When record crowds converged in the National Capital Region (NCR) for the 2009 Presidential Inauguration from Jan. 20-21, a real possibility existed for cellular and Internet access to be jammed due to overwhelming wireless communications and Web bandwidth use. Approximately 2 million people were expected to converge in the District of Columbia area.
The NCR has one of the largest populations of high-ranking military officers and senior civil service executives, such as the Secretary of the Navy, Chief of Naval Operations, Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, Marine Corps Commanding General and additional chief of staffs and executives.
To ensure minimal disruption or loss of NMCI connectivity during the inaugural event, Margaret Davis, NMCI regional field leader for the NCR, pulled together an HP Enterprise Services-led core team to prepare and activate a special crisis management plan should an emergency response be needed during the inauguration time frame.
“Several factors made this particular readiness activity challenging,” said Davis. “Because of the inauguration, it was a local federal holiday. Businesses were closed, traffic was blocked and security was tight accessing the NCR. It was important that we place people in strategic locations to ensure mission-critical services and executive-level VIPs were served in the event of an incident.”
Using NMCI's Crisis Command Center Plan and Crisis Management Plan, the team developed a special “Presidential Inauguration Business Continuity Preparedness Strategy.” The business continuity strategy defines a structured response process to coordinate activities with the Service Delivery leader, Regional Delivery leader, Enterprise Operations manager, Enterprise Network Operations and Security Center (ENOSC), NMCI Command Center, NMCI leadership, Network Operations Center (NOC), Service Desk, Enterprise Engineering, Field Services and Account Management.
“From January 19-21, the NMCI Command Center escalated a Level II Readiness position, which is a watch stage requiring the crisis manager and ENOSC to monitor NMCI sites in the NCR,” said Richard Sisler, NMCI Crisis Management manager. “The strategy framework included the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Incident Management System (NIMS), which provides a systematic, proactive approach to guide departments and agencies at all levels of governments and the private sector to work seamlessly together to mitigate incidents. In addition, preparedness checklists were developed for the NCR team, incident commander and area commander.”
NMCI personnel were positioned in locations around the NCR to support key high-ranking officials. In addition, HP Enterprise Services NMCI NOC Services temporarily increased bandwidth capacity for remote access services in case of a surge overload.
To mitigate total loss of cellular communications or Internet connectivity, the team obtained five direct connect handsets from Randy Clark, HP Sprint/Nextel client executive. These handsets were placed in strategic locations in the NCR.
“Direct connect works like a two-way radio,” said Sisler. “It does not use cell towers. We positioned the handsets at strategic NCR locations, giving us a four-deep communications process – cell, landline, e-mail and direct connect.”
Throughout the entire inauguration, no service disruption or outages were reported.
“We were prepared by having a business continuity strategy in place and people strategically located to support key Navy and Marine Corps personnel,” said Davis.
“The team did an excellent job following the Crisis Management processes and procedures. Due to their efforts, a major event in the Washington area had no effect on our users' ability to execute their mission,” said Robert Pearson, vice president of NMCI operations.
