According to Adam Continuity, local authorities in the UK are setting exemplary standards of practice when it comes to data management and backup.
Nearly all of local authorities surveyed had rehearsed their IT disaster recovery procedures in the past two years, three-quarters had reviewed their disaster recovery support within the last year and over 80 per cent said they used a third party to help with disaster recovery rehearsals, according to the survey.
Philip Caulfield, managing director, Adam Continuity, said, “It’s a refreshing case of practise what you preach with local authority IT departments. Around 65 per cent of those responsible for IT in local authorities consider business continuity to be extremely critical to the council and that attitude is reflected in how they manage disaster recovery and in their professional planning.”
67 per cent of IT professionals in local authorities gave business continuity a top rating when it came to how critical it was to the council’s business. However, they did not think that councillors shared their priorities; only a quarter thought that elected members would give business continuity the same level of importance.
Half of those responsible for business continuity in local authorities considered their IT resilience budget to be insufficient, with a budget freeze in the past year for 80 per cent of respondents. Two-thirds of local authorities use a mixture of in-house staff and external contractors; the remaining third have outsourced their disaster recovery completely.
Adam Continuity has also announced a new contract with the Lincolnshire Shared Services Partnership which will see the business continuity specialist provide disaster recovery and backup services to all seven district councils and the Police in Lincolnshire. Despite only four of the councils having had some sort disaster recovery contract in the past, the new county-wide service will save £110,000.
Roger Holloway, procurement officer, Procurement Lincolnshire, said, “Adam Continuity was able to offer a joint service contract for all the partners in the group at a much lower cost than the four existing contracts. For those partners with no contract in place, Adam Continuity provided a cost-effective solution to disaster recovery across Lincolnshire County Council. This contract alone has seen an astonishing £110,000 saving, compared with the individual cost of providing disaster recovery services.”
