An ISO 20000 certificate proves that your IT service management system has been certified against a best practice standard and found compliant. Issued by a third party certification body/registrar, the certificate proves that you have established and effective to deliver quality IT services that meet customer requirements and service levels.
The standard adopts a process approach for establishing, implementing, operating, monitoring, reviewing, maintaining, and improving an organisation’s IT service management system.
ISO 20000-1 is established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and is the standard used for certification. It has replaced BS 15000 and provides an internationally accepted IT service management system standard. Heavily based on the content of BS 15000, the material was reorganised to align and harmonise with other international standards
The standard also draws on and is well supported by other public documents including the sister standard ISO/IEC 20000-2 the ‘IT Service Management Code of Practice’ and the widely accepted guidance in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) drawn from the public and private sectors.
Delivering quality IT services
Certification has been available since 2003 under a scheme administered by the influential IT Service Management Forum (itSMF). They enabled key stakeholder participation to design and develop the scheme arrangements for effective certification that was easily transitioned from BS 15000 to ISO 20000 in 2005.
The standard is intended for organisations who provide managed IT services such as infrastructure and/or applications support; this can be both for external delivery e.g. to clients who have outsourced their IT support, as well as for internal IT groups.
It takes a comprehensive approach to IT service management and defines a set of processes needed to deliver effective service. These range from core processes related to configuration management and change management to processes covering incident and problem management as well as those interacting directly with customers such as business relationship management.
In line with other management system standards
ISO 20000 is aligned with other modern management systems standards and this supports consistent and straightforward implementation and operation where integrated systems are needed. The result is:
Harmonisation with management system standards like ISO 9001 and ISO 27001.
Emphasis on continual process improvement of your IT service management system.
Clarification of minimum requirements for plans, documentation and records.
Effective use of the using a Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) process model.
Where do I go from here?
For third party certification, you need to implement an effective IT service management system complying with the requirements of the standard. The first step is to get on the road to certification.