ITIL for Government

In a recent article, Federal IT Spending is Up, the writer discussed how the federal government’s committment to IT is going to increase in the coming years. The article denotes that 89% of IT managers in the federal government have plans to increase their technology budgets. The article goes on to sight other signs that the in the coming years the government will become involved with purchases to replace their existing desktop infrastructure and moving to Microsoft Windows 7.

With all of these new expenditures in technology how can the government continue to keep it’s budget balanced and the cost of providing IT services to the rest of it’s agencies at a respectable price?

The answer is ITIL.

ITIL works to reduce the cost of expenditures by developing a strong relation to Configuration Items, Asset Management, and the demands of the end-users. By utilizing ITIL an IT department can reduce the cost of new expenditures up to 40% according to an August 2008 IDC Survey entitled Datacenter Automation: Accelerating Market Maturity Through Investment in IT.

How does the Government Reduce Expenditures on Technology with ITIL

By establishing an Asset Management system the government IT department can better track how many desktop computers and laptops are out in the production environment.  The technology management can also keep better tabs on the software licenses that have been purchased and used. 

Example:

Imagine a Public Health Administration department has 1,500 employees. Often some of the employees need to utilize Microsoft Word. Depending on when an employee recieved their installation of Microsoft Word is what version they have installed. Prior to implementing the IT Asset Management System the department either had to upgrade everyone at an increased cost; or upgrade employees only when they asked. Once this department implemented the Software Asset Library they were able to better track how many copies of Microsoft Word 2003 and Word 2007 they had installed in the enterprise. The IT department was then able to better allocate copies of the newest version to those that needed the upgrade as opposed to those that wanted the upgrade but did not need the upgrade to perform their job functions. This saved the administration from purchasing many unneccessary copies of Microsoft Word 2007.

So keep reading about ITIL and find out how your government organization can reduce the cost of technology.

So you’ve either taken part in an ITIL project, program, or initiative.  Or maybe you just found out about IT Service Management and the ITIL framework and would like to make a career in the ITSM industry. 

The core purpose of the ITIL v3 Foundation Certificate is to certify that the certified professional has gained the essential knowledge of the ITIL terminology,  basic concepts, and comprehends the core principles of IT Service Management.

The Typical ITIL v3 Certification Candidate

Typically it is recommended that the candidate have around 2-3 years of IT experience at a minimum and experience working within an ITIL program of an organization.  Someone that has experience working in either the helpdesk, desktop engineering, or Project Managment department will be familiar with many of the ITIL concepts and terminology.  Do not despair if you don’t have this experience as you can catch up by putting forward several more hours of experience in training and materials.

Getting certified in ITIL is simple.  You take one exam called the Foundation level exam. 

How Long Do I need to Study for the ITIL Exam

Typically the course material is 3 days in a classroom environment or 16.5-20 hours if you go with an online educational platform.  If you do a self-study method such as online or purchasing a book we suggest you spend about 2 weeks (80 hours) to fully prepare for the test.  This is to ensure that you have a higher likelihood of passing.

ITIL v3 Foundation Certification Exam

The exam can be taken at any Prometric testing center and the cost for the exam itself is approximately $150.  This fee may differ if you take the exam in combination with the course and/or the price is changed by Prometric or EXIN.

The candidate will have a total of 60 minutes to answer 40 multiple choice questions on the topic of ITIL.  A passing score of 65% is required to pass this closed book test on ITIL fundamental concepts.  If the candidate is sitting for the exam in a language other than their native language, the candidate may have up to 75 minutes to take the 40 question exam. The Foundation examinations are available in English, French, Spanish, German, Portugese, Chinese, Japanese and Russian.

ITIL Certificate and the Green Pin

Upon completion of the ITIL v3 Foundation Exam, you will recieve the coveted “Green” Lapel Pin.  Successful ITIL certified folks can go on to intermediate and advanced certifications in the ITIL. 

Good Luck on your Quest to becoming ITIL Certified!

