Throughout government agencies, public servants use integrated service management tools for streamlined reporting, optimized ticket management and organized service catalogs in IT and business operations. However, these end users often only utilize about ten percent of the tool’s capabilities. If they can increase the utilization of the tools, IT leaders are then able to turn their attention to improving operational processes and expanding capabilities.
These next steps are critical for organizational maturity – and are the topic of discussion of experts around the Beltway. On recent episodes of “The Federal Leader’s Playbook” podcast, BMC’s own Jeff Collison joined a roundtable of Federal ITSM professionals from Acuity, Inc. in discussions on where the ITSM industry is today and how it is evolving over time.
The group, with more than 50 years of combined ITSM experience in the public sector, revealed 6 key observations and trends:
1. Public sector ITSM solutions have checked the box on managing incidents and service catalog requests.
“I see some confidence in service catalog request / portal activity. [Government users are] doing an okay job and they’re ready to move into some more complicated subject matter.”
– Jessica Alfaro, Acuity
2. Uncertainty is a roadblock to ITSM maturity – despite increasing situational awareness and a demonstrated desire to partake.
“From a tools perspective, often most of the customers that I talk to don’t necessarily know what all the tools that they’ve bought do.”
– Jeff Collison, BMC
3. Information is still siloed between information assurance and operations.
“There is definitely a silo between the information assurance world and the operations world. No longer can anyone just pass a 500-page report… there needs to be better communication.”
– Jeff Collison, BMC
4. Looking ahead, federal organizations must prioritize processes over tool sets.
“I would like to see customers kind of get out of the tool mindset and talk about use cases across the board.”
– Jeff Collison, BMC
5. Automation has the potential to dramatically streamline service delivery and facilitate better situational awareness.
“Development of a discovery capability with a CMDB (Configuration Management Database). If I don’t know what I have out there, it’s very difficult to monitor it, and it’s very difficult to protect it… It’s not just understanding what I have out there, it’s how those things are related to each other in the environment.”
– Jeff Collison, BMC
6. The necessary change will take a champion willing to advocate for significant organizational change.
“Some of the challenges that we’ve had is [finding] that champion. You know someone that understands service management, that understands the footprint…it’s all of that AND enforcing a vision.”
– Jessica Alfaro, Acuity
If these insights and perspectives have caught your attention and you want to learn more, we encourage you to check out the full Federal Leaders Playbook podcast. Season 1 is entirely dedicated to the topic of IT Service Management. The podcast is available free from iTunes or Google Play. All episodes can also be streamed from YouTube or online at www.FederalLeadersPlaybook.com.
