. When this becomes part of the group psyche of people, they have a tendancy to better prepare themselves for these types of events. As awareness and preparedness grows, the incidents of predatory pricing will drop because those who contemplate it think twice, because there is much more negative public opinion associated with it.

Public-Private Partnerships in Disaster Management

2005-10-26T09:45:00.000-04:00

I sat in on a session this past week that featured an hour-long conference call from an on the scene emergency worker from a global 100 firm who was calling from the scene of the recent Pakistan earthquake. Beyond the descriptions of what we have routinely become accustomed to in the two weeks since the earthquake - frantic efforts to rescue stranded survivors in the mountains, and emergency services being stretched to the limit (he mentioned just returning from a hospital in Islamabad with 300 beds, now struggling to handle 1,200). We were also fortunate enough to hear his perspective on things we don't normally hear about in such urgent circumstances.

For one thing, he spoke about how such events provide the perfect opportunity to create public/private partnerships to enhance response. By combining forces both entities can effectively eliminate redundancy, reduce loss, save lives and improve productivity. These factors are particularly important when it comes to repairing infrastructure such as roads, or water pipes and reducing the liklihood that things like digging up a road only have to be done once. Working together can reduce costs and reduce the likelihood of having to do things twice. In addition, parterships on this scale can establish minimum standards and best practices that can be put to immediate use.

I saw first-hand the value of how the private sector can put its best foot forward when I dropped into my local Wal-Mart last week. When I was checking out, I was asked if I would like to donate a dollar to earthquake relief in Pakistan; when I said yes, the checkout clerk simply pointed her bar code reader to a code that was pasted on the register, and it was immediately added to my bill. I thought about how many people would check out in that store on that day, the number of days Wal-Mart would be collecting, and the number of Wal-Mart stores who would be participating in this initiative throughout the world. Just amazing.

Of course one of the keys to making sure public/private partnerships can move forward is to ensure they move beyond the realm of partisan politics. In this session we heard horror stories from Sri Lanka about villages being denied critical services and supplies because of the way that community may have voted in the past. If these types of hurdles can be overcome, the upside is tremendous.

So much so in fact that the UN is beginning to acknowledge the value of these partnerships and now trying to take a more active role in coordinating their formation. The following article identifies some of the reasons why such partnerships make sense:

Unfortunately, most mega-cities are located in developing countries, with few financial or human resources to allocate to natural-disaster-risk reduction. The lack of urban-planning capacity often explains additional urban risk factors, such as badly designed or poorly constructed buildings and infrastructure.

The quality of housing construction and infrastructure is therefore essential to reducing disaster vulnerability in urban environments.

This is the main reason why natural disasters disproportionably affect the poor. Poorer sections of urban populations often live in high-risk locations, such as steep or unstable hillsides and unclaimed terrain, which are especially prone to natural hazards. The poor build cheap, reside in the most unsafe settlements, and are the first at risk.

...Public-private partnerships could also contribute to hedging urban risks, by bringing together finance and governance experience.

We'll provide some thoughts on the effects of predatory pricing in disaster zones, and how this practice can be curbed effectively.

Hurricanes Decimating Florida's Insurance Industry

2005-10-24T11:51:00.000-04:00

As hurricane Wilma lays yet another beating on the gulf coast region of Mexico and the United States, someone has to be thinking about how the insurance companies are handling all this. It's funny, I just took a break from writing this piece when I was called by a friend who told me to take a look at the cover of today's Wall Street Journal, and check out an interesting article titled Hurricanes Squeeze State Insurers of Last Resort. This quote gets to the crux of the problem:

State governments in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and elsewhere created the insurers to cover homeowners unable to get policies from private companies that are retreating from higher-risk customers. But the unusually large number of hurricanes that have slammed into the region during the past 14 months threatens to overwhelm the government-backed insurers and could lead to sharply higher rates for every policyholder in those states.

...Even a glancing blow from a weakened Wilma, which is expected to make landfall today in southwestern Florida, would worsen the financial crisis because the storm will wreak damage throughout densely populated areas along both coasts where Citizens has heightened risk exposure.

"It is not a system that is working," says Jeffrey Grady, president of the Florida Association of Insurance Agents, a trade group in Tallahassee, Fla.

Actually, I was going to blog a conversation I had with a friend last week who works with one of the large insurance companies in the US, and we began discussing this very subject. If you have followed this blog, you will know that one of the main themes we have periodically dicussed is the issue of how precariously perched the insurance industry is as a result of things such as the need for terrorism insurance and the need for governments to backstop the primary providers of coverage. Well, one thing we haven't discussed is how climatic change in the gulf is affecting providers along the gulf coast. It's not a pretty picture.

My source told me among other things that Katrina imposed a $1.55 billion loss on Florida's largest insurer. Another one of the big 3 or 4 insurers in Florida has actually formed a seperate LLC in Florida that allows the parent company to be insulated from losses. By creating a seperate entity, this company can completely revamp its pricing structure to insulate itself from the increased incidence of catastrophic hurricanes. On a longer term basis, many of the insurers want to pull out of Florida altogether, but are being swayed by political pressure and state insurance commissioners (the Citizen's Fund) who need these companies to remain in place.

Faced with mounting losses, and no easy escape hatch, the plan is to first shy away from coastal regions, bump up premiums (some have received approval for 22% price hikes), and engage in a standardized policy of non-renewal for as many cases as possible (one of these insurers has already targeted 240,000 non-renewals).

The bigger issue here is how the potential loss of insurance coverage will affect the economies of the areas where non-renewal will become standard. If I were a business operating in a coastal area that couldn't get coverage, I'd probably think twice about investing too much into my business. The macro effects of these trends will become truly mind-boggling.

Carnival of the Capitalists blogs Gill

2005-10-23T10:04:00.000-04:00

Carnival of the Capitalists #107, the weekly roundup of the best of the business blogs, has picked up a post from Gill Blog and nicely sandwiched it between two other posts that will be interesting to our readers here.

Professor Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, has some good ideas:
Some 21st Century Ideas on Energy and Employment

With gas prices skyrocketing, people are looking once again at ways to save energy. Unfortunately, while high gas prices bring back memories of the 1970s, the policy solutions that some people are bringing forth seem about as dated as shag carpets and leisure suits.

