Since 2007, Witt Associates has been working with the City of Alexandria to develop Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) plans, across all city departments. This process began by developing a custom, Alexandria-specific COOP template. The template was developed by working initially with four of the City's key departments: Human Services, Information Technology Services, Transportation and Environmental Services, and Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse. The purpose of the City's COOP was to establish policy and guidance to ensure the execution of department mission-essential functions in the event that services are threatened or impaired, and/or the relocation of selected personnel and functions is required. The COOP includes provisions for the reconstitution and/or maintenance of management capabilities and essential functions when an emergency threatens department staff, clients, programs, properties, and/or viability.
These four departments vary significantly in structure, mission, and client-base. They were selected in order to develop a sufficiently flexible COOP framework such that these COOP form the basis of a replicable COOP template.
Since the initial development of the template, the City of Alexandria Office of Emergency Management has used the template to provide technical assistance to the remaining departments (approximately 30) in the development of their own departmental COOP.
As part of this effort, Alexandria subsequently contracted with Witt Associates, in 2009, to accelerate the City-wide continuity planning effort in preparation for potential impacts of a 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic. Witt Associates worked with departments City-wide to identify essential functions and developing alternate-staffing COOP.
In the event of an emergency situation that disrupts normal operations, COOP/COG planning facilitates the maintenance of requisite authorities, leadership, and decision-making capacities. It also includes plans and procedures that define and describe statutory requirements and responsibilities (local, state, and/or federal) placed upon governing bodies, delineate essential functions, specify successions and emergency delegation of authority, identify alternate strategies, provide for interoperable communications, and validate such capabilities through tests, training and exercises.