Business Continuity Management

The Disaster Management Branch provide oversight and support for the Business Continuity Management policy.

SA Health is required (as with all SA government departments) to plan for and implement sound Business Continuity strategies, should they be impacted by a business disruption.

Business Continuity is closely aligned to emergency management as many (but not all) causes of business disruptions may relate to either internal and/or external emergencies.

Business Continuity also aligns closely with risk management, as a robust risk assessment process should see the majority of business disruption related risks identified, communicated and mitigated as part of ‘best practice’.

Importance of Business Continuity Management

Business Continuity is essential for ensuring that SA Health can respond to and recover from any business disruption to ensure that it can meet its organisational objectives and continue to delivery critical / essential services in a timely manner.

Business disruptions can often be summarised as a “loss of…”, as described by the list below:

  • facility / site / work area
  • personnel / workforce
  • information, communication and technology services
  • essential services (for example gas, water, power)
  • surge workload

It is the responsibility of the Department for Health and Wellbeing, Local Health Networks and other individual entities of SA Health to ensure that they have robust business continuity planning arrangements, current plans and thoroughly exercised and reviewed response and recovery arrangements to manage the impact of any business disruptions.

Business Continuity Management Framework

To ensure compliance with these responsibilities, and consistency across the agency, the SA Health Disaster Resilience Policy Directive (PDF 321KB) is applicable to all business continuity activities across SA Health.

To support this, the SA Health Disaster Resilience – Business Continuity Management Framework (PDF 208KB) provides a consistent set of principles for planning for, responding to and recovering from disaster and disruptive events. The BCM Framework is mandatory.

Further information

For further information, please contact the Disaster Management Branch:

Email: Health.DisasterManagementBranch@sa.gov.au

Telephone: (08) 7425 5932 during business hours

Address: Level 2, Citi Centre Building, Hindmarsh Square, Adelaide 5000.