A Critical Review of the Introduction of the Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) in Korean Local Governments

The Korean government has introduced the Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) in public organizations. This plan can help maintain the core functions of public organizations in emergency situations. Based on this recognition, it became mandatory to introduce COOP in public organizations, including local governments, in 2017. However, many public institutions have experienced difficulties in introducing COOP. In this study, we focused on the reasons for such difficulties in local governments and suggested policy recommendations. We reviewed COOP applications in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and conducted interviews with experts who participated in the process of building COOP within local governments. The results showed that the mismatch between other disaster preparation manuals and COOP and the absence of standard COOP plans for local governments constitute the main barriers. For a better and wider application of COOP, the Korean government should provide more practical standard guidelines based on damage estimation and coordination with existing other manuals. Based on the results, we present a Korean standard COOP for local governments using the scenario and checklist methods.