The IT Infrastructure Library – ITIL – is a framework of proven best practices for IT service management. Its ownership resides with the UK government’s Office of Government Commerce but it is universally regarded as an open, vendor-neutral framework. It is not a standard in the recognised sense of the word, although two formal standards – BS15000 and ISO20000 – support it. ITIL does not give rise to a concept of “ITIL compliance” and an organisation cannot be ITIL compliant – but individuals can be ITIL certified and an organisation can be ISO20000 certified; and a piece of software can be compliant with aspects of ITIL, e.g. the requirements for a configuration management database.

Although the ITIL best practices are heavily informed by corporate experience, there have nevertheless been very successful implementations of ITIL in public higher education, and there are plenty of benefits for a university in a systematic engagement with the ITIL framework. In particular, there are benefits for merging institutions in laying down a shared process understanding and consensus.


A description of ITIL. The heart of ITIL – for these purposes, at any rate – is two process clusters: service delivery and service support. The service delivery processes are primarily tactical and proactive (service level management, financial management, capacity management, availability management, IT service continuity management) and the service support processes are primarily reactive and operational (configuration management, change management, release management, incident management, problem management and the service desk). Except for the service desk, which is a real structure, these processes do not constitute operational or organisational entities; rather, the processes are generally distributed across the IT organisation (though some, such as change management, may be centralised). For each of these processes there is a clear mission and a definitive set of tools and techniques that constitute defined best practice.

These best practices will, to a great extent, already be part of the culture and the operational framework of most, perhaps all, IT departments in the South African public higher education community. But they will not necessarily be formalised or understood as a common language and a common set of process descriptors. In addition, the service focus of ITIL is sometimes culturally alien to the more hardboiled technical units in an IT department. These units often value heroics over method, firefighting over fire prevention, personal expertise over documentation, and the Nike approach – “just do it” – over planning and change management. For such units, the ITIL emphasis on business objectives and services, rather than on kit and code, can be constraining, but it can also be highly liberating.

There are two additional benefits worth mentioning. (1) ITIL can help to promote co-operation across organisational subdivisions within an IT department. While the silo phenomenon cannot entirely be avoided, a level of process consensus founded upon an agreed framework of best practice can help to prevent silos becoming hermetically sealed, independent organisations. (2) ITIL can promote IT coherence in a merger by equipping all the parties to the merger with a common understanding and a common language, helping them to get beyond the layers of organisational sediment that every IT department builds up over the years.


The DITCHE focus on ITIL. DITCHE has historically emphasised technical skill and will continue to do so in the future, but the acronym – developing IT capacity in higher education – has always emphasised the entire scope of activities and processes necessary to deliver high-quality IT services in universities. DITCHE has selected ITIL as the focus for a sustained emphasis over the next three years, the object of which will be to disseminate formalised, certification-track training in ITIL over the entire public higher education IT community. The primary intention is to ensure that a minimal critical mass of IT staff are formally exposed to the language of the framework, and to support a shared conception of process across a community of practice within the entire sector. It is not DITCHE’s intention to pursue an “ITIL rollout” within the community. Implementing ITIL as a full-blown organisational project is a daunting exercise with immense (human) change management implications, and we don’t expect that many IT departments will have the resources or the inclination for such a project. At the same time, we do not regard such a project as necessary to achieve real benefits from engaging with the framework – while we will give all support and encouragement to those who pursue such an implementation, more modest appropriations will also be completely supported.


Further reading.  The official ITIL website is http://www.itil.co.uk. The Wikipedia entry is very good. The IT Service Management Forum website  is also an excellent resource, as is the site of the South African chapter . DITCHE will also provide all participating institutions with a minimal set of the official ITIL handbooks.