Emergency Preparedness & COOP
Continuity of Operations planning for federal programs
Executive summary
How federal program offices can build, exercise, and maintain a Continuity of Operations Plan that actually activates under pressure — with annexes for cyber incidents, pandemic response, and physical disruption.
The COOP that no one reads
Most COOPs are written for compliance and forgotten. We outline the three artifacts that make a plan executable: the activation card, the role roster, and the recovery sequence.
Tabletop exercises that change behavior
A short-form tabletop format that drives real updates to the plan, run quarterly in under ninety minutes.
Cyber incident annex
Integrating CISA guidance with agency-specific reporting timelines.
Pandemic and biological annex
Lessons from COVID-era continuity activations across HHS and CDC partners.
Maintenance discipline
How to keep a COOP current without a dedicated team — a quarterly review checklist with named owners.
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