Bureau of INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Continuity of Business Operations
BIS maintains the Comptroller’s Office agency-wide disaster recovery and business continuity plan which ensures that the Office’s mission critical and mandated functions are restored with minimal interruption in the event of a major incident or disaster. The plan addresses incident management, technology restoration, and business process continuity for all 18 bureaus within the Office. The plan is also integrated with the disaster recovery capabilities of several key vendors who are an integral part of the Pension Asset Management functions of the Agency, including our Custody Bank (Bank of New York/Mellon) and QED Financial Systems.
The plan also includes the real time replication of critical transactions to a remote computer processing location. In addition to housing the required technology and infrastructure components, this remote location will also provide key personnel with on site systems access, and provide an emergency operations center for the Comptroller. In the event of a disaster which precludes access to One Center Street, key Comptroller Office personnel can work with system access at the remote location on each of 3 different daily shifts.
Communications are critical to disaster and incident management.The Comptroller's Office utilizes several tools to assist in disaster-related communications. MetaMessage is used to support pin-to-pin communication between Blackberry devices. This ensures communication capability is maintained for critical personnel in the event of a disaster. Send Word Now is used to send a communications blast to all personnel in the agency. The blast messages can be sent to land line phones, cell phones, Blackberrys and email.
Detailed testing and maintenance methodologies were developed as part of the plan. Maintenance is performed on a continual basis to reflect updates to the recovery environment, and changes to business functions, the organization, and technology within the Agency.
The Comptroller’s Office provides critical services to all those living, working, visiting, or doing business with New York City. All of these stakeholders benefit by ensuring within a short timeframe that business processes can be restored, and operations can continue in the event of a disaster.