The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will build a new business continuity site after a review found its current sites fail to adequately fulfill disaster recovery functions.
The Federal Parliament’s public works committee (PWC) has given the go ahead for the new site, which will be located in Baulkham Hills, 25km Northwest of Sydney’s CBD. The site is set to be operational by 2007 and will cost around $38 million to construct.
According to the PWC, the RBA’s current arrangements were unsatisfactory in the areas of ensuring that essential staff were available when required, costs and control over business continuity arrangements and locating the continuity site at a safe distance from the RBA head office and Sydney CBD. The need to consolidate all IT and communications (ITC) systems was also seen as key.
Currently, the RBA has a business continuity site at Kirribilli, an ITC disaster recovery site at a leased data centre in West Pennant Hills and banking operations in its Canberra branch.
While many firms have recovery facilities available around Australia’s major cities, the RBA’s new premises will be for the sole use of the bank, due in part to concerns over the bank’s reliance on third-party vendors.
The centre will be a two-storey building including offices for 55 permanent staff, emergency workstations for 165 staff, enclosed offices and meeting rooms, a 240-square-metre data centre and 20-seat dealing room at the core of the ground floor and intensive and resilient data communications.
Although the 55 permanent staff will in be long-term office space, the centre will be segregated into a permanent area and an emergency occupation area. The emergency area will remained in a ‘lights out’state until required.
While the 55 staff will be permanently stationed at the centre, the RBA is hoping to transfer staff to the new site on a rotational basis.
The RBA could not give the PWC an estimate of how often the new facility would be used, but stated that the facility would be used for rehearsal and intensive testing.
Business continuity advocates hope the RBA’s move will increase the profile of business continuity in Australia. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority recently launched its new prudential standard on business continuity management (BCM).