Recognising IT as an internal business partner and crucial to the business processes of an organisation, Gosford City Council on the Central Coast of New South Wales has implemented Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes to improve its service and support to staff.
ITIL is a set of IT service management practices that are considered industry good practice for service delivery and process management worldwide. ITIL provides detailed guidelines of a number of important IT practices and provides comprehensive checklists, tasks and procedures that organisations can tailor to their needs.
Gosford’s IT Coordinator Jamie Beal said that with an ever increasing reliance on IT, Council needed a service management framework to ensure it was aligned with industry standards and could cope with the increasing demand for IT services.
"Previously, when a staff member had a technology related problem, there were a number of different support areas they would choose from to gain support – for example, IT, telecommunications, records or GIS," he said.
"This often caused process duplication with overlapping between support areas, the support provided by each IT area was inconsistent, it was confusing for customers, and it was difficult to measure service delivery as a whole."
In search of something that would meet the needs of customers and the organisation, Council looked to an ITIL framework. This would provide:
ï a single point of contact for all IT customers
ï the ability to measure service levels
ï defined processes for incident, problem and change management
ï the ability to scale support services as the business grows/changes
ï a streamlined communication channel.
Gosford’s ITIL framework comprises three levels of support.
Level one support – the help desk – is responsible for receiving, categorising, prioritising and troubleshooting all requests.
If level one support cannot resolve the issue on first contact, the problem is escalated to second level support – desktop support – where necessary hardware replacements, repairs or software modifications are made, or onsite support is provided.
Following this, if the problem remains unsolved, it progresses to level three support -systems administration. Systems administrators typically design, build and administer Council’s IT infrastructure. They also manage many projects and follow up problem, change and asset management processes.
Jamie Beal said the success of the ITIL implementation is partly due to the strategically timed implementation of a new Service Desk product.
"The Service Desk software is ITIL compliant and provides self help services for customers," he said.
"It integrates with our network monitoring system and provides customised request templates that allow staff to lodge their issues online. It allows users to track their service requests, access a solutions database online, and view service announcements.
"A service catalogue is being developed to provide a menu style portal for customers to easily gain IT support services.
"As well as reducing the workload for our Helpdesk staff, the Service Desk provides the ability to conduct customer surveys."
Jamie Beal said prior to implementation, an ITIL trainer was employed by Council to deliver onsite training and certify all relevant IT staff. This was to ensure IT staff understood all aspects of the implementation and could assist with ongoing improvements to the system.
Since introduction of both the ITIL processes and Service Desk, Council has seen a steady increase in the number of requests resolved without additional IT staff.
"The reporting features are fantastic and provide a clear view of key performance indicators," said Jamie Beal.
"Staff have also responded well to the new systems, with more than half of service requests now being submitted by the Service Desk Web Form, rather than email, phone or in person.
"It is anticipated that more customers will be able to resolve their own requests due to the customer knowledge base that is constantly being updated with common solutions to every day requests."
For further information contact Jamie Beal on (02) 4325 8923 or email jamie.beal@gosford.nsw.gov.au
