Business Continuity and Emergency Preparedness

This part of the guidance has been informed by work carried out by Historic England’s (former) Heritage Information Partnerships (HIPs) team (now HER Partnerships team), which ran a series of workshops for HER professionals in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Emergency Scenarios

When preparing plans for business continuity, it is important to consider the types of potential emergency scenario which may be faced, as each type of scenario may require a different response. The emergency scenarios identified as potentially having a significant impact upon an HER’s ability to continue to provide a service are as follows:

• disasters caused by natural and/or human action (flood, fire, storm damage);
• staff losses;
• pandemics;
• extra-mural digital disasters (e.g. impact on software supplier/digital host organisation);
• data leaks (see also GDPR and Data Protection);
• cyber-attacks and computer hacking, including malware, phishing, DDOS and DOS attacks and man-in-the-middle attacks.

As well as planning for such emergency scenarios, business continuity plans should also consider the ways in which these plans may need to be adapted post-implementation. This requires robust lines of communication and regular review to ensure that the plan continues to meet the needs of changing circumstances. This is especially the case where there are unforeseen changes and/or when the needs of the HER are competing with other needs within the organisation. The nature of many HERs’ host organisations means that key HER staff may be redeployed to higher priority areas within the organisation on a temporary basis, as happened during Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.