Senior professionals from the management consultancy firm Quint Wellington Redwood Asia, Asia-Pacific, Japan and the Middle East, and IT management software provider CA Malaysia told The Brunei Times that marrying IT and business concepts, rather than merely aligning them, would be an effective step for organisations.
One collection of IT service management best practices, which supports this direction and is gaining popularity amongst organisations and governments across the globe, is the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), which was developed by a British government agency in the 1980s.
Early adopters of ITIL guidelines include financial institutions, telecommunications companies and governments. ITIL's provision of a customer-centric infrastructure is in favour of the global drives toward improved service provision, as well as a more modern culture of inclusion. The framework afforded by the ITIL guidelines is now in effect across the British government, as well as large firms such as Procter and Gamble, Philips and Shell.
Quint regional director Martin MC Ng said many developing countries in Asia were taking after global corporations by considering ITIL in their plans to centralise their systems of governance and refresh national agendas.
"Mampu (Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit) of Malaysia is showing a particular interest in ITIL, and already has several employees certified in the subject," said Ng. He added that Indonesia's Tax Authority, under the Ministry of Finance, was already using a service framework based on ITIL.
"In the past, IT organisations were viewed as only giving support," said Ng. "Now IT supports services provided by organisations."
"There is a need for organisations to actually present themselves as service-providers. They should be constantly asking themselves: 'How well do I serve my customers or citizens?"
Establishing a proper framework to clearly define and standardize operations would help streamline channels of communication within organisations, as well as between service providers and their clients, thereby facilitating service delivery and response to faults.
CA managing director Queenie Wong said that in the case of e-government projects, the clarification of government processes would be certain to win the trust of citizens.
"Say a service is disrupted; the public will then be assured that the incident is being managed, and that the problem has been escalated to the right team," she said. "People will know what to do and who to contact."
"Service is all about expectations. When expectations are not met, then you have frustration."
Both Ng and Wong said ongoing campaigns were necessary to promote government services to its citizens.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Fei Phoon
Quelle/Source: The Brunei Times, 09.03.2007
