In a bid to save money and better serve its citizens, Plymouth City Council has gone live with six ITIL disciplines and is introducing improvements to existing and new processes using elements of both ITIL v2 and v3 with Hornbill's Supportworks ITSM. The disciplines already deployed include Service Desk, Incident, Change, Configuration, Problem, Request Fulfilment, Access Management and elements of Service Level Management. The ICT Service Delivery Team at Plymouth is also currently working on Release as well as Event Management and Knowledgebase.

Mel Gwynn, Operational Service Delivery Manager at Plymouth City Council commented, "Plymouth City Council is committed to using the ITIL framework. It helps us improve service efficiency, improve system availability, allow prioritisation of services, and ensure better quality assurance. This enables the Council to save money while better serving citizens. Supportworks ITSM has enabled us to implement ITIL in a phased manner. We have now largely completed implementing many of our processes and are now looking at where we can adopt elements of ITIL v3 to provide further improvements. Supportworks ITSM supports this approach allowing us to mature our existing ITIL v2 processes and adopt new ITIL v3 processes at our own pace."

As part of the project to deliver a more efficient service to its customers, Plymouth ICT has implemented a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) where every Incident, Problem and Change is linked to a Configuration Item (CI). In achieving this, the quality of data has been improved at point of capture and within the system. As a result the department now has full visibility of CIs that are causing issues, and can react more quickly.

Mel Gwynn explained, "We support over 250 applications and have tens of thousands of Incidents in the system. We now have full visibility of where problems are occurring which has lead to more efficient service provision, as we now know where best to focus our efforts for the greatest benefit."

The ICT Team has also implemented a customer SelfService portal where the top 15 most frequent service requests are standardised, each with its own form to ensure the correct data is collected. Any callers to the Service Desk are encouraged to use the SelfService facility wherever possible, which reduces the load on the Service Desk and eliminates time wasted requesting further information.

To provide even greater levels of efficiency, Service requests that are subject to Line Manager authorisation have been automated within the system. Line Managers now receive an email which includes a link to the SelfService portal, where they are able to approve the request and the approval is captured within the system for audit purposes.

Mel Gwynn commented, "Service delivery performance has definitely improved when compared to our old way of working. This is down to the combination of Supportworks ITSM and the fact that we have revisited our processes, streamlined and automated them using the ITIL framework."

Gerry Sweeney, CEO of Hornbill Systems said, "Organisations in both private and public sectors are being called upon to provide ever improved services to support business operations with fewer resources. Plymouth City Council has demonstrated how a lean ICT operation using a powerful tool like Supportworks ITSM alongside the ITIL framework, is able to provide flexible support for a wide range of applications, to people working in many locations, with diverse requirements. This effective service delivery enables Plymouth ICT to support its business processes enabling staff to provide better services to citizens."

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NOTES TO EDITORS

About Plymouth City Council
Based on the south coast of Devon, Plymouth City Council is committed to delivering high quality services in a fair and equal way to all sections of the community.
Plymouth City Council and its partners share a vision to make Plymouth one of Europe's finest, most vibrant waterfront cities, where everyone can enjoy an outstanding quality of life.

The Council is committed to providing high quality services for all residents and its ambition is to become an excellent performing authority by 2012.

For more information please visit:
www.plymouth.gov.uk