Disaster recovery and business continuity plans in Class-A Parastatals in Kenya

Abstract

Information has almost single handedly become one of the most critical success factors for most organizations. Through the use of vast information bases organizations are able to make relevant and important strategic, tactical and operational decisions that give them a competitive edge. The continued operations of an organization depends to a large extent on management’s awareness of potential disasters, their ability to develop plans to minimize disruptions of critical functions and the ability to conduct recovery operations successfully with the least amount of downtime. Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is defined as a proactive planning process that ensures critical services or products are delivered during a disruption while Disaster Recovery (DR) can be defined as the process by which you resume business after a disruptive event. A disaster can therefore be defined as the loss or interruption of a critical service(s) or process for a period of time which threatens the ability of the enterprise to fulfill its mission. The general objectives of this study were to assess the disaster recovery and business continuity plans of class-A parastatals in the various government ministries. Research design employed in this study is descriptive in nature. The study focused on Class A parastatals as they represent huge government corporations both in-terms of strategic importance, revenue and employees. This study employed a survey method of design. The study targeted 54 senior and middle-level management employees. Primary data was collected using self-administered questionnaires. The data collected from this study was mainly presented through the use of summarized percentages, proportions and tabulations and other data presentation tools in all the sections of the questionnaires. The study concludes that during pre-planning consulting business process owners during the business impact assessment was considered the most important step. During plan development, developing a formal system backup policy and schedule was most important while during testing having frequently scheduled tests was most important. Establishing agreements with critical vendors’ and service providers was considered most important in plan maintenance. The greatest benefit of implementing BC and DR was reduced down-times while the greatest challenge in implementation was bureaucracy. The study concludes that parastatals should invest in BCP and DR in order to minimize downtimes as well as safeguard their information.