How the IT Team Helped One Government Weather the Storm

Previous emergency planning, in coordination with other impacted agencies, informed Washington (DC) Office of the Chief Technology Officer officials as to which systems, processes, and teams are essential, said CTO Stephen Miller. “We identified very early what our critical systems are,” Miller said. During the January ice storm, emergency communications networks and 911 systems stayed online, and the call center remained fully staffed. OCTO technicians supported District of Columbia Public Schools’ technology infrastructure and the district’s Emergency Command Center. The Security Operations Center and Network Operations Center run 24/7 at OCTO to maintain security and support network infrastructure, respectively. “What we’re doing is we’re monitoring that critical infrastructure,” Miller said, underlining that this includes reporting on the operational posture of agencies and impacts they are facing that could affect services. “Because we want to make sure our people, our places, our procurement, our processes, are all still running exactly the same as they would without this ice storm that we saw.”