You can download a copy of current version of the glossary here: Glossary.pdf
Academic Appointee
The definition of academic appointee varies, but some typical examples are:
- professor
- lecturer
- librarian
- curator
- teaching assistant
- graduate student instructor
- graduate student researcher
Contact your HR representative if you have any questions about academic appointees.
Action Items
Action Items are activities that you want to track that could be done now (or any time before a disaster strikes) to make your unit more prepared.
Centrally-Owned Applications
Centrally-Owned applications are those whose technical owner is UT Information Technology Services (ITS).
Cost Center
An accounting term denoting a unit or sub-unit that incurs costs but does not directly produce revenue. In some organizations, this term is loosely used to divide the organization to allocate budget (with no reference to revenue or profit).
Critical Application or Server.
A Critical Application or Server is essential to the core mission of your unit. For disaster planning, it must be continued through disaster or resumed soon after a
disaster, to ensure either the viability of the organization or its ability to serve its customers.
UT Ready defines four levels of criticality:
Critical 1: Must be continued at normal or increased service load and cannot pause. Necessary to life, health, security. (Examples: inpatient care, police services)
Critical 2: Must be continued if at all possible, perhaps in reduced mode. Pausing activity will have grave consequences. (Examples: provision of care to at-risk outpatients, functioning of data networks, at-risk research)
Critical 3: May pause if forced to do so but must resume in 30 days or sooner. (Examples: classroom instruction, research, payroll, student advising)
Deferrable: May pause; resume when conditions permit. (Examples: elective surgery, routine building maintenance, training, marketing).
Critical Function (see Function)
Dependencies
Upstream Dependencies are the units (WITHIN UT) whose reduced functioning would seriously impair your own unit’s ability to perform this Critical Function.
Downstream Dependencies are the units that would be seriously impacted if your unit could not perform this Critical Function.
- Consider who produces what you need (upstream) and who needs what you produce (downstream).
- Dependencies are usually units, although it can be a process (e.g., instruction) or a group of people (e.g., students).
- Please do not name IT systems as either upstream or downstream dependencies here. IT systems are treated separately.
- Add comments to clarify selections.
Disaster
A disaster is a sudden or uncontrollable event that causes severe disruption, damage, or harm. These events may be natural, such as hurricanes or pandemics, intentional, such as terrorism, or unintentional, such as a broken pipe.
Documents
Documents are any files, spreadsheets, images, manuals, etc., that are important for supporting your designated function(s). The documents listed here may be paper or electronic. Do not include records stored within a database application such as a financial system, an HR system, a medical records system, etc. These will be treated elsewhere.
Note: If a document is confidential or sensitive, please describe it but do not upload it. Although your plan lives on a secure server, the group of people authorized to see your plan may not all be authorized to see that document.
Note: All types of documents will be accepted for upload (20MB per document size limit). But future opening, viewing & downloading requires that the computer being used at that time have the appropriate software. Use Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format when possible. Avoid less-common document types, and use this system as your secondary repository only - make sure your documents are also available elsewhere.
Formal Delegation of Authority
An assignment of authority & responsibility to perform specified acts on behalf of the organization: e.g., to sign specified types of contracts. This assignment is almost always granted via a written document.
Function
A function is a service or mission your unit provides. Examples of functions include
- laboratory research
- classroom instruction
- purchasing
- paying employees
- course scheduling
- facilities repair
- grant accounting
A critical function is an activity that is essential to the core mission of your unit. For disaster planning, a Critical Function is a function that must be continued through the disaster or resumed soon after the disaster is over to ensure either the viability of the organization or its ability to serve its customers. UT READY defines four levels of criticality:
Critical 1: Must be continued at normal or increased service load and cannot pause. These units or processes are necessary to life, health, or security. (Examples: inpatient care, police services)
Critical 2: Must be continued if at all possible, perhaps in reduced mode. Stopping will have grave consequences. (Examples: provision of care to at-risk outpatients, functioning of data networks, at-risk research)
Critical 3: May pause if necessary but must resume in 30 days or sooner. (Examples: classroom instruction, research, payroll, student advising)
Deferrable: May pause; resume when conditions permit. (Examples: elective surgery, routine building maintenance, training, marketing)
Functional Owner
The function owner is the unit that authorizes any modifications to the function.
