As an integral part of the LDCs’ meter to bill processing, the availability of the MDM/R is important. The MDM/R Business Continuity Manual outlines procedures and interactions required between the SME and MDM/R Service Recipients to restore normal service operations as quickly as possible and to minimize the business impacts of an MDM/R outage that is expected to last more than 24 hours, defined as a "business interruption event".

The MDM/R Business Continuity Manual applies to the MDM/R Production and Disaster Recovery environments only. The plan does not include the procedures for the resolution of incidents or problems that are determined to be within the MDM/R Service Recipient’s systems or processes – these remain the responsibility of the MDM/R Service Recipient to resolve.

The MDM/R Business Continuity Manual includes four main steps:

• Planning including proactive, precautionary measures taken by both the SME, MDM/R Service Recipient and their authorized agents;
• Initial Response in reaction to a business interruption or potential business interruption event in order to assess the level of impact and level of response;
• Recovery with the objective of returning critical MDM/R services to reliable operation within service levels set out in the MDM/R Terms of Service; and
• Restoration with a longer-term objective of returning to operations at the primary site or alternate site with the required high availability and disaster recovery protections.

The SME’s involvement in assisting MDM/R Service Recipients when recovering from an MDM/R business interruption event within their internal systems falls under the scope of the MDM/R Incident Management Manual.

It is extremely important that LDCs and their service providers understand not only how the SME will handle an MDM/R production business interruption event, but also what their responsibilities and expected actions are prior to and during an event. Please review the MDM/R Business Continuity Manual to help ensure that your organization is sufficiently prepared in the event of an emergency. 

If you have any feedback on the MDM/R Business Continuity Manual, please contact us.