No Internet, Now What? A New York Village Plans for the Worst

The Village of Lynbrook (NY) is planning for the possibility of a major Internet outage — the kind that could last six months. The village's Internet Outage Continuity Plan has distributed copies to all of its municipal departments. The document is intended to supplement other disaster recovery and business continuity plans. It maps out every function conducted by local government, identifies those involving the Internet, and lists alternative, offline methods of getting the job done. According to Lynbrook Village Administrator John Giordano, theirs is the first municipal Internet outage plan in the state. Lynbrook spent about four months convening department heads to discuss ideas and develop its plan. It gave a copy to the New York Conference of Mayors, for sharing with other interested local governments. Still, governments’ best efforts may not always be enough, and keeping operations running could mean ensuring older technologies like landline telephones and faxes remain an option, even as governments acquire modern tech. Lynbrook’s plan anticipates the loss of everything from credit card processing (answered by a reversion to checks and cash) and email (replaced by fax, phone calls, and, in some cases, postal mail) to the downing of the key fob system at village headquarters (the alternative: reinstall manual locks).