Key Resources
The most necessary people and resources required to sustain your Critical Functions during adverse events. Some institutions choose to record titles and roles; others enter the names of specific individuals. Many who maintain lists of key people outside this application choose to add those lists as attachments in the Documents section, rather than entering them one by one and maintaining them in multiple locations. Resist the temptation to list all your staff under Key People. The staff you should list are the ones you would call upon first in a time of crisis - who have the experience, skills, or authority to help “sort things out” and plan the next steps.
Leadership Successor
The leadership successor is the person who would be an appropriate substitute if the head of the unit is absent. In most cases, this will not be an officially designated position.
Peak Periods
Peak periods are time intervals measured in months where you would expect the activity of your critical function to be exceptionally high. This might be a peak workload period such as the annual financial closing for accounting functions, or it might denote activities that happen only at certain times - such as course registration that occurs once per semester. Select as many months as needed. If this function has no peak periods, leave it blank.
Recovery Point (or Period) Objective (RPO)
A recovery point objective (RPO) is the maximum targeted time period in which data might be lost from an IT service due to a major incident. The RPO sets the limit in which systems designers have to work. For instance, if the RPO is set to four hours, then off-site mirrored backups must happen and be completed more frequently than every 4 hours – a daily off-site backup on tape will not suffice. NB: Business continuity uses a business impact analysis to determine RPO for each service – RPO is not determined by the existent backup or replication regime.
Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is a goal you set for the amount of time it should take to restore the service. When figuring the RTO, account for other business processes that must be restored and the impacts that this process has when unavailable. If there are a number of processes that must be restored, it may be helpful to develop several tiers for RTOs. For example, Tier 1 could be 0-4 hours, Tier 2 4-24 hours, etc. These tiers are arbitrary and should be developed based on the needs of your unit.
Skills
These are special skills, licenses, or certifications that might be needed post-disaster. Please enter those skills appropriate to the performance of your unit’s critical functions. If a particular skill is required post-disaster, include it on your list even though you think you will have it covered. For example, “the ability to process payroll” will be needed by many units. Even though you have a person who does payroll, he/she might not be available.
Sub-Unit (see unit)
Staff of Other Units
These are the essential people from elsewhere within UT whom your staff will need to contact within the first few hours or days after a disruptive event.
Stakeholders
These are other people that your staff may need to contact after a disruptive event. For example - vendors, clients, project partners, donors, sponsors. When listing vendors, please include only those that your unit makes individual purchases from (as opposed to those vendors who sell in bulk via the central purchasing department).
Regarding alternate vendors: if a usual supplier is local, you may want to seek an alternate outside the local area. If you prefer, existing lists can be uploaded on the Document Summary page.
Student-staff
Student-staff are work-study students and other employed undergraduates. Do not count unpaid student interns.
Teams
Teams are any group of people essential for coping with adverse events. Teams may include external members in addition to your staff. List them all. Some examples of teams you might use are:
- Disaster Response Team
- Hazardous Material Team
- Facilities Team
- Networking Team
- Server (System Administration) Team
- Applications Team
- Operations Team
- Communications Team
- Finance Team
Technical Owner
The unit that administers your system or has access to modify programs or databases.
Unit
Your unit is your workgroup. It might be a department, center, institute, business unit, or similar group.
A sub-unit is an area within your unit. For a college, the sub-units might include departments. For departments, the sub-units might consist of centers, institutes, research labs, administrative staff, etc. A sub-unit is a group to whom you provide a service or who provides a service to you; whose reduced functioning would seriously impact the ability to perform a critical function. In other words, who do you depend on for Upstream and Down Stream dependencies within your unit? In some cases, you might want to create a separate DRP for a sub-unit if it is sufficiently complex or large.
Unit-Owned Applications
Unit-Owned applications are those whose technical owner is within your unit or whose owner is any other campus unit (another department or college, but not UT Information Technology Services).
Unit-Owned Servers
These are servers owned and managed by your unit, not by UT Information Technology Services, which are necessary for performing your critical functions. It is okay (even encouraged) to group similar or related servers into one entry when it makes sense, such as machines making up a cluster or a web farm with multiple machines doing the same functions.
Workstation
A workstation is any tablet, laptop, desktop, or workstation computer which is not a server.