Advanced Government Crisis Management and Continuity Planning Training Course

Course overview

Government agencies and public-sector partners must sustain essential services while making defensible decisions under severe uncertainty. A cyberattack may disable citizen-facing systems, flooding may isolate facilities, civil unrest may disrupt field operations, or a public-health event may overwhelm normal command arrangements. Senior staff need more than an emergency plan: they need a tested continuity management system that identifies critical services, sets recovery priorities, establishes delegated authority, and coordinates credible public, interagency, and humanitarian action.

This advanced five-day course develops the practical methods used to design, govern and exercise crisis management and business continuity arrangements in government settings. Participants work with ISO 22301 and ISO 22361 principles, business impact analysis, threat and hazard identification, continuity strategies, crisis decision logs, emergency communications protocols, recovery time objectives and exercise evaluation methods. They learn to connect strategic crisis governance with operational continuity plans for people, facilities, technology, suppliers, records and public services.

Delivery combines instructor-led analysis, government incident case studies, facilitated command-post simulations and structured planning workshops. Participants use scenario data to make escalation decisions, prepare a continuity strategy, draft crisis governance arrangements and test them against cascading disruption. Each participant leaves with an organisation-specific Crisis Management and Continuity Improvement Pack, including a service-prioritisation matrix, continuity strategy outline, crisis team terms of reference, exercise objectives and a 90-day implementation roadmap.

The course is designed for experienced public-sector managers, resilience leads and programme leaders who already contribute to emergency preparedness, service delivery or organisational risk management and now need to lead cross-functional continuity and crisis-management work.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Conduct a business impact analysis that ranks essential public services, dependencies, maximum tolerable periods of disruption and recovery objectives
• Apply ISO 22301 and ISO 22361 principles to structure a government continuity and crisis-management framework
• Design crisis governance arrangements with defined activation thresholds, delegated authority, decision rights and escalation routes
• Build continuity strategies for workforce, facilities, ICT, records, suppliers and public-facing service channels
• Develop a threat and hazard risk register using consequence, likelihood, vulnerability and control-effectiveness criteria
• Create a crisis communications protocol with stakeholder maps, message approval workflows, holding statements and rumour-management actions
• Plan and facilitate a discussion-based continuity exercise using objectives, injects, observer guides and after-action reporting
• Produce a 90-day continuity improvement roadmap with accountable owners, milestones, resource requirements and assurance measures

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Business Continuity Managers — who must maintain and test continuity arrangements across essential government services
• Emergency Management and Civil Protection Officers — who coordinate preparedness, response structures and interagency action
• Senior Public Service Managers — who hold accountability for sustaining critical services during disruption
• Risk and Resilience Managers — who need to connect enterprise risk, operational resilience and crisis governance
• ICT and Digital Service Leaders — who must plan recovery of priority systems, data and citizen access channels
• Humanitarian Programme Managers — who need continuity arrangements for field operations, partners and duty-of-care obligations

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience in public-sector operations, emergency preparedness, organisational risk, service delivery, ICT recovery or programme management. The course assumes familiarity with terms such as risk register, incident escalation, stakeholder mapping and emergency response, plus an ability to interpret service-process information and participate in structured planning workshops. Prior exposure to a business continuity plan, emergency operations centre or exercise is useful but not essential. No formal certification in ISO standards, specialist crisis-management software, coding skills or prior command-role experience is required. Participants should bring examples of their own continuity or emergency arrangements where organisational policy permits.

Training methodology

The instructor uses short expert briefings to establish methods, followed by government-focused case analysis, facilitated planning tables and crisis simulation rounds. Participants assess a fictional public-service disruption with cascading ICT, workforce, supplier and public-information impacts, then make decisions using role cards, incident updates and time-bound injects. Small groups build planning components each day and receive structured peer and instructor critique against ISO 22301 and ISO 22361 principles. The final session converts learning into an individual 90-day application plan for the participant’s own organisation.

Course outline

Day 1: Crisis Governance and Public-Service Resilience

• Government crisis-management architecture and continuity management system design
• ISO 22301 continuity management requirements and ISO 22361 crisis-management guidance
• Essential-service identification and public-value prioritisation
• Crisis activation thresholds, alert levels and incident categorisation
• Strategic, tactical and operational command roles
• Delegated authority, decision rights and emergency governance
• Crisis decision logs, situation reports and executive briefings

Workshop: Participants analyse a sudden disruption to a citizen service and produce a crisis activation decision, initial governance chart and executive situation report.

Day 2: Impact Analysis, Risk and Critical Dependencies

• Business impact analysis interview design and service-process mapping
• Maximum tolerable period of disruption and recovery time objective setting
• Minimum business continuity objective and recovery point objective distinctions
• Threat and hazard identification using FEMA THIRA concepts
• Dependency mapping for people, premises, ICT, data, suppliers and utilities
• Single points of failure and cascading-failure analysis
• Risk treatment selection and residual-risk acceptance

Workshop: Participants complete a business impact analysis and dependency map for a priority government service, defining recovery objectives and critical vulnerabilities.

Day 3: Continuity Strategies and Operational Plans

• Workforce continuity, succession and remote-working arrangements
• Alternate-site, facility-denial and access-control strategies
• ICT disaster recovery alignment and priority system restoration
• Records protection, data accessibility and information-security controls
• Supplier continuity clauses, mutual aid and emergency procurement
• Continuity procedures for public-facing and vulnerable-client services
• Plan structure, checklists, call trees and document-control protocols

Workshop: Participants develop a continuity strategy options paper and operational plan outline for a service affected by facility, staff and system loss.

Day 4: Crisis Communications and Multi-Agency Coordination

• Crisis communications governance and spokesperson authorisation
• Stakeholder mapping for citizens, staff, elected officials, media and partners
• Holding statements, message maps and public-information approval workflows
• Rumour monitoring, misinformation response and social-media escalation
• Interagency coordination structures and liaison-officer functions
• Humanitarian coordination, duty of care and affected-population communication
• Common operating picture design and information-sharing protocols

Workshop: Participants respond to a fast-moving scenario by preparing stakeholder messages, a media holding statement and a multi-agency coordination briefing.

Day 5: Exercising, Assurance and Continuous Improvement

• Exercise strategy and HSEEP-aligned exercise programme design
• Discussion-based, tabletop, functional and full-scale exercise selection
• Exercise objectives, injects, control arrangements and participant briefings
• Observation criteria, evidence capture and performance assessment
• After-action reports, corrective-action registers and lessons management
• Continuity assurance, internal audit and management review
• Ninety-day implementation planning and executive sponsorship

Workshop: Participants run a tabletop exercise segment, produce an after-action improvement register and finalise their individual Crisis Management and Continuity Improvement Pack.

Tools & standards covered

ISO 22301, ISO 22361, FEMA THIRA, HSEEP

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions