Essex County Council shows how improved IT Service Management can help local government overcome budget challenges
27 Mar 2015 02:01 PM
A focus on improving and refining IT Service Management (ITSM) through the adoption and adaption of ITIL® is helping local authorities to meet objectives despite continued financial pressures. A new case study, presented by AXELOS Global Best Practice, outlines how Essex County Council used ITIL to improve services while reducing costs.
Local authorities have faced cuts in their budgets in recent years, and this is set to continue. Councils in England have been warned that they face an average cut of 1.8% in their overall spending power, according to the provisional local government finance settlement for 2015-2016 published in December 2014*.
Kaimar Karu, Head of ITSM at AXELOS, said: “Improving ITSM practices is helping councils with budget restrictions to meet service obligations. Councils across the country have seen very strong results - such as England’s second largest local authority, Essex County Council, which provides services to over 1.4m people.”
The council’s 200-strong IT function supports around 10,000 staff and is led by Chief Information Officer (CIO) David Wilde, who joined the organization in 2011.
Mr Wilde said: “When I joined the council the customer base had little or no faith in the IT department and there was a service report full of red Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). We had silos of knowledge without adequate tools to enable sharing and out of date documentation.
“As the council was and is under continued financial pressure, with aspirations to become a truly mobile and flexible workforce, we needed to standardize our estate, meet our Service Level Agreement (SLA), gain control of the service, get our underpinning contracts into line and capitalize on sensible outsourcing opportunities, such as our networking.”
Mr Wilde had previously worked for the UK Government and was involved in the early design and creation of ITIL, the most widely accepted approach to ITSM in the world. The use of ITIL over the past four years has helped to improve the council’s ITSM, with the whole IT department now trained to at least ITIL foundation level.
Mr Wilde said: “Ensuring everyone is trained to foundation level has really helped to gain momentum and increase awareness and understanding. ITIL provides the right blend of service management, infrastructure management and customer focus.”
A new case study published by ITIL owner AXELOS looks at how the council has used ITIL. It explores the challenges Mr Wilde faced when adopting the framework, the major achievements and how ITIL has worked alongside other methodologies.
Kaimar Karu added: “The Essex County Council case study highlights how empowering stakeholders in every level of the organization is one of the main factors in the successful adoption of ITIL. David’s experience shows that ITIL plays an important role in successful delivery of services and can help public sector organizations improve service management, even during times of austerity.”
You can download a pdf of the case study or read it online at AXELOS.com.
* Council Tax freeze and sensible savings ‘will deliver fairer deal for hardworking families