Tony Gill at the Gill Blog specializes in Workplace Continuity and has been writing about telework as a business continuity strategy:
Connecting Telework to Broadband, BCM and Gas Prices

I came across a piece the other day that was just fascinating, as the primary basis for justifying telework was made by correlating the costs of broadband with the cost of gas.

The Wired GC is thinking ahead:
Flu Pandemic and Disaster Planning

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have provided real-time stress testing for the disaster planning of many businesses. Not all have fared well; many are now doing things differently.

Amid the stories about a possible worldwide flu pandemic, one planning difference becomes apparent: while hurricanes and other severe natural forces impact people and physical structures, the flu only hits people. And keeps hitting–a flu pandemic comes in waves and can last for months.

We're working on something about business continuity planning for law firms, as well, which will be posted soon.

Campus Continuity Goes Mainstream

2005-10-20T07:30:00.000-04:00

Just got back to the office after addressing the 38th Annual CAAT Facilities Conference hosted by Conestoga College in Kitchener, Ontario. This is an annual meeting of Ontario's colleges and institutes and this year the theme seemed to be a familiar one - risky business. The agenda of the conference reflected the important role played by facilities personnel play at their institutions in creating and ensuring a s safe, supportive environment for students and staff.

It was coincidental that this year's conference focused on a theme that closely aligned with our Campus Continuity program that we launched in the spring. Not suprisingly, my topic was Campus Continuity, and I used the opportunity to point out to administrators that in order for campus risk to be adequately addressed, it is very important for administrators to think beyond issues of public safety, and consider things such as the financial dimension of disruptive events.

I began the session by discussing the major components of a business continuity plan, then did something a little different - I asked the audience to assume the City of New Orleans was a business, and as a business, I asked them to evaluate how all the components described in section 1 were met. Finally, I said that if we were so presumptuous to liken a city to a business, why couldn't we use those same standards in evaluating how an educational institution uses these practices.

I have a condensed version of the presentation I will post on the site in the next week or two.

Connecting Telework to Broadband, BCM and Gas Prices

2005-10-14T06:56:00.000-04:00

Let's play the time machine game for a minute. We'll start by getting in and setting our coordinates back about ten years to late 1995, or early 1996. Although you have recently witnessed the worst act of terrorism on American soil a few months ago at a federal building in Oklahoma City, the whole notion of risk management and business continuity seems better understood in the IT department.

Gas prices are sitting around a buck a gallon, and this crazy thing called the internet is starting to gain a little momentum. In fact, if you're willing to pay on a per-minute basis, you can hook up an internet connection to your phone line at home. By doing so, you can access the latest html-based web pages (and impress your friends using the term "html") at the snap of a finger (well, maybe the snap of a tree trunk in a redwood forest, given the transfer rates of data on a low bandwidth home connection).

You start to think that the time may be right, and you now have the ammunition required to go to your boss and ask what he thinks about setting you up in a remote teleworking arrangement. You unfortunately make that request while he's having a sip of water, because as you finish, he laughs so hard that you're directly in the line of fire of the water spray he spits from his mouth (unfortunately, dry cleaning costs are pretty much the same as they are today).

Prospective teleworkers need not despair. It's time to go Back to the Future, where the world has changed significantly and the stars may actually be working in your favor. For one thing, large scale risky events have become commonplace, so much so that organizations frantically try and keep their business continuity plans updated.

Slow bit rate transfers are now regarded by most people the same way an MP3 aficionado views a 78 RPM phonographic record. Broadband's everywhere, and this can now be used to create a virtual office on an anywhere-anytime basis. Gas prices? Let's just say that when prices in Atlanta briefly topped the $5 a gallon mark a little over a month ago, the times can be characterized as being a little different.

Okay, okay enough of the cute storytelling, I came across a piece the other day that was just fascinating, as the primary basis for justifying telework was made by correlating the costs of broadband with the cost of gas. Check this out:

But there's also an economic driver that's emerged in the past few months and for macroeconomic reasons appears here to stay. For the first time in U.S. history, consumer bandwidth is less expensive than consumer fuel. Think about it: The going rate for broadband connectivity to the home is up to $50 per month (though some business-class services may run as high as $150 per month). If the going rate for gasoline is $3.70 per gallon, those monthly broadband expenditures will buy about 350 to 1,000 miles of commuting (figuring a 25-mile-per-gallon vehicle). That's the equivalent of a daily commute of between 17 and 52 miles. By enabling employees to work virtually, you're allowing them to save what's rapidly becoming a significant line item in their budgets.

Wow, isn't that something? Who could have made a prediction like that just ten short years ago? Just goes to show how quickly the landscape changes, and how much more sense telework makes today.

SMEs Don't Plan for Business Continuity and Telework

2005-10-12T10:24:00.000-04:00

Jo Verde from JeMM Consultants sent me some interesting tidbits over the past couple of weeks that neatly tie into some of themes we discus on this forum. To begin, consider the following item revealing that despite the urgency of maintaining a business continuity plan, a large number of small to mediums sized enterprises (SMEs) do not have any business continuity plans in place, but could significantly enhance their survivablity if such plans were put in place:

The London Chamber of Commerce (LCCI) - which represents 3,500 predominately small businesses - says that up to 44 per cent of small and medium-sized firms have no contingency plans in place and many of those that do fail to communicate to their staff effectively about what needs to be done in the event of a major emergency incident...

"The chronic lack of preparedness on the part of small and medium-sized firms is the greatest avoidable threat in the capital today," said LCCI president Michael Cassidy. "Directors owe it to themselves, their employees and other firms in the supply chain which depend on them to take action now."

We always on the need to integrate telework into business continuity planning. Although it makes perfect sense to us - especially in areas that might be vulnerable to a disruptive event - it seems as though the message just isn't getting through. This view is supported by the following press release:

Nearly two-thirds (62%) of mid-sized UK businesses make no provision for staff to work from home in the event of disruption or disaster, while less than a third (29%) have updated their business continuity plans since 7 July...

While two in three (63%) mid-sized organisations claim to have business continuity plans in place, in London this falls, alarmingly, to one in three (33%). In the event of being shut out, few employees would have access to the corporate network or even a list of contact details for their colleagues and clients.

