Participating in a regional public-private emergency partnership — why do it and how do you make it work?

An ongoing relationship with government is essential to a robust and evolving business continuity plan. Each level of government plays an important role in handling a disaster, and private sector firms must understand those roles and what they can and cannot expect from the public sector in a time of crisis. Through a relationship with the public sector, firms may be able to obtain daily incident information, access to an operations centre during an emergency, and cooperation in learning more about evacuations, credentialing, pandemic planning and other critical issues. This paper demonstrates the value of forging such a relationship with government through a regional partnership. Especially during a crisis, state and local government cannot coordinate effectively with each individual company. Therefore, coalitions constitute a valuable tool for interaction. Through a regional partnership, firms can also participate in the national public-private partnership on homeland security that has been established since September 11th. The information thus obtained will be most valuable to business continuity planners. Moreover, firms will have a voice in government emergency planning at all levels. The first such partnership was established by ChicagoFIRST, and this organisation serves as a case study about the methods by which firms benefit from such a partnership.