Thank you to everyone that has reached out and engaged in Continuity of Operations (COOP) introductions and opportunities thus far! We are looking forward to the future of COOP, the revitalization of the COOP program, and providing helpful resources and opportunities to support departments throughout the development of their COOP plans. These COOP chat series articles will offer updates and a chance to learn something new!
On October 24th, COOP Program Manager, Yvette Osborne, led an internal Multnomah County Emergency Management workshop outlining the COOP element of Mission Essential Functions (MEFs) and the task of determining essential functions within an organization. An integral goal of the COOP Program is to provide resources to encourage departments to workshop and determine what their Mission Essential Functions are throughout the response phase and in the aftermath of an incident.
Mission Essential Functions are a succinct, manageable list of functions that an organization/department/division MUST continue, or resume rapidly, following a disruption of normal operations. These are functions that cannot be deferred during an emergency or disaster. These functions typically provide vital services (public safety, health services, etc.) but will also include those functions necessary for Continuity of Government (COG).
The process of establishing MEFs requires an intimate understanding of an organization’s routine operations. Although many functions are important, narrowing down certain activities an organization performs that are deemed essential can be time consuming and require internal conversations, workshopping, and the participation of leadership. To arrive at a list of prioritized essential functions, a department/division must start with all business functions and progress logically through to the most essential. The process looks like this: identification of all functions, determining which are essential functions, and then prioritization of those essential functions.
Below demonstrates an organization's practice of categorizing Mission Essential Functions versus supporting functions (not MEFs):
Mission Essential Functions (MEFs)
- Repair/clear roads
- Provide medical care
- Fight fires
- Manage the Emergency Operations Center (EOC)
- Provide public awareness messaging
Supporting Activities (Not MEFs)
- Manage human resources
- Provide IT support
- Maintain service vehicles
- Provide food for essential employees
- Stand up an emergency call center
Identifying your Mission Essential Functions is only the beginning of a much larger process. The next step will be to conduct a risk assessment against those MEFs. Although this sounds like a daunting process, we are here to offer plenty of resources to walk you through it. COOP is here to stay and won’t lead you astray!
If you are ready to delve into COOP, contact the COOP Lead in your group. If you already have a COOP plan, they can share your groups identified MEFs. This may be under an older system called BOLD, or it could be under a COOP file in your group's Google Drive folder. Just so you know, BOLD is no longer being supported by the county and files should have been migrated to a new platform called Veoci as of July 2023. Training opportunities for the use and understanding of this platform will be forthcoming from the state.
If you are unfamiliar with BOLD or Veoci, do not have a login, or just need more information or support with COOP, you can contact Multnomah County’s COOP Program Manager, Yvette Osborne at
yvette.osborne@multco.us. More details regarding COOP can be found within the Multnomah County Emergency Management COOP section.
Remember - it’s always better to be COOP-ed up together! Keep an eye out for our next COOP chat series article, and always feel free to reach out with any COOP related questions!
