Seven Questions to Ask During a Continuity Plan Review

A continuity plan can look complete and still fail when the people, systems or facilities it depends on are unavailable. A useful review therefore asks more than whether required sections exist. It tests whether the organization can continue its most important work under realistic disruption.

FEMA’s 2018 Continuity Guidance Circular, updated in 2024, presents continuity as an organization-wide capability built around essential functions, supporting resources, leadership, communications, records, alternate arrangements, devolution, reconstitution, and regular testing. The seven questions below turn those concepts into a focused internal review.

1. Are essential functions clearly defined and prioritized?

Start with the work that must continue or resume quickly. Each essential function should be specific enough that personnel can recognize the required outcome, not merely the department responsible for it.

For each function, document its acceptable interruption, minimum staffing, required systems, vital records, facilities, vendors and partner dependencies. If everything is labeled essential, the plan may not provide leaders enough direction when resources are constrained.

2. Does each function have a workable continuity strategy?

A plan should explain how essential work will continue when normal arrangements are unavailable. Review alternate facilities, remote-work options, manual workarounds, backup communications and access to equipment or records.

Check whether the strategy matches the disruption being planned for. An alternate site does not solve a regional power or telecommunications failure unless the supporting dependencies are also addressed.

3. Are orders of succession and delegations of authority usable?

Succession identifies who assumes a position. Delegation establishes what authority that person may exercise and under what conditions. Review both.

Confirm that named positions still exist, contact information is current, alternates understand the role, and legal or policy requirements are addressed. Avoid relying only on individual names; position-based language is generally easier to maintain as personnel change.

4. Can personnel access the records and systems they need?

Identify the records, data and applications required to perform each essential function. Then ask whether authorized personnel can reach them securely from continuity locations or through approved remote arrangements.

Review backup frequency, restoration priorities, access controls and offline procedures. A backup is not enough if nobody has tested whether the correct information can be restored within the needed time.

5. Will communications work when normal channels do not?

Continuity communications should support leadership, employees, partners, customers and the public as appropriate. Check primary and alternate methods, contact-list ownership, message approval and accessibility.

Test the failure of a familiar tool. If email, cellular service or the usual mass-notification platform is unavailable, does the plan identify a practical backup and who activates it?

6. Does the plan address devolution and reconstitution?

Devolution transfers responsibility for essential functions to personnel or locations outside the primary operating staff or facility when the normal organization cannot perform them. Reconstitution is the structured return to normal or a new operating environment.

Review activation criteria, transfer procedures, resource needs and decision authority for both. Plans often describe how to relocate but say much less about prolonged loss of the primary team or how leadership will decide that normal operations can safely resume.

7. Have the procedures been trained, tested and improved?

Training and exercises should produce evidence that the plan works. Use discussion-based and operations-based activities appropriate to the capability: contact drills, records-access tests, leadership succession discussions, remote-work checks or tabletop exercises.

Record observations as specific corrective actions with an owner and target date. Revisit the plan after exercises, real incidents, organizational changes, technology changes and new dependencies—not only on an annual calendar date.

Turn the review into an improvement agenda

Score only what the team can support with plan language, procedures, records or demonstrated performance. Separate missing information from known weaknesses, prioritize gaps by operational consequence, and assign a manageable set of improvements.

The Response Depot EOP / Continuity Plan Review Checklist + Scorecard provides separate review prompts, a documented 0–3 internal rubric, summaries and an action tracker. It is designed to help review an existing plan and organize follow-up; it is not a complete plan-writing package or a federal certification.

A strong continuity review should leave the organization with more than a score. It should identify what must change, who owns the work and how the improvement will be tested.

Official sources

• FEMA: Continuity Guidance Circular, 2018 edition with 2024 update (PDF)
• FEMA: Continuity Resource Toolkit
• FEMA Preparedness Toolkit: Continuity of Essential Functions Exercise Starter Kits

Sources checked October 13, 2026. This article provides general organizational planning guidance; applicable laws, regulations, accreditation requirements and organizational policies govern specific continuity obligations. Cover image is an original editorial illustration.