It's interesting to also note that this piece points out that not only do a number of SMEs lack business continuity plans, but they seem to be unable to grasp the consequences of taking preventative action:

“With business continuity, it pays to be pessimistic – whilst large enterprises are more aware of the risks, small to medium businesses need to wake up and make preparations fast. As the research shows, many businesses aren’t even backing up data off-site – a simple and cost-effective means of protecting against data loss and ensuring business survival.

“The technology now exists to allow staff to easily work from home as if in the office simply by plugging into a broadband connection. But an alarming number of small and medium businesses are failing to plan for when offices can’t be accessed or for network failures.”

We'll have a couple of comments to make about broadband in the next post.

Google, Sun Microsystems and Workplace Continuity

2005-10-06T17:25:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, we took a break from the fallout of Katrina to discuss the rise of Google. We, like others, speculated about what Google had up its sleeve to further its dominant position and suggested that because they were in the midst of hiring a bunch of OS guys they could very well be developing an operating system for the internet at a very powerful level, and much the way Microsoft did for PCs.

Well, they got a little closer this week as it was announced on Tuesday that Google and Sun Microsystems struck a strategic alliance to apparently go head to head with Microsoft's Office software. One of the things we were speculating quite plainly spelled out here:

Eventually, the partnership could lead to Google offering word processing, spreadsheet and collaboration tools that would compete with Microsoft's industry-leading Office suite of software.

Powerful office tools available anywhere there's an internet connection? Working on an anywhere, anytime basis? Seems as though more pieces in the Workplace Continuity puzzle are coming together.

Workplace Continuity Affects Roles of Senior Management

2005-10-03T13:42:00.000-04:00

Change seems to be a recurring discussion theme within public and private organizations globally. Whether this is driven by the decline of manufacturing in North America (and the consequent rise in knowledge-driven organizations), the impact of globalization, reconfigured management structures, or the higher profile of enterprise risk management (ERM), change is indeed afoot.

If this is accepted as a given, it becomes incumbent upon executives to grow their organizations, in part at least, by redefining the roles of those who execute senior policy directives. This all ties in very closely with the underlying principles of Workplace Continuity. The connection points are fairly straightforward: organizational policies are changing because of a combination of factors are colliding simultaneously, including:

Globalization
the trend toward flatter organizational structures
the rising costs of employee turnover
the impact of rapidly evolving mobile technologies
growing recognition of the need for better employee work/life balance
the growing
ubiquity of broadband that facilitates the expansion of telework
greater risks associated by manmade, naturally occurring and technologically-based phenomena
the need to better manage facility and overhead costs

Clearly, the dynamics of the workplace are in the midst of substantial change, and to remain competitive, organizations need to keep pace. So what’s the macro effect of workplace continuity on an organization? The impact of risk and business continuity planning is on the front burners of many organizations; therefore a more structured approach to ERM is required. The main challenge for the organization is to move to a point where it can connect a number of seemingly unrelated functional areas.

A growing number of organizations profess to having existing ‘plans’ in place, but the overriding question is how holistic are these plans and to what extent do they integrate multiple areas of risk on a uniform platform? For one organization, that plan may be focused on how to evacuate employees from a site in the event of a disruptive event; another sees this as an exercise in preserving valuable data by choosing one of a number of readily available backup strategies; a third might be weighted more toward quantifying intangibles and calculating how a ‘bad’ event may negatively impact their brand; while another will look at how risk can be somehow managed by using the assets within its real estate portfolio. Certainly, these are all valid concerns, but the real test is how well are these areas connected along a common continuum? Experience thus far has shown that organizations still tend to manage these functions at a very narrow bandwidth and within well-fortified silos. The result is a number of individual silos with a lot of white space (a.k.a. scant communication) between them.

The goal then should be to shrink that white space by better managing risk, costs and operational efficiencies. It would seem logical that the point where these initiatives can find some common ground is through one function that brings it all together. Because bricks and mortar seems to be a common denominator – place, as we know is where everything happens – it stands to reason that facilities personnel could conceivably quarterback or project manage the entire process. If your real estate executives gain a better understanding of workplace continuity principles – everything ranging from a fundamental understanding of emergency management, business impact analysis, and data backup – they can integrate this knowledge and form better working relationships with those who control the silos, and ultimately use this knowledge when putting together a comprehensive organizational facilities strategy.

By no means are we suggesting that the onsite facility manager should be managing the critical data or crafting its emergency response plan, but an efficient configuration of the workplace will at least in part be made more efficient if facilities personnel are empowered to better connect the dots. It may seem overly ambitious, but it just makes good business sense. As the dynamics of the workplace undergo transformation on an unprecedented scale, so too will the skill set requirements of those whose traditional roles have remained static, as they will have to adapt to the changing roles and responsibilities associated with workplace continuity. If executed properly, the organization will be rewarded with greater operational and financial efficiencies realized by making traditional organizational roles more cross-functional.

Economic Consequences of Hurricanes Hitting Houston

2005-09-27T10:10:00.000-04:00

What a couple of weeks. It all started with a tropical depression that began to form in the Atlantic in mid-August, and after it had run its course and dissipated into a scattering of rain showers off the eastern coast of Canada, Katrina had become the costliest natural disaster to ever hit the United States. Within just a few weeks, and well before residents of the U.S. Gulf Coast had a chance to start putting back the pieces of their shattered lives, another potentially more ominous storm, Rita, began its course along a near-identical path.

So what did we all learn from this? There is a natural tendancy to play Monday morning quarterback, especially in the aftermath of such a huge disaster and unfortunately, this leads critics to look at an entire response, identify cracks and magnify them to the point that when the fix is proposed, a disproportionate amount of resources are allocated toward crack repair instead of fortification of the entire structure. There is no doubt that the economy of New Orleans has taken a huge hit given its importance in energy, shipping and tourism, but the question remains: how wisely will the relief dollars be spent?

The importance of this point cannot be overstated - now that Rita passed without delivering the knockout blow to Houston that was initially predicted, officials everywhere are playing the same old "out of sight, out of mind" game, and not thinking about the required what-ifs to move forward. The fact remains that the more significant economic issues are being given the same regard as a hot potato.

