UC Ready Enhancement Project
Frequently Asked Questions
Question
Answer
What is the project
timeline?
The UC Ready Enhancement Project is currently underway. The data
migration from the old system to the new system will occur between
March 9th and April 15th. Following April 15th, Continuity planners will be
configuring the tool for their campus. Workshops, interviews and/or
training sessions with system end-users will start in May and continue
over several months, at the discretion of campus continuity planners.
The continuity planner at your location will manage your local transition
and keep you informed of any important developments or actions you
need to take. Please stay on top of communications from your campus
continuity planner and take action as needed.
Although the underlying software platform is changing, the name of the
tool is not changing and it will still be called UC Ready.
In early 2014, The UC Ready Enhancement Project was established to
improve the functionality of the UC Ready tool. The project’s goal was to
identify the key enhancements necessary to continue to grow UC
continuity planning efforts. In conjunction with this project, a decision
was made to shift the strategic focus of continuity planning from the
departmental-level to the campuswide level. The enhanced UC Ready tool
will incorporate all of the previous tool's functionality and include key
enhancements that enable this important strategic shift to include
campus level continuity planning efforts.
What can I do to prepare
for the transition?
What is the new tool
called?
Why the change to this
new tool?
What are the benefits of
the new tool?
Why do I need to use this
new tool to create a
business continuity plan?
What will happen to my
current UC Ready plan?
Are we going to have to
start over?
Updated: April 2015
The new UC Ready tool will incorporate all the functionality of UC Ready
plus support campus level planning by enabling continuity planners to
conduct Business Impact Analyses; quantify dependencies across
departments; specify and track “best practices”; and roll up data for
reports at any level of the organization. The new tool will enable staff at
each location to achieve a new level of campuswide preparedness.
Your unit plays a unique and essential role in sustaining the University of
California’s mission of teaching, research, public service, and patient care.
Departments around campus depend and rely on your continued service
and functionality in order to be successful and efficient.
Prior to rollout, your existing continuity plan will be transferred into the
new UC Ready tool. While the content of your plan in the new software
tool will be similar to your plan’s current content, there will be a need for
you to edit and update your plan after the rollout. Some questions will be
new; some will be asked differently; and some will require data to be reentered by you because certain items could not be automatically
transferred due to structural differences. The campus continuity planner
will guide you how to do this, and when to begin.
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I was a “Gatekeeper” in
the old UC Ready system,
what will be my role in the
new UC Ready system?
Why aren’t the old plans
available and why can’t I
update them?
How many people are
allowed access to my UC
Ready plan in the new
system? Will I able to
grant them access?
How will the new UC
Ready software differ from
the former UC Ready?
Updated: April 2015
Your role in the new system will be similar, but will be called Plan Owner
rather than Gatekeeper. While the former UC Ready system allowed
multiple Gatekeepers, the new system provides for only one Plan Owner
per plan. If your UC Ready plan had multiple gatekeepers, the campus
continuity planner will work with you to identify the primary point of
contact for your unit’s continuity plan.
Your former plan is still available as an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) document. If
you have not saved that document previously, your campus continuity
planner can furnish it. Updating will be done using the new UC Ready
system; data edits in the former system were “frozen” as of March 9 to
ensure a stable dataset for the migration.
Plans are most effective when widely shared within your unit. Our
experience with the former UC Ready system showed that UC Ready was
used online by (typically) one person in a unit, occasionally two, and
rarely more. The majority of persons given online access to their unit’s
plan never used that access. In the new system, the emphasis will be on
sharing the plan within your unit using the PDF version of the plan, which
you can email or print. Nonetheless, online access can still be granted to
a limited number of others in addition to Plan Owners; contact your
campus continuity planner to arrange this.
The new software will differ in many ways. Some of them are:
 Workflow: Plans are created on a single primary screen rather than
on many screens.
 Templates: The new UC Ready will offer eight different planning
templates (sets of questions). Each unit will use the template most
suitable for it.
 Enterprise-level plans: The new tool will enable the creation of
campus-level and medical center-level plans as vehicles for
executive strategy and executive action.
 Coordination across departments: The new UC Ready tool will do a
better job at identifying & tracking dependencies (situations where
departments depend on other departments or on specific
resources).
 Prioritization based on severity of impacts: The new tool uses a
process called “impact analysis” to suggest the units and functions
whose disruption could have the greatest impact on the campus
mission, hence merit particular attention in the planning process.
 Best Practices: Departmental best practices are suggested, based
on type of department.
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