Report Summary
Social Security Administration
Office of the Inspector General

Quick Response Evaluation: Social Security Administration's Disaster Recovery Process (Limited Distribution) (A-14-09-29139)
The objective of our review was to evaluate the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) current disaster recovery process in the event that the National Computer Center (NCC) is unavailable. Our review focused on (1) documenting SSA’s disaster recovery plan for the NCC and how this plan will change once a second data center is available and (2) determining the availability of services to the public under different disaster scenarios.

We determined SSA’s current disaster recovery (DR) plan is heavily dependent upon the availability of a facility the Agency refers to as a hot site. Although SSA has an NCC DR plan in place, we believe SSA must consider the potential impact of the issues identified in the report and devise a plan to ensure that SSA is best positioned to avoid an extended disruption of service which will limit the Agency’s ability to provide service to the public. The current state of the NCC places greater importance on DR. SSA's Durham Support Center (DSC) has been designed with the capacity to expand both the number of mainframes and the power supply to support that expansion. The Agency expects the DSC to be fully functional in 2013.

We recognize that SSA is taking a very deliberate approach in establishing the DSC. There is a concerted effort to ensure adequate preparation and testing before workloads are actually transferred to the facility. Given the current state of the NCC’s infrastructure, the resources that have already been expended on the DSC; the DSC’s apparent processing capacity, and the limitations of using a hot site; we believe the Agency would be best served by expediting the use of the DSC for NCC DR purposes.

WHILE THIS SUMMARY IS AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC, THE FULL REPORT CONTAINS RESTRICTED INFORMATION FOR OFFICIAL USE. AS SUCH, DISTRIBUTION OF THE FULL REPORT IS LIMITED TO AUTHORIZED GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS.