Information Technology Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity at United Nations Office in Nairobi, Kenya
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Date
2016Author
Akwah, Benjamin O
Type
ThesisLanguage
en_USMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Organizations operate in an environment that is uncertain and unpredictable in
estimating the nature, time and the magnitude of disruptions that might arise. It has
therefore become important for the organizations to consider adopting a proactive
approach in dealing with the uncertainty by developing a support framework to
protect themselves against the outcomes of the disruptive events. The study was
guided by the following objectives: To establish the extent to which United Nation
has implemented IT disaster recovery plan. To establish the effect of disaster recovery
on business continuity at the United Nation office in Nairobi and to determine the
challenges of implementing disaster recovery. The research design adopted was
descriptive research design. The study used primary data which was collected using
questionnaires. The target respondents for the study were from the Finance, Human
Resource and IT departments. These are the perceived technical people that were
better placed to answer the research questions. In each department, 10 questionnaires
were distributed. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics
including tables, pie- charts, percentages, mean and standard deviation. It was found
that the organization recognizes the danger on its operations as a result of disasters
occurring. Majority of respondents seemed to embrace almost all the steps in the
various sections of BC and DR planning. Disaster management planning should
involve all the stakeholders in a firm and at the same time be holistic in the sense that
it should be strategic, consider business risk management analysis, awareness and
Information Life cycle managements for the development of a business continuity
plan. The model adopted for the study was found to be reliable. Back-up strategies
and other undocumented back-up strategies were found to be statistically insignificant
even though development of a plan, risk assessment and choosing an alternative
recovery site were insignificant. The major limitation for the study was scope. The
findings cannot be over generalized. The study was undertaken at United Nation
Offices in Nairobi and therefore there’s no room for comparison of findings with
other offices. This study was also limited by other factors in that some respondents
may have been biased or dishonest in their answers considering that they were all
commenting on their employer. The study recommends there is need to enhance the
organizational disaster recovery which will assist in the reduction of performance risk
assessment. Disaster recovery helps the organization in tailored recovery plan that
provide direction on how quickly to resolve the site issue. The study also recommends
that there is need to manage on the organization conflict of interest among influential
stakeholders, lack of clear policy guidelines and severity of disruptions. The study
centered on disaster recovery principles and its effect on business continuity process
in United Nation Office Nairobi. A similar study should therefore be done on other
Parastatals in Kenya. This will shed more light on the disaster recovery principles and
its effect on business continuity process in those Parastatals.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
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