Let's compare the two cities for a moment. New Orleans has a metropolitan population base of about 1.35 million residents. Shipping is clearly the biggest industry, as the port of New Orleans is in fact one of the world's busiest seaports. In contrast, Houston's metropolitan population base is approximately 5.2 million people, and beyond the fact that Houston's port is just as prominent as New Orleans, it's economy is much more diversified:

Houston's energy industry is a world powerhouse (particularly oil), but biomedical research, aeronautics and the ship channel are also large parts of the city's industrial base. The city is the largest petrochemical manufacturing area in the world, including for synthetic rubber, insecticides and fertilizers. The area is also the world's leading center for building oilfield equipment...

Houston is second to New York City in Fortune 500 headquarters.

Indeed, there is a vast amount of knowledge capital concentrated in an area that is particularly susceptible to natural disasters such as hurricanes. Nowhere was this more vividly put on display than the unprecedented traffic jams that formed when the Mayor and Governor put out the evacuation notice for all Houstonians. What would have happened if that 100-year storm hit Houston, and more directly, how would that have affected the economy of Houston, the United States, and the world?

More than anything this shows that officials within the private and public sector really have to start addressing the issue of human concentration in large cities, especially in coastal regions. In fact, this takes us right back to basics of the proposition we have been trumpeting since our inception: organizations, whether they are cities, or corporations need to really start looking at how they can better decentralize their operations and adopt simple, yet effective strategies such as telework to address this mounting economic storm.

Schools Incorporating Business Continuity Strategies

2005-09-21T01:00:00.000-04:00

Recently, there’s been tremendous emphasis placed on tightening risk management standards at schools across Ontario. The recent Safety Audit Survey sent by the Ministry of Education provides evidence of this trend. Given the degree to which publicly-funded school boards are making these front burner policy issues, it seems natural they apply standards that not only safeguard people, but the underlying assets, and systems.

The financial services industry and government provide a window to how this is being approached, as these sectors have worked diligently to create strategies countering the effects of downtime associated with disruptive events such as blackouts, ice storms, or even basement floods. Although schools have not been an initial focus, security experts, insurers and risk professionals have started identifying them as places that are becoming more susceptible to a spate of naturally-occurring and anthropogenic phenomena. Schools are unique and therefore, for a risk plan to be effective, it should address vulnerabilities compromising the continuity of school operations.

Taking a wider view of risk at schools makes good business sense - it not only ensures the primary mission of the school is fulfilled, but it can minimize downtime, better manage the school’s risk profile and even save lives. The impact of disruptive events can:

- Interrupt the continuity of student instruction
- Disrupt the provision of services
- Damage physical assets including buildings, artifacts, and labs

Byproducts of event-related disruptions can occur too. These include an impact on computer systems (tied to student/alumni records), supply chain partners, food services and productivity. The financial impact imposed can also be substantial. Boards regularly invest funds to upgrade facilities and amenities - large-scale events can destroy them in a moment. Regardless of size, disruptive events impact a board’s bottom line and this can result in monetary losses and legal liability.

This article by Tony Gill, Managing Director of Gill Advisors Inc., was recently published in the Ontario School Boards' Insurance Exchange newsletter, ORACLE, available in pdf format.

Visit www.campuscontinuity.com for more information about business continuity solutions for educational facilities.

Business Continuity Awareness Week

2005-09-18T00:15:00.000-04:00

The Business Continuity Institute is sponsoring Business Continuity Awareness Week from September 18-24, 2005.

The organisers of the North America BCAW have collectively developed a package of useful information to help you use the week to promote or enhance your business continuity management program within your organization and with your business partners.

Our article, "Connecting Real Estate Strategy to Business Continuity" [pdf] is included in the materials provided free to the business public to increase awareness of business leaders, not just during Business Continuity Awareness Week, but for the future.

Business Continuity Awareness Week is endorsed by the Association of Contingency Planners, the Business Continuity Institute, the Canadian Centre for Emergency Preparedness, and the Disaster Recovery Information Exchange.

Connecting Real Estate Strategy to Business Continuity

2005-09-16T21:46:00.000-04:00

This article was written for Business Continuity Awareness Week by Tony Gill, Managing Director of Gill Advisors Inc., which provides BCM solutions to public and private sector clients.

When an organization finally makes the commitment to put together a BCM plan, it should consider how a well thought-out facility strategy adds the finishing piece to a complete plan. Real estate assets – regardless of whether they are owned or leased – play a significant role simply because they constitute the “place” where all organizational operations occur. In fact, when planners begin introducing the facility piece into the BCM equation, a number of new issues begin revealing themselves like successive layers of an onion. The traditional link between BCM and real estate has always been associated with identifying backup or redundant sites where systems and staff can maintain critical operations should the primary site become non-operational. The degree to how incident-ready these locations are is described by whether they are identified as being hot, warm or cold sites. As BCM expands beyond the confines of the IT department and becomes a front-burner priority across the enterprise, the role of real estate changes accordingly.

When this happens, an entirely new range of issues need to be evaluated. Let’s begin by expanding on the issue of backup facilities. If an organization has more than one location - assume for illustrative purposes we’re talking about a regional network of branch offices - planners need to project how these facilities can be used beyond the roles they play under normal circumstances. This begins when BCM planners identify the critical functions that have the lowest threshold for being non-operational (often described as downtime) and prioritize them from most critical to least critical. Should a disruptive event force the closure of one facility, some of the critical operations identified at the outset can be carried on at a backup location. If this happens, planners might deem certain assets within their portfolios as being suitable for backup. Typically, the sequence of events after a disruptive incident would be as follows: primary site becomes non-operational; key personnel moved to secondary location; non-critical employees at backup site are told to make way for key individuals.

If backup sites become a viable strategy, the next question is what factors constitute an acceptable backup site. In this case, the familiar “location, location, location” mantra becomes just as applicable to BCM as it always has in real estate. Geographic proximity to hazards (e.g. flood planes, seismically sensitive zones with weak soil characteristics), backup power sources (sometimes even on separate power grids), as well as the availability of redundant communications infrastructure (including terrestrial, wireless or satellite based telephony) are just a sampling of some of the factors that should be analyzed when determining suitability.

Depending on resources, an organization may also want to consider establishing an emergency operations center (EOC) that can provide a command post for incident managers to use in the event of a disruptive incident. Again, this could be a stand-alone facility on or off site, or it can be as simple as a room set aside within a backup location. If such backup solutions are cost prohibitive, alternate solutions can be provided by external third parties. Such organizations can provide backup space in remote locations whose facilities are often configured to immediately “plug and play.”

