Exercise Raffles III, Singapore’s 2011 financial sector “industry-wide exercise” (IWE), will be an afternoon tabletop on Thursday, 15 September, followed by a “validation” desktop exercise to try out an “industry-wide emergency response model” on Friday, 16 September, and a wrap-up and group hug (“post-exercise review”) on Friday, 30 September. The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) has contracted PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to manage the exercise. The next ABS briefings on the IWE are Monday, 22 August (only for the participants’ exercise facilitators) and Tuesday, August 23 for everyone else (the last one before the Big Show).

There will be a test for participants of online connectivity to the exercise portal – through which exercise developments will be delivered – on Wednesday, 24 August.

Click on his name if you’re wondering, ‘Who was Tommy Raffles and why does Singapore name hotels, shopping centers, boulevards, public plazas and disaster exercises after him?’

The scenario will be “multiple events unfolding concurrently, including physical attacks with the possibility of a cyber-element.” Earthquake would be a good scenario, wouldn’t it? It’s certainly topical in Asia at the moment, and Singapore has an outsized ‘it-can’t-happen-here’ attitude, always a sure sign that it eventually will. Past IWE scenarios have been multiple IED’s in the Marina District (after the 2005 London bombings), and pandemic influenza in 2008.  Read more... (383 words, 1 image, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)

Singapore’s financial sector industry-wide exercise (IWE) will run from Thursday, Aug 28 to Friday, Sep 11, 2008. There will be three sessions, presumably corresponding to escalating stages of epidemic development, in a highly-pathogenic influenza (HPI) scenario over the two-week period, plus a “practical drill” on Friday 29 August that will require participants to execute HPI response plans at their own facilities.

These are the briefing slides used at ABS’ Apr. 3 announcement in Singapore, and these slides are for the first “communique” briefing on May 7. This slide lists the dates of future briefings and communique’s. The ABS has opened an IWE portal (exercise web site) specifically for the exercise.

• These are the MAS guidelines on pandemic measures for banks, issued in January 2006.

• These are MOH’s recommended infection control measures for workplaces, last updated in May 2007.

• These are the Singapore MOH influenza alert levels (there are five; WHO has six).

The IWE is sponsored by the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) with support from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), which includes the Singapore Police and Civil Defence Force (our fire department). Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MoH) will surely contribute, too.  Read more... (1131 words, 0 images, estimated 4:31 mins reading time)

Thousands of innocent bankers could perish in Singapore’s next financial sector disaster exercise in 3Q 2008, when the Standing Committee on Business Continuity Management of the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) plans to simulate the late stages of an infectious disease epidemic on the island.

No event in Singapore can be taken seriously until it has an acronym, so an exercise for the Lion City’s entire financial sector is called an “industry-wide exercise,” or “IWE.”

The ABS committee favors a multi-day IWE spread over two (2) weeks. The U.K. ran a financial sector pandemic scenario, “Exercise Winter Willow,” over three weeks from January 30 to February 20, 2007, and a similar exercise in the U.S.A in September and October also lasted three weeks. Members of the ABS committee, who represent big local and global financial institutions, participated in one or both of those exercises and have concluded that three weeks is too long. Senior management loses interest.  Read more... (448 words, 0 images, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)