There are several Change Management Metrics that can evaluate if the registered change is on-schedule and all of the approvals have been recorded in time for the change to start. Often the best practice for managing the Change Management Process in accordance to ITIL is to maintain a set of metric based reports that the IT Change Owners and Change Managers can easily retrieve using a self-service portal or tool.

Here are several metrics that may assist your organization in building better insight as to if the Change Management Process is moving the change request through smoothly and if there are any bottlenecks along the way.

Change Management Backlog

Pending Action

This measurement is to determine how many changes are pending an action either by the Change Owner, Change Manager, Approving Authority, Business Owner, Customer, or anyone else associated with the Change Request.

Pending Action Calculation: ($current_date – $last_activity_date) > $max_target_days

A suggested $max_target_days should be between 3 to 5 days. An activity could be as simple as updating the Change Request of if the Change is still on schedule.

Pending Approval

Similar to Pending Action, it is a good practice to have a separate metric that notes how many change requests are still pending approval authority before they can continue.

Pending Approval Calculation: ($approved)=false and $status NOT in {“Rejected” | “Cancelled” | “Closed”}

Alternatively a good metric to use is to also have a departmental based report that each department can run to see if they have change requests awaiting approval from their department.

Pending Approval by Department Calculation: ($approved)=false and $status NOT in {“Rejected” | “Cancelled” | “Closed”} and #department isin $current_pending_approval_groups

Change Management Schedule

Changes Scheduled for Implementation this Week

Most organizations try to schedule a weekly meeting to discuss the IT Changes that will be implemented during the current week. This meeting allows for the Change Managers and Change Owners to come together and formally inform each other of the impact and status for each change. This calculation can be used in preparation for the meeting and/or to build a calendar for business and IT users to stay informed.

Scheduled Changes in Current Week (Assumes 7 day week): $current_date + ’7′ > $implementation_date

This second calculation could be use if the department only works a 5 day work week. You would assume that $day_of_week is the day that that work week begins (i.e. Monday = 1, Tuesday = 2, etc)

Scheduled Changes in Current Week (Assumes 5 day work week): $current_date + (’5′ – $day_of_week) > $implementation_date

Hopefully these simple metrics can help you uncover a few bottlenecks in your organization’s change management process. Remember, using metrics based on ITIL concepts are built on a guidline but do not always represent the best way to report progress in your IT organization. Each metric would need to take into account the capability, capacity, and maturity of the Change Management Process at the organization.

The purpose of Change Management is to ensure that all methods and processes are standardized across the Information Technology Enterprise.  Utimately through using Change Management, an organization and establish a controlled environment to record, evaluate, authorize, prioritize, plan, test, implement, document, and review changes to the IT Infrastructure.

There are two main goals of change management:

1. Respond to the business’ goal of reducing downtime while increasing productivity
2. Respond to IT Requests that will better align the services of IT and the needs of the business

A change can arise because it is a proactive or a reactive measure.  A proactive change is making a change to benefit the business.  This could be deploying a new application, upgrading an operating system, or an enhancement to an existing IT Service.  A reactive change is a change that is used as a means to resolve an error.  This could be a change such as restarting a server, applying a software patch, or replacing a failed hard disk.

The Change Management Process is often managed by a Change Manager and approval for changes are authorized by a Change Advisory Board (CAB).  The size and personnel needed to manage the Change Management process is often scalable and dictated by the size of the organization.  Typically the process is centralized, however, often smaller organization will have a change management process that is informal.  An informal process would be like one that sends a simple email to several other employees and/or is notes jotted down in a notebook.

IT Change Management Example:

Your Web Application Department is part of an IT Division that oversees a Judiciary Branch for a major metropolian city.  The goal of your organization is to keep the Judiciary Branch’s website operational for the public as well as internal intranet users.  At times you will need to restart the Web server to add memory or to add hard disk space as more users use the website.  Change Management can help control who and when a modification is made to that server.  If you use a controlled change management process, the system administration will have to notify all of the business users and IT support staff when they move the server offline.  The Change Management process would also require there to be a paper trail of documentation for what modification was made to the server as well as who made the modifications.  Change Management can really assist even a department from costly unplanned downtime and unavailablity of the servers.