If planners commit to evaluate the suitability of backup locations, they should do the same for primary locations. If the area is prone to earthquakes, hurricanes, or floods, good planners should ask themselves how well the facility is capable of allowing occupants to “shelter in place”, a strategy describing how structural integrity of a building contributes to creating internal safe areas where occupants can move without being exposed to hazards on the outside. If your organization is considering upgrading its facilities to better align with safety standards, some areas to consider include evaluating the types of building materials used within a facility (e.g. is reinforced concrete, or steel frames used?), the type of and amount of glass within a particular structure, as well as the physical proximity of the building to roads and parking lots. Such facilities should also have internal safety features such as modern sprinklering and alarm systems. Together these functions will make for a secure primary facility.

Beyond structural considerations, is there anything else planners do to make their facilities better withstand disruptive events? In the context of power, much can in fact be done. Events such as the 2003 Northeastern Blackout that left some 50 million people in the dark and imposed an economic cost of more than $1 billion on New York City alone vividly exposed the contributing role power hungry buildings played in the blackout. When the lights went out, there were many organizations who despite being able to shift to backup power sources, discovered within a short time that many of these sources were limited (such as diesel fuel that powered backup generators). The ability of a facility to better insulate itself from the effects of blackout can significantly be enhanced with the adoption of smart building technologies that can reduce their dependence on traditional sources of power by using a range of smart building technologies including occupancy sensors, as well as solar power that can be used to fuel up backup generators.

There are other strategies that can be employed that may initially seem disconnected to fundamental BCM principles but in fact play a key role in the larger equation. Consider telework for instance. Increasingly, more organizations are looking to better manage overhead and boost employee morale and productivity by adopting teleworking into their corporate culture. Telework programs are set up to allow an employee to work remotely at least a certain percentage of the time. In turn, this not only can reduce real estate costs (face it, if space is required less often, less space is needed), but also helps manage the risks of having highly skilled workers in a single location.

The take-away from all this is simply that a well-considered BCM plan will always be carefully aligned to an organization’s real estate strategy. After evaluating assets within a portfolio, a wholesale restructuring of facilities and their uses may need to be undertaken, a process that might require acquisition and disposition of space and/or buildings. From an administrative standpoint, it’s a good idea to consider harmonizing lease terms and create ways to manage all facilities from a central platform. Taken together, these factors point to the inevitable expansion of a Facilities Manager’s role and this requires a greater understanding of basic BCM principles. As more information is absorbed, he/she becomes a more strategic contributor to the BCM process.

Economic Costs of Katrina

2005-09-15T07:27:00.000-04:00

There is spreculation that the reconstruction of New Orleans will not just be a fix, but an entirely new rebuild consisting of massive relocation programs. This morning, I read about the possibility of building a Tennessee Valley Authority-like agency tentatively called the Gulf Coast Regional Redevelopment Authority that will start with an initial infusion of $150 Billion.

How does one begin to measure the economic costs of the storm? I came across these figures in this morning's Wall Street Journal (source material from: Risk Management Solutions, Environmental Protection Agency, Insurance Information Institute, Mortgage Bankers Association):

90,000 square miles covered by federal disaster declaration (about the size of the United Kingdom)
555 water systems in Mississippi, 469 in Louisiana and 73 in Alabama affected
$125 billion or more in economic losses
$25 billion or more in insured property losses (compared with $20.1 billion after Sept. 11 attacks)
$40-$60 billion in private insured losses
160,000 or more homes ruined in Louisiana
360,000 mortgages, valued at $48 billion, affected

This is just a start, and we expect these numbers to be revised to include unforeseen costs in the future.

Patriot Day - Remembering September 11

2005-09-11T08:46:00.000-04:00

In the United States, Patriot Day occurs on September 11 of each year, designated in memory of those who died in the September 11, 2001 attacks. However, the name does not seem to have caught on in the American vernacular; most people still refer to the day as "September 11" or some variation thereof.

U.S. House Joint Resolution 71 was approved by a vote of 407-0 on October 25, 2001. It requested that the President designate September 11 of each year as "Patriot Day." President George W. Bush signed the resolution into law on December 18, 2001 (as Public Law 107-89). As such, it is not an official public holiday, but rather a discretionary day of remembrance.

September 11 — A Memorial honors the victims of 9/11.

Winds of Change has an extensive roundup of discussion in the blogs and worthwhile links here and here.

9/11. Of course you remember where you were. That day was a summons, a call; many answered it, in many different ways. Our team is here because of it. In all probability, so are you.

There's a spectacular aerial photograph taken on Sept. 23, 2001 over the World Trade Center site from an altitude of 3,300 feet.

*NOTE* The following link is to a directory holding the image. Because the image is so large (14MB @ 9372 x 9372 pixels) clicking the image could freeze your browser. I recommend saving the image by right-clicking only if you have a high-speed internet connection, and then opening it with a program on your computer that handles .jpg images.

High-Res Aerial Photo of Manhattan shortly after 9/11/2001

The September 11 Digital Archive, charged with saving the histories of September 11, 2001 has created a new presentation showing Views of Ground Zero at approximately 9:00 AM on September 11, 2001.

For the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we have selected photographs and stories from Ground Zero in New York, and overlaid them on an interactive map. Clicking on blue markers (photos) or red markers (stories) shows details from the September 11 Digital Archive.

John M. Ford presents 110 Stories, an allusion to the height of the World Trade Center, which is both a poem and an audio video matching sound bites to video clips evoking memories of September 11.

Photo Journal - Five Days With Katrina

2005-09-10T10:26:00.000-04:00

PROLOGUE:

On Sunday August 28 I woke up at 5 in the morning to go to my morning job at the Chateu Sonesta Hotel. The night before, we had been warned that Hurricane Katrina was preying her eyes upon us. In the history of New Orleans, there has NEVER been a direct hit by a hurricane. In everyone's mind, this hurricane would follow the same path that hundreds of past storms had done before. However, because of the size of the storm and ferocity which it tore through South Florida, the citizens of the The Big Easy prepared themselves as best they could... this is my tale of the events...

The link to this slideshow has been removed because the gallery has been taken down, probably due to exceeding bandwidth, after all the attention in the blogosphere and the CNN interview. Whenever the slideshow is hosted again, a new link will be posted.

