VIEJO, USA: Mission Viejo’s Disaster Recovery plan was formed over a two-year period that included conducting a thorough risk analysis of systems and evaluating recovery time for business processes.

Now, taking it a step ahead, Viejo is taking the lead as the first city in the county to streamline its disaster recovery plan with a remote location in San Diego – increasing the reliability and availability of the city's emergency response systems and records to keep the community safer.

“Public safety and disaster preparedness have always been a hallmark of our city’s agenda,” said Mayor Frank Ury in a press note. Improving the city's emergency response is vital to the community's safety and well being.”

The city examined any threat that can cause a system outage – from virus attacks and accidental data deletion to natural disasters like floods, fires and earthquakes. Through the review process, the city established a list of critical applications, technology services and recovery time objectives for each. The city chose leased space in San Diego to create redundancy and a recovery location for its critical systems and electronic data.

“Now, if a disaster strikes, the city can restore vital systems and information to its emergency operations center within minutes rather than days and can activate that center from any location with Internet access,” said Director of Information Technology Jackie Alexander.

Along with a remote DR location, the city also digitized nearly three million paper documents and made them available to the public online – as part of its continued commitment to practicing good government. Through its strategic disaster recovery and preparedness plan, Mission Viejo is greener, leaner and more efficient. Digitization means less paper and more government transparency. The city will save money in hardware and maintenance-related costs, and energy consumption has been reduced.

Ury said the plan is a “win-win” for emergency responders, the city and community as a whole.

“It's not a matter of ‘if’ an emergency will strike, it's ‘when’ one will strike … and our residents can rest assured and feel more confident that their city is better prepared to respond immediately to any situation or emergency,” he said.