The Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources (DISER) became the first federal government agency to implement ServiceNow at the protected level.
ICT Operations Branch general manager Steve Stirling announced the change in service management at the ServiceNow Knowledge 2022 conference in Sydney.
Using the ServiceNow Protected Platform hosted on Microsoft Azure, DISER automated service management for its more than 4000 staff in two phases last year, starting with internal IT service management (ITSM).
“We first focused on an ITSM implementation. We started that project in July 2021 and went live in September 2021,” he said.
“The second tranche went live throughout the organization, including ITSM and a range of corporate services in December 2021.”
Corporate services include procurement, finance, payroll requests, legal services and communication support.
Removing “pre-legacy” for the new
In partnership with Deloitte and Canberra-based BT Automation as implementation partners, Stirling said DISER took the decision to replace a “really old ITSM tool”.
“It’s almost like a pre -legacy system – it’s been in place … since the early 2000s and a starting ticketing tool,” he said.
“So, what we’re really looking at are ways to provide operational efficiencies and improvements for our staff to interact with corporate transactions.”
Stirling said that before ServiceNow staff weren’t always sure “whether to pick up the phone and call someone, go to our intranet … or … try to find someone to help them [in-person]. ”
“There was a pretty different support process in organizations for IT and then different for all the other interactions,” he said.
“So, bringing them together, from the perspective of staff members, gave them a place to go … interaction with all corporate and IT services.”
Stirling also said that while the platform has been up and running for only a few months, DISER is “seeing some really early benefits”, including freeing up staff for other jobs.
“[There are] efficiency in terms of the group of people who have to test the jobs put into our old service management tool, or via a phone call – that all happens automatically now, so we’ve achieved some pretty significant compiling staff, which frees up those people to move into higher value-add activity. ”
DISER has also retired a series of mailboxes previously used to manage staff interactions, and is now seeking interaction and integration with third-party products.
In March 2022 alone, there were more than 6500 self-service requests, with email requests dropping to just 164. There are also 500 virtual agent conversations.
DISER is now looking at a range of interactions and integrations with third-party products to automate HR and payroll jobs.
Paving the way
Stirling said that although some “network jiggery pokery” is needed to operate the platform in the DISER environment, there aren’t any “specific challenges”.
“We have paved the way for other organizations, so a lot has been learned that has been achieved as part of our implementation,” he said.
However, DISER also underestimates the “significant application” of the platform in areas other than ITSM.
“Maybe we didn’t do well in the beginning. We are more focused on retiring our legacy system and modernizing our ITSM approach, ”Sterling said.