Here's a new link to "Five Days With Katrina" the Alvaro Morales slideshow that is hosted again on the Kodak Gallery.

See also: Eye of the Storm, a photoblog at Dancing With Katrina dot blogspot dot com.

See also: Operation Eden, an extraordinary photoblog and journal telling the story of Hurricane Katrina from a very personal perspective.

Hurricane simulation predicted 61,290 dead

2005-09-09T16:41:00.000-04:00

In the Associated Press photo above, President Bush talks with rescue swimmer Dustin Skarra during a briefing on damage from Hurricane Katrina in Mobile, Alabama, Sept. 2, 2005. Mr. Bush was hoping to boost the spirits of increasingly desperate storm victims and exhausted rescuers. At far right is Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security, and to his right is the Director of FEMA, Michael Brown. (Photo: AP/The Mobile Register)

As Katrina roared into the Gulf of Mexico, emergency planners pored over maps and charts of a hurricane simulation that projected 61,290 dead and 384,257 injured or sick in a catastrophic flood that would leave swaths of southeast Louisiana uninhabitable for more than a year.

These planners were not involved in the frantic preparations for Katrina. By coincidence, they were working on a yearlong project to prepare federal and state officials for a Category 3 hurricane striking New Orleans.

Their fictitious storm eerily foreshadowed the havoc wrought by Category 4 Katrina a few days later, raising questions about whether government leaders did everything possible - as early as possible - to protect New Orleans residents from a well-documented threat.

After watching many of their predictions prove grimly accurate, "Hurricane Pam" planners now hope they were wrong about one detail - the death toll. The 61,290 estimate is six times what New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has warned people to expect.

"I pray to God we don't see those numbers," Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told The Associated Press. "My gut is ... we don't. But we just don't know."

This according to an article by Associated Press writers Ron Fournier and Ted Bridis with contributions from Kent Prince, AP News Editor in New Orleans, providing details of planning underway when Hurricane Katrina struck.

Under FEMA's direction, federal and state officials began working on the $1 million Hurricane Pam project in July 2004, when 270 experts gathered in Baton Rouge, La., for an eight-day simulation. The so-called "tabletop" exercise focused planners on a mock hurricane that produced more than 20 inches of rain and 14 tornadoes. The drill included computer graphic simulations projected on large screens of the hurricane slamming directly into New Orleans - considered by federal experts to be nearly as big a risk as a terrorist attack on American soil or a massive earthquake in San Francisco.

"We designed this to be a worst-case but plausible storm," said Madhu Beriwal, chief executive of Innovative Emergency Management Inc. of Baton Rouge, hired by FEMA to conduct the exercise.

The experts completed their first draft report in December 2004.

A follow-up workshop on potential medical needs took place in Carville, La., on Aug. 23-24 of this year, bringing together 80 state and federal emergency planning officials as well as Beriwal's team.

They produced an update on dealing with the dead and injured, and submitted it to FEMA's headquarters in Washington on Sept. 3. By then, Katrina had hit and the Bush administration, state and city officials were under heavy criticism for a sluggish response.

The 2004 report was designed to be the first step toward producing a comprehensive hurricane response plan, jointly approved and implemented by federal, state and city officials. But a lack of funding prohibited planners from quickly following up on the 2004 simulation.

"Money was not available to do the follow-up," Brown said.

Continuously updated information can be found at NOLA.com's Hurricane Center, and at the CBS network's Katrina Disaster Blog, which has up-to-the-minute coverage, such as this report today:

September 9, 2005 at 10:24 a.m.
(CBS) — The Washington Post reported that most of the men in FEMA's top leadership positions came to their posts with "virtually no experience in handling disasters." The report scrutinized the experience of five out of the eight men in charge of the agency, "whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks."

Because veterans such as U.S. hurricane specialist Eric Tolbert and World Trade Center disaster managers Laurence W. Zensinger and Bruce P. Baughman have left FEMA since 2003, a "brain drain" of sorts has set in for the agency.

Due to the rapid turnover, three of the five chiefs for natural-disaster FEMA operations are simply "acting" chiefs, the Post reported.

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds comments on CRONYISM AT FEMA and systemic problems with disaster preparedness.

Google and its Role in Katrina Relief

2005-09-07T10:31:00.000-04:00

Google Hurricane Katrina Resources has come to the rescue of many people searching for missing loved ones through a modified version of its ubiquitous search engine. The latest online tool powered by Google is this service that lets users determine water depth values in the flooded areas of New Orleans.

Leave it to Google to use one of the biggest news stories in recent memory to serve notice to the world that not only are they right in the thick of things to provide help to those who need it, but that they are indeed a force to be reckoned with. Make no mistake about it: Google is everywhere. This is interesting, because a week or so ago I was about to blog the emergence of Google and not only how their innovations lend to the notion of decentralized workplaces, but that they are also poised to become the new Microsoft.

I heard a piece on NPR recently that discussed this very notion. One of the main guests during this segment was Ben Elgin from BusinessWeek who carefully pieced together the elements of what could be called nothing short of a world domination strategy. Google has moved beyond search engines into a number of new and exciting spaces that represent huge growth areas on the net. A sampling of these includes Google Earth, Blogger, Google Desktop, Gmail and Google Talk. The recent launch of Google Talk, the newest entrant in the red-hot instant messaging space says much about the company’s confidence.

What makes Google Talk particularly interesting is that there really is nothing proprietary about the technology, as the service is being introduced not on the basis of technology, but more on the its being launched under a very powerful brand. It’s no wonder that analysts have described this as Google’s first pure muscle play. Google’s flurry of recent activity is just a pre-cursor to what lies ahead. In the middle of August, Google quietly acquired Android, a Silicon Valley-based company thought to be focused on the development of mobile phone software. From a piece Ben Elgin recently posted on BusinessWeek Online:

In what could be a key move in its nascent wireless strategy, Google (GOOG ) has quietly acquired startup Android Inc., BusinessWeek Online has learned. The 22-month-old startup, based in Palo Alto, Calif., brings to Google a wealth of talent, including co-founder Andy Rubin, who previously started mobile-device maker Danger Inc.

Android has operated under a cloak of secrecy, so little is known about its work. Rubin & Co. have sparingly described the outfit as making software for mobile phones, providing little more detail than that. One source familiar with the company says Android had at one point been working on a software operating system for cell phones.

