Project Summary C-39: Offsite business continuity

Project Summary

C-39 Financial Plan 2018 – 2022 Priority: Critical

Project Name: Offsite business continuity 2-2-13103-950 CC1183 1-2-01600-310

Submitted by: Dawn Christenson, Director of Finance

Executive Summary

To ensure business continuity, data backups must be moved off-site and preferably off-Island. The current system of backups is sub-optimal as data is currently backed up on the same on-site hardware as operational data is stored. This project utilizes $15,300 carried forward from the 2017/2018 IT Strategic Plan capital budget allocated to backups and connectivity.

Business problem and opportunity

Risk mitigation for business continuity in the event of a disaster or any other massive data loss. A replicated environment is a near mirror to production environment which is capable of a faster time of recovery. The recommended solution assumes a low tolerance for down time and data loss, thus a replicated environment is a more appropriate approach with recovery time ranging from minutes to hours.

Proposed project objectives

A replication approach results in a return to operations turnaround of 2-4 hours from a current likelihood of greater than a full day. It includes the ability to operate from the Public Safety Building in case of local power failure at View Royal’s Town Hall or localized disaster. In event of larger scale disaster, it provides the ability to be operational in <4 hours from an off-site location. Capital costs are for hardware and professional services to upgrade firewalls to handle the full data load at the expected service level.

Business risks

Without a secure offsite replicated data and backups program, there is a high organizational risk from insufficient recovery from major and critical failure. The same potential for failure exists in our backup system as our operational system, thus the need to segregate the backups to an off-site location.

Proposed funding

Capital: Casino revenue; Operational: Taxation

Costs and benefits

Costs	FY1	FY2	FY3	FY4	FY5	5-year Total
Capital	15,300					15,300
Operational	33,250	34,000	34,500	36,000	36,500	174,250
Total	48,550	34,000	34,500	36,000	36,500	189,550

Benefits
Tangible	Ability to recover critical data and be operational in case of disaster
Intangible

Recommendation

THAT the Committee recommend the 2018-2022 Financial Plan include the offsite business continuity project with capital costs to be funded by Casino revenue and ongoing operational costs funded by taxation.