Guide to evolving your government IT from a cost center to a service center
IT service management (ITSM) resources have traditionally focused on putting out fires—that is, reacting to needs and solving problems as they arise.
Evolving beyond that model to create a service-based practice requires addressing the gap between old, on-premise legacy systems and a cloud-based one. A modern ITSM model includes automation that drives responsiveness and efficiency while generating visibility, transparency, and clear reporting to create proactive, data-driven decision making.
What does it mean for IT to be a service center?
Modern IT service management solutions are strategic and cross organizational. Rather than just being resolution focused, IT practices become invested in the larger role they play in delivering an excellent customer experience. By becoming a single point of contact focused on compliance, self-service, and full integration of all agency departments, they work toward the larger goal of improving IT, communication, and business processes across the organization.
Ultimately, they focus on three key areas:
Innovation
Ask most IT professionals about their challenges and they’ll mention siloed data; assumption-based decision making; inefficient workflows and manual processes; lack of visibility into requests, projects, and workloads; and expensive maintenance of legacy, on-premise IT infrastructure.
All of these challenges steal time, deplete resources, and drain budgets, leaving little money or energy for innovation.
Modern IT service management, on the other hand, focuses on improving collaboration across departments and agencies, automating manual processes, decreasing delivery times, consolidating data into one unified view, creating clear accountabilities between Dev and Ops teams, and fostering agility and responsiveness.
ITIL best practices
Organizations looking to implement the right framework to facilitate their digital transformation can take advantage of recognized ITIL best practices via a modern IT service management platform. The result of such practices includes supporting an agency’s holistic goals, enabling change, managing risk, and continually delivering a better customer experience.
Additionally, enhanced information quality stemming from an integrated solution removes guesswork so agency leaders can gain deeper insight into high-demand areas and opportunities for further improvement.
The business value chain
In the old IT model, ITSM played a support role at best, mostly helping solve immediate needs and technical issues. But with increasing expectations and scrutiny at all levels, government agencies must transition to helping deliver a better experience—for both government employees and citizens, while optimizing operations and reducing waste.
This means aligning IT to government priorities, providing greater visibility into common issues across the agency via real-time analytics so you can proactively get a jump on issues before they become a big problem. Plus, access to self-service portals and a centralized knowledge base improves answer consistency, empowers those seeking information, and delivers a better user experience.
Streamlined processes, clear accountabilities, and better reporting free-up time and resources to focus on strategic initiatives that better serve constituents and ease employee workloads.
Get more information about modern IT service management for government
Modern IT Service Management for Government provides end-to-end visibility, robust reporting, and automation, helping IT professionals in the public sector—many with limited budgets and resources—deliver a superior IT experience.
To find out how Modern IT Service Management powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365 can streamline your government agency watch this webcast, Modern Service Management for Government.
