Enrollment Management Business Continuity Plan

UMBC Enrollment Management (Undergraduate Admissions, Financial Aid, Academic and Pre-Professional Advising, and Registrar) provides critical and time sensitive services to members of our community including internal and external constituents.  Rare and unforeseen circumstances may occur which could impact delivery of these services. In the event of such occurrences, we are committed to being prepared to promptly resume critical operations, minimizing the impact of these disruptions on our constituents.  Members of the UMBC community can be assured in knowing that our business continuity planning has prepared us well to sustain critical services without significant disruption. Below are the Business Continuity Plans for individual Enrollment Managements departments.

A Business Continuity Plan is a department’s roadmap for keeping its most essential services running during and after a disruption. While emergencies can take many forms (power outages, severe weather, cyber incidents, building closures, or unexpected staff shortages) a BCP ensures that critical operations continue with minimal interruption.

At UMBC, each Enrollment Management unit maintains a BCP that outlines:

Critical functions the department must preserve

Key personnel and backup roles

Essential systems, data, and resources

Alternative workflows if normal operations are unavailable

Communication procedures for staff, students, and campus partners

The goal of a BCP is simple:
To protect the university’s ability to serve students, support academic operations, and maintain continuity no matter the circumstances.

These plans help departments respond quickly, reduce downtime, and coordinate effectively with campus leadership and emergency management teams. They are reviewed regularly to ensure they remain accurate, actionable, and aligned with UMBC’s broader preparedness efforts.

The Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) describes the processes UMBC uses to identify essential functions and the actions we take to ensure their continuous performance during periods of disruption.  The COOP is the continuity plan for the University.  It instructs each College, Division, and subordinate unit on the process for identifying essential functions.  Resources:

Business Continuity is a method of documenting your individual and unit-level responsibilities.

 

There are 4 Phases of Continuity Planning:  Phase 1:  identify your organizational work functions.  Phase 2:  conduct a Business Process Analysis (BPA).  Phase 3:  conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA).  Phase 4: prioritize and document essential functions.

The first step in continuity planning is to identify your organizational work functions. Use the links below to access your College or Division’s continuity survey. Each survey allows a department to develop an inventory of all it’s work functions. Survey questions allow staff to describe their primary day-to-day work functions in basic terms. These are activities that are central to the performance of their job requirements. Staff responses are captured in an online spreadsheet. Leaders review and validate responses to identify gaps, expand on unique activities, and identify interdependencies that link functions together. This creates “buckets” based on common themes, and we use these buckets to develop Mission Essential Functions (MEFs).

A Business Process Analysis (BPA) is a systematic method of examining, identifying, and mapping the functions needed to perform each Mission Essential Functions (MEF).  This identifies gaps in your department’s inventory of organizational work functions from Phase 1 and details areas where multiple offices share responsibilities.

A Business Impact Analysis (BIA) predicts the consequences of a disruption to business operations.  It calculates operational, financial, compliance, and reputational costs of downtime. A BIA also establishes two specific performance targets for recovery:  1) a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) – the maximum acceptable length of time a function can be down before severe harm is sustained; and 2) a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) – the maximum acceptable amount of resource loss measured in time.

  • Business Impact Analysis (BIA) Worksheet – Coming Soon

Each College and Division may maintain an individualized Department Emergency Action Plan (DEAP) for continuity.  Subordinate units within the College or Division may also have a DEAP.  Each DEAP describes a College or Division’s PMEFs and lists each subordinate unit that has its own plan.  These plans document the continuity process, to include BPAs and BIAs, and describe your Emergency Action Procedures (EAPs).  EAPs are the immediate actions taken during a continuity disruption to mitigate impacts on operations.  EAPs are short checklists that simplify procedures. EAPs state no more than five immediate actions used to mitigate impacts: 1) detect; 2) verify; 3) notify; 4) act; and 5) end (or restart at step 1).