This acquisition has led many to believe that Google could in fact play a big role in pushing for smarter mobile devices that could deploy a mobile version of Google within handhelds. The implications of this could be mind-boggling.

Mr. Elgin had also mentioned that Google has been hiring lots of folks to build operating systems, and this includes several key people who worked on Microsoft’s .NET initiative, as well as people who worked in developing the Mozilla browser – the main competitor to Microsoft Explorer. Combine that with the rumors that have Google buying up a ton of dark fiber routes (something that might suggest Google may want to build their own internet backbone), and you start to see the makings of something potentially quite large. Could it be that Google is positioning itself to actually be the next Microsoft? The mere fact that they are hiring a bunch of OS guys suggests that Google might very well be developing an operating system for the internet at a very powerful level, and much the way Microsoft did for PCs.

There's certainly more to say about this, but I'll just gather my thoughts before posting again, and ultimately tying it all back to Workplace Continuity.

The Political Storm After Katrina Begins

2005-09-05T10:30:00.000-04:00

It was about this time last Monday Katrina made landfall and caused unimaginable horror. A week after the world has had time to digest the storm's aftermath a fierce political storm in brewing in Washington and Baton Rouge. Today's New York Times reports that the administration has already put together a strategy that might minimize political damage:

Under the command of President Bush's two senior political advisers, the White House rolled out a plan this weekend to contain the political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.

It orchestrated visits by cabinet members to the region, leading up to an extraordinary return visit by Mr. Bush planned for Monday, directed administration officials not to respond to attacks from Democrats on the relief efforts, and sought to move the blame for the slow response to Louisiana state officials, according to Republicans familiar with the White House plan.

The effort is being directed by Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, and his communications director, Dan Bartlett. It began late last week after Congressional Republicans called White House officials to register alarm about what they saw as a feeble response by Mr. Bush to the hurricane, according to Republican Congressional aides.

While the partisan blame game erupts, another tempest in a teapot is becoming clear - the role of FEMA not only in the context of this tragedy, but also in terms of its overall effectiveness. From today's Globe and Mail:

But the central villain of the piece, in the judgment of almost everybody here, is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which heads up the disaster response.

FEMA was created in 1979 by former president Jimmy Carter, but in 2003 it was folded into the new Department of Homeland Security.

Since then, FEMA's many critics say, the overriding federal emphasis on countering terrorism has seen the organization's bureaucracy mushroom, while weakening its ties to state emergency programs and slashing its spending on disaster preparation.

Hey, wait a second, FEMA...Homeland Security...that passage has a familiar ring to it. I know I've heard it somewhere before. Oh yes, now I remember, it was from a piece we did on gillblog last summer after Hurricane Charley. Click here if you'd like to give it a read - it seems particularly relevant in light of the political storm quickly gathering on the horizon.

Katrina's Impact Analysis Issues

2005-09-03T14:47:00.000-04:00

The casinos that once operated on floating barges in Mississippi and now litter the landscape of what was once a pristine gulf coast are a stirring metaphor to how "The House" - in the past always being assured of winning - would one day lose. The magnitude of the loss is now beyond comprehension, given the economic contribution casinos make to Mississippi's fragile coffers. Somehow the industry will have to rebuild. Another high stakes riverboat gambler that finally took a hit when the odds went the other way was the U.S. Government.

Gambling, as most of us know is all about playing percentages and probabilities. The average patron in a casino will sometime go with long odds in the hope that maybe, just maybe the numbers will work in his favor and he'll hit the jackpot. Bigger players - national governments included - tend to take the safe, low risk approach. Therefore, when planners talked about the probability of a Category 4 storm hitting New Orleans AND levee systems being breached, planners were told that the numbers were too small to take serious action.

In fact last night Lieutenant General Carl Strock, Commander and Chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, mentioned in an interview on CNN that the probabilities they were dealing with were a 99.5% chance against such a sequence of events occurring. In other words, there was only a .5% chance of occurrance. Like any good gambler, the government played the sure bet and didn't commit the funds required to fortify the levees, chosing instead to allocate them elsewhere, thereby staying within the limitations of a budget.

Of course the only part I didn't hear from Lietenant Strock was if government officials adequately matched these probabilities against the impact of what would happen if that particular 0.5% event were to occur. It is one thing to dismiss a low probability of occurance if the impact is rather benign and maybe results in a couple of days of downtime, quite another if the impact results in the absolute shutdown of a major city for a period of months. In other words, probability and impact assessment go hand in hand; yet the common tendency in policy making on this level is to focus more on current costs than on future risks.

It's all hindsight now, and frankly the process used to evaluate whether to move forward with the project or not still seems logical. More than anything, however, this is a tragic example that vividly shows the types of issues that are considered when doing any kind of impact analysis. It also shows that no model can ever remain stagnant without being periodically updated. The fact that higher water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are leading to a marked increase in the occurance of catastrophic hurricanes, makes it necessary to revise those statistical probabilities that underpin a particular course of action.

If there's a couple if little lessons to learn here, they're simple: never underestimate the importance of conducting a thorough impact analysis as a critical component of a well-rounded business continuity plan; and always make sure those plans are continually updated.

Updates of Hurricane Katrina impact analysis are here and here.

Hurricane Katrina Aftermath Satellite Images

2005-09-02T15:43:00.000-04:00

Click here to go to the NOAA Website where there is an interactive base map with links to high resolution satellite imagery showing the aftermath of the hurricane wind and flood damage.

Katrina's Link to Increasing Fuel Prices

2005-09-01T07:32:00.000-04:00

Just like everywhere else where gas prices have shot up over the past couple of months, I drive around and wait for my moments to pounce. It was a fairly predictable game until this morning. You see, until then, I knew that if I chose my moment, I could probably get away with paying around 93 cents per liter (I live in Toronto), thus avoiding the spikes that would see the price sometimes rise to about $1.03. That ended this morning when I paid $1.26. That's a 25% price hike in one night. I know that this is the whole supply and demand thing, but there has to also be a bit of a Katrina effect.

We've actually been warned about this type of thing before. Consider this from a piece just published in June:

"As evidenced by the increases in global inventory levels of crude oil, current oil output worldwide is more than adequate to meet existing demand. The real problem will come - exclusive of unanticipated and protracted distruptions in supply (read...Hurricane activity in the US Gulf of Mexico...) - later this year, when forecasted demand is projected to exceed the ability of worldwide refining cpabilities to process available crude into useable refined petroleum products."

