Last month, Gates issued guidelines for the transition, stressing that the department must maintain continuity of operations and ensure efficient and effective transition between the outgoing political leaders and the incoming administration, according to Whitman.

CNN: Pentagon prepares for wartime transition

The office also is in charge of sensitive continuity-of-government operations in wartime or crises.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center For Security Policy

The affected companies did not contract for a 100% uptime SLA. In other words, their continuity-of-operations (COOP) plan did not require having support from multiple, geographically disbursed, datacenters.

FORBES: Will Amazon Outage Stop GovCloud?