My Summer Job

I realize I just posted, but my script is still running, it is not time for lunch yet, and I have a lot to catch up on.

I just spent some time writing about a script I had to write for work, but I've not really elaborated on what it is I do. I mentioned a few couple posts back that I work as an intern in the Business Recovery Services department for First National Bank of Omaha. As it turns out, this is an exciting, dynamic, and challenging field and I'm glad I chose to come here this summer.

The primary goal of our group is to provide internal consulting services to the corporate business units and our affiliates regarding business continuity planning and disaster recovery. The idea lies in that if a business unit can list its core processes and functionality and then identify what resources (locations, people, resources, supplies, technology) it needs to do them, it can develop plans to work around a situation in which one or more of those resources becomes unavailable.

What we do is work with each group to assist them in identifying their processes and resources, and guiding them through their planning development. We use a toolkit called eBRP to store and organize all the information and manage our efforts.

My group only consists of three people, including myself. The interesting thing is that I can bring my IT and computer science experiences to the table. I've pretty much moved into the lead role for all efforts regarding technology. Once ETS (our technology division) settles down, I'll be responsible for rolling out our planning efforts to them.

Another big thing I do is data gathering and processing. That sounds pretty bleak I suppose, but the state of technology representation in our system was immature and not sufficient to recovery business in the event of an emergency. Therefore, I had to contact different groups within ETS to identify what kinds of information we had to describe our technology infrastructure, where it was, and how we could get it into eBRP. The main areas I focused on were databases, networking, and servers. I wanted to ensure an automated data flow that would pool into our system, so I worked with the respective managers to schedule reports that would end up on my machine. From there, I had to write scripts that would parse the data and massage it into a format that would work well with eBRP's import tools. It turns out I've run into some weak spots with eBRP, and pulling all that off tends to be fairly difficult so far. The good news is that I wanted to learn the Python scripting language this summer, and it lended itself well to creating solutions for these problems.

So far I've gotten most of the data import processes to a state where they can be fully automated, but I want to make sure they're bug free and maintainable before I leave. Either way, it's a lot of fun and it has variety. The best part is that I feel challenged and rarely bored here.

One final thought. While working with the tools and processes here, I've begun to see how our efforts are pretty valuable to any organization. I've also seen how the tools and processes available aren't as effective, efficient, or robust as they could be. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be many major players in that market so innovation seems to move slowly. It is entirely possible that if get an entrepreneurial spark before I graduate, I may try to create a more effective business recovery management solution and develop a consulting service around it. It's certainly an exciting field and I know quite a few talented people back at school that would be excited to help out. I suppose any readers that take an interest in this or have suggestions should feel free to contact me and let me know.

Ok, lunch time!