And we are often reminded about the impact of short-term supply shortages - especially those that can arise in the Gulf of Mexico

Oil production, refinery and pipeline problems can temporarily contribute to higher prices. Last fall’s hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico significantly curtailed oil production from offshore platforms as well as coastal refinery operations. About one-quarter of Gulf oil production remained out of service for an extended period and several Gulf Coast refineries had to curtail output because of hurricane-related effects as well as scheduled maintenance

Despite the evidence, and the warnings our natural tendency is to proceed thinking that the worst will never happen, and we should just move forward. The fact is, oil from the Gulf of Mexico is becoming a very important source that many energy officials feel represents a tangible way for the US to at least partially insulate itself from the supply-side uncertainties stemming from abroad. The region is recognized as an important area, and the current administration is banking on it:

Since 2001, the administration has continued incentive programs for deepwater areas of the Gulf and introduced new incentives for other areas. The most recent announced by Interior Secretary Gale Norton in January 2004..."The Gulf of Mexico delivers more oil and gas to the US market than any single domestic or foreign source, but many older, easier-to-reach fields have passed their peak. Exploration has shown more gas can be produced at deeper depths under existing shallow-water infrastructure; and oil can be produced at tremendous depths,"

This region is increasingly becoming the main artery of domestically produced oil,

The Gulf of Mexico is home to roughly a quarter of U.S. domestic oil and gas output, with a capacity to produce about 1.5 million barrels per day of crude and 12.3 billion cubic feet per day of gas.

but this morning we found that the two main piplines that supply product from Texas all the way up to the eastern seaboard have become disabled because power outages are disabling the system's pumping ability. In fact 80% of output has been disrupted, which means (if my math is correct), that overall supply has dropped by 20%. The connection to price hikes at the pump are complete, and the overall situation is worsened in some areas that develop a greater than average reliance on fuel

Some of the knottiest issues still to be resolved will be restoring electricity to Gulf Coast pipelines and refineries, which are also suffering from flooding that could very well have left critical electric motors submerged. It will be days before a full assessment of the damage can be done, industry officials and analysts said.

Meantime, wholesale gasoline suppliers have begun limiting the amount of fuel they sell to retailers in certain markets in order to make sure they do not take delivery of more fuel than they actually need.

Now, if I'm an oil supplier to the U.S. from an area that is insulated from the effects of hurricanes and other supply side shocks, no matter how dire the situation has become along the Gulf Coast, this is good news:

Canada's big oil producers enjoyed yet another surge on the Toronto Stock Exchange yesterday, in many cases breaking new record highs as the effects of Hurricane Katrina travel north....Of course, oil producers have become wildly profitable now, with the price of crude oil breaking one record after another. Oil closed yesterday in New York at US$68.94 a barrel, down US87 cents -- but that's the ninth consecutive day it has traded above US$65...At this price, Alberta's oilsands are cash machines and its vast oil reserves attract comparisons to that of Saudi Arabia. As a result, investment dollars are pouring in, making the shares of oil producers appear free from gravity.

Meanwhile back in the Gulf, the effort required for producers to restore some degree stability especially on their oil rigs is no small task, and can only fully be appreciated by looking at the logistics involved:

BP has already started to move small crews to some of its platforms. The crews will restart generators and inspect the facilities for damage prior to bringing them back on line.

On Monday, there were reports of several rigs that had gone adrift. The rigs are often equipped with electronic locator devices so the companies can locate and retrieve them when they come free of their moorings.

For as much as we have been discussing our reliance on fuel and connecting it to the long-term sustainability of our contemporary work culture on the blog, it is really quite scary when the pieces come together and some of the predictions come true. Only time will tell how long this takes, but in the short term at least, we can say goodbye to that little jig we've been playing at the pumps.

Concerns about gasoline price gouging and profiteering following natural disasters are prompting investigations and legislation.

The Precarious Geology of New Orleans

2005-08-30T06:51:00.000-04:00

As the Gulf Coast braced itself for Katrina's arrival yesterday, the media was already on top of the story like a multi-layered blanket. And why not? Barely a day after the Mayor of New Orleans, the Governor of Louisiana and a team of Emergency Management people from FEMA, Homeland Security, and throughout the state gathered in front of a podium to tell residents of New Orleans to expect the worst, the media took over.

In the hours before Katrina made landfall, newsrooms were abuzz with anticipation and raw nerves. Nowhere was this more apparent than on CNN, where a CNN weatherman lost his cool while covering the storm.

Why was this such a particularly big deal? In short, it was about the possibility of losing The Big Easy, as its category 5 designation, combined with its path pointed directly at the city. Other cities could better withstand the effects of a hurricane because they have defined shorelines that can act as breakwaters. For New Orleans, however, it's a different story altogether. In fact, the problems were summarized in this story that was published (ominously?) on September 11, 2001 in Popular Mechanics in the following article appropriately titled "New Orleans is Sinking":

New Orleans sits atop a delta made of unconsolidated material that has washed down the Mississippi River...Think of the city as a chin jutting out, waiting for a one-two punch from Mother Nature. The first blow comes from the sky. Hurricanes plying the Gulf of Mexico push massive domes of water (storm surges) ahead of their swirling winds. After the surges hit, the second blow strikes from below. The same swampy delta ground that necessitates above-ground burials leaves water from the storm surge with no place to go but up.

...During a strong hurricane, the city could be inundated with water blocking all streets in and out for days, leaving people stranded without electricity and access to clean drinking water. Many also could die because the city has few buildings that could withstand the sustained 96- to 100-mph winds and 6- to 8-ft. storm surges of a Category 2 hurricane.

Today, 80% of New Orleans is estimated to be under some amount of water, but the fact that Katrina decided to take a slight turn to the east saved the city from what would probably be an unprecedented catastrophe (although Katrina's force was every bit as intense as predicted and could already prove to be the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history). The clock keeps ticking.

Update

The section above was written early Tuesday morning, when it was thought Katrina had spared New Orleans, and before we learned about levee breaches throughout the city. Shortly after posting, Chad Myers on CNN reported the first break, and since then emergency managers have been doing their utmost to stabilize the area.