Finding My Way in the Bureaucracy

Computerworld - After the adventure that I described in my Feb. 14 column, "Disaster Recovery Planned on the Fly" , I set about creating a real contingency plan. I've made some progress, but along the way, I've gotten a good taste of what it's like to work in a state agency.
Having found no evidence of contingency plans for either facilities or personnel, I decided that my first step should be to talk to the chairman of the safety committee. This fellow is a lifelong government employee who looks as if he should already be retired.
We've all heard the rumors that government employees, feeling secure with a lifetime job that provides good retirement and health benefits, have the mentality that "it all pays the same" whether they work hard or not. I now think those rumors are true. And I hear that it can take up to three years to fire someone around here. No wonder no contingency plans are in place.
I explained to the safety committee chairman that I was working on a contingency plan for the agency and that I wanted to make sure it addressed facilities and personnel as well as information systems. I asked him how often the committee meets and whether I could sit in on a meeting.
Bad news: They meet annually, and I had just missed the meeting. So, what issues had they addressed? The chairman's most urgent concern was that many employees are getting up in years; the committee decided to recommend to the agency administrator (in private-sector terms, this is the equivalent of a division president) that a defibrillator be purchased in case someone had a heart attack. OK, I could see that the safety committee wasn't going to be much help.
Working on my own, I completed the contingency planning road map and began to identify the major information systems. I was pulling together an inventory and identifying where confidential data resided outside the major information systems -- all in all, having a great time -- when it occurred to me that I just might want to make sure that my business-impact assessment and individual disaster recovery plans for the major information systems aligned with the larger government picture.
That's when I got the bright idea to boldly go where no woman has gone before and e-mail the chief information security officer for the state. I had met the guy once and thought he seemed a little wet behind the ears; I figured he would probably welcome my expertise on