MITA Service Management – a vision

The world has for a while been living through another revolution where digital disruption and fusing technology are transforming, improving and at the same time challenging a wide array of industries. This is also impacting society at large since for many aspects of life, technology is no longer just a necessity, but a critical need that determines whether outcomes are underlined by success or failure. Adapting to technology trends and using digital services therefore requires a shift across all facets of the social landscape.

Certain circumstances, such as the COVID-19 situation, push society to rely on technology even further. In any case, the list of business processes or day to day activities which have absolutely no reliance on technology is on a heavy decrease.

This implies that managing information technology (IT) and services has become a pivotal activity without which many targeted results become unobtainable. Indeed, the world has also evolved within the service management domain. Modern methodologies complement and sometimes take over the more traditional ones. For example, shifting towards Agile practices may be more applicable than a Waterfall approach in certain contexts. Also, adopting less rigid, flexible processes is frequently preferred to what was more commonplace in earlier times. The list goes on.

The Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA) is not exempt from this influence. As the Government Agency for IT, and specifically through its Service

Management Department together with a range of stakeholders, the need to look into the sign of the times and duly respond, becomes a critical mindset. This does not mean changing everything, all at once, at all costs. Rather, it is a gradual process of focusing on value, retaining the good, improving in small steps and collaborating between different parts of the organisation therefore including the client.

The Service Management Department is already engaging to reach objectives deemed critical to thrive in the current industrial revolution. The objectives, aligned to the Agency’s strategy are based on the primary elements of service management: people, technology, process and partners.

While MITA requires the traditional IT service management approach for a number of areas and services it administers, it is clear that it is vital to having a plan for the upskilling of its human resources enabling them to speak modern “languages” and adopt novel mindsets and approaches. This of course enables the workforce to be able to reap value through a spectrum of methodologies and gradually shift to a more value-creating culture. For instance, effectively ensuring that the traditional IT Operations, or system administration, is injected with knowledge pertaining to software-defined data centres, infrastructure as code and automation of “everything possible” is a fundamental need. Also underlying these, are various methods, frameworks, approaches and cultures that may be exploited to improve service management.

For the technology aspect, which ultimately is the enabler that service management exploits to render its services, MITA has not ceased investing. Elements such as cloud technology, high-speed connectivity, modern authentication, as well as various security layers amongst others are now a reality. Service Management within MITA is therefore supported by a layer of cutting edge technology permitting the transformation of opportunities and demand into value across varying circumstances.

With regards to the process aspect, MITA has a strong reputation of experience and expertise since it was one of the local catalysts exploring international frameworks to implement processes such as incident management, change enablement and configuration management almost three decades ago. Through ongoing maintenance as part of the service management key responsibilities, these remain valid to date. Notwithstanding, failing to look at modernizing various elements of such processes would potentially lead an organisation to fade into oblivion. As stated, certain services are well suited with traditional processes. However for others, failing to exploit modern elements such as automation and more agility, is not an option.

MITA has a long-standing good relationship with its partners and this stems from the fact that the primary objective of the Agency is to build and maintain healthy engagements which permit value co-creation. Building on this characteristic is at the center of the organisation, including the Service Management Department.

With its vision aligned to the Agency strategy, and collaborating as well as being supported by various elements of the organisation, the Service Management Department is set to maintain its key position to not only operate the technology providing the outputs to enabling outcomes, but to drive the improvements in line with the changing business needs and hence ensure the manifesting of continuous value to the client. For this to occur, service management requires to adopt the said holistic view and have a plan to not only evolve but to also adapt while gradually shifting to new cultures, as applicable.