Sixty-five percent of respondents said budget constraints represented the biggest hurdle to implementing effective agency continuity of operations. Technology infrastructure, management focus, and remote access to data and applications also represented significant hurdles for state and local agency IT officials.
The White House estimates that a severe avian flu pandemic could last 18 months, rolling across the country in multiple waves and actively infecting communities for six to eight weeks at a time. Approximately 40 percent of U.S. workers could be kept off the job for a few weeks. An outbreak could shut down any government facility where even one case of the flu has occurred. To increase social distance, employees could be restricted to their homes or temporary shelters indefinitely.
"As the primary provider of services to citizens, state and local governments don't have the option to just go home and wait out the pandemic. Beyond emergency services, day-to-day human, business, and citizen services must continue largely unimpeded," said Bert Wakeley, director of State and Local Government for Citrix. "Much like Y2K, agencies can see both the potential problems and solutions well before they happen - now avian flu preparation is just a matter of political leadership focus and priority."
Despite increasing concern in the public and private sectors about an avian flu pandemic in the United States, just 27 percent of survey respondents said they were concerned about the impact of an avian flu outbreak on their daily agency operations. Sixty-seven percent said they were not very concerned about the effects of an outbreak on agency operations.
At the same time, however, more than half of the survey respondents said their agency business continuity plans provide for secure, anytime, anywhere access to critical business applications over any computing device and over any network - a critical capability to enable ongoing agency operations in the event that agency offices are closed in response to an avian flu outbreak.
"The results demonstrate that technology is not a barrier for pandemic preparation. That said, the survey also demonstrates an acute need for greater awareness of the avian flu threat and greater resources to address that threat," Wakeley said.
