This assignment specifically addresses four of the learning objectives of the course: LO1: demonstrate a critical awareness of the importance of IT service management and the need for organisations to...

Letter of transmittal
To:
Ms Pam Christie, Managing Director of TAFE NSW and Deputy Director-General,
TAFE and Community Education
Re:
ITSM management and further certification
Contains:
Summary and information regarding cu
ent ITSM procedures and recommendation
with regards to a phone line, outsourcing the help desk, and further certification.
Follow-up action:
Act upon or request further information with regards to specific recommendations
Please do not hesitate to contact me if any continued communication or clarification is
equired.
From:
Student Name
Course/Number
Date
Instructor Name
Length: 3000
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Executive summary
IT Service Management (ITSM) is an increasingly important part of any modern
usiness. This is especially true in an organisation with diverse requirements such as the
NSW Department of Education and Training (DET). This report investigates the nature and
activities of the ITSM procedure at DET through an overview of existing services and then
specific report on the following core questions:
What are the advantages to the IT service desk being in-house?
Should NSI outsource the service desk?
Should NSI seek ISO/IEC 20000 certification to complement the existing ISO 9001
and ISO 14001 compliance?
Should there be further alignment with ITIL?
Introduction to the report
NSW exists in a very difficult ITSM environment. Unlike the vast majority of
organisations, it has a very
oad physical footprint with no central points of contact for most
of the franchise (involved stakeholders at all levels other than NSI internal staff). To
complicate matters, teaching itself creates a series of limitations and demands on the people
who need support, leaving them with little time to chase such matters up in, generally out of
usual office hours since they are busy all day with teaching or related duties. By the same
token, most stakeholders have access to computers and a reasonable proficiency therein.
The choice to have an IT-only help desk was a radical departure from the service
method that assumed that low-information density personal contact in the form of voice
calling or meeting staff to be the norm. Instead, the entire help desk was put online.
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Part 1. Importance of ITSM at NSI
Overview of IT needs
The simplest way to describe the central importance of ITSM at NSI is to look at the
ange of services that are required for it to operate effectively, and the spatially and
conceptually distributed franchise that it must serve, both directly and indirectly. It simply
could not exist in its cu
ent form without substantial IT procedures and systems integrated
into all services and functions.
For example, the following is a list of aspects of NSI which each
ings specific
ITSM requirements (indicated in
ackets):
 Services range from early childhood education through to post-compulsory education
(academic access and lesson databases)
 delivers vocational education and training (VET) to around 500,000 students throughout
some 131 colleges organised into the regions, delivering close to 13 million student hours
per year (student registration, course data, cu
iculum and delivery concerns)
 Provide 1,000 courses to more than 50,000 local and international students (student
tracking)
 Issue over 140,000 group certificates per annum (certification procedures, authentication)
 2,700 full-time and part-time staff, with an annual budget of more than $130 million and
an asset base of around $370 million. (HR – salaries, forms, etc)
 Serves a workforce who are connected by have na
owly specified and specialised jobs,
such as teachers, public servants and ancillary staff (very diverse stakeholder
equirements)
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 Covers Finance & Administration, Human Resources, Infrastructure & Assets, and
Information & Communications Technology (must be easily integrated with a
oad
ange of data)
 recu
ent budget of around $1.5 billion and an asset base of some $2.6 billion (finance
procedures, expenses, budgeting, reports)
 Over 130 specialist and standard IT classrooms with 16 or more desktops in each, as well
as speciality facilities
 24 hour access for the main portal, and NSI facilities are in use from 8:00am to 10:00pm
weekdays and most weekends. (Resource management, building and room passes,
security tracking, service provision, etc.)
 Over 100 servers and 1,500 of the desktops/laptops designated to teaching and admin
staff who use them intensively.
As a result of all of these things, it is critical that NSI has a clear and effective IT
policy, and it is in is vein that it has been developed.
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Why is it important for NSI to have effective processes in place to manage IT services?
NSI has a world-class ITSM service over its franchise, partly because of the particular
conditions in NSW that are not present in much of the world (such as widespread internet
access but a very low population density). This service is well recorded, especially by Cater-
Steel (Cater-Steel & Toleman, 2009; see Cater-Steel, & Wulf, 2011, for a detailed cross-
country comparison of the Australian system with a German equivalent).
There are three major reasons that effectiveness must be upheld within IT processes.
The first is passive; in order to avoid bottlenecks in existing system, the management of those
systems must be continuously optimised, adapting to a changing environment. Second, it
creates a resource that, properly utilised, can significantly reduce the operational overheads
and administration time of several different stakeholders, increasing overall effectiv4eness of
service delivery. Thirdly, as noted in Hershey et al (2010), mobile handheld devices are
ecoming more and more integrated into education, especially higher and VET, both in terms
of service access and in administration and the classroom itself. A good ITSM policy will
keep NSI at the forefront of these changes, giving it a chance to guide rather than follow.
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Part 2. Service Design
State of play
There are several well-researched,
oad ranging studies on the specific nature of
ITSM demands within the world today, including ones with specific recommendations for
educational institutions. However, NSI is a different beast to almost any equivalent
institution, and as such we must first look at the basic...