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.