The City of Toronto is the largest urban centre in Canada and rates around fourth largest in North America. The City is organized into 3 "clusters". Cluster B is made up of nine divisions and two secretariats.  IT services used by Custer B users are supplied by Cluster C and other Divisions in the same cluster.

The City of Toronto is a large complex municipality delivering a large number of diverse services to its citizens. The City of Toronto serves a population of over 2.5 million people in 44 municipal wards. Service to the public is provided through over 40 divisions with an active permanent and part-time workforce of approximately 33,000 full-time equivalent positions as well as a number of agencies, boards and commissions for a total of nearly 47,000 staff.

Project Summary

Developed an IT Disaster Recovery Plan to support the development of a Service Continuity Management plan for the 9 Divisions and 2 Secretariats which make up Cluster B in the City of Toronto.  Cluster B contains the group of divisions responsible for Emergency Services, infrasturcture and Urban Planning.

Requirement

The City of Toronto, and specifically its divisions that make up the Citizen Focused Services Cluster B, program operations would effectively cease if the critical IT applications that support its business functions were inaccessible for an unacceptable period of time.  In some cases, public health and safety would immediately be jeopardized by the failure or inaccessibility of a critical IT application. The City of Toronto recognised that a disruption in IT services would have a direct impact in providing basics services to the public and requested the development of an IT Disaster Recovery Plan to ensure essential IT services were maintained.

Project After Discovery

It was agreed that since the initiative originated in the IT services department of Cluster B, the requirement was for an IT DRP. This was confirmed by the fact that no user groups were intending to participate in the initiative to the level that would be required to develop a BCP.

City of Toronto's research led them to our consultants team of high qualified IT and Management professionals.  The consultants innovated approach to problem solving was able to quickly develop and identify the process needed to create DRP.  During the "Discovery" phase NegenIT was able to clearly understand the opportunity, problems, challenges and requirements.  Working on-site the consultants  conducted workshops, one-on-one interviews. 

• Defined the list of Users - numbers, locations, organization and application requirements
• Established the application availability requirements
• Defined documentation standards for applications and infrastructure
• Compared DRP capabilities with requirements
• Developed a process for identifying and managing IT Disaster Risks
• Delivered the DRP Recovery Procedure, Maintenance and Testing Processes
• Defined the organization requirements, budget requirements and implementation requirements

Using the consultants project and implementation plan City of Toronto introduced the DRP plan.

In addition the consultants developed all the new processes that lead to a reduction of resources needed to manage documents.  The consultants plan included training programs for engineers and support staff.  The consultants were also instrumental in designing and implementing the help desk support policies. 

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