Supporting NCDC Business Goals by Transforming IT Service Delivery

Background

National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) is a premier service organization dedicated to providing climatological services to every sector of the United States economy and to users worldwide. It houses the world's largest active archive of weather data. NCDC produces numerous climate publications and responds to data requests from all over the world. It operates the World Data Center for Meteorology, co-located in North Carolina, and the World Data Center for Paleoclimatology, located in Colorado.

NCDC develops national and global data sets that have been used by both government and the private sector to maximize the resource provided by the Earth’s climate and minimize the risks of climate variability and weather extremes. NCDC's climate data have been used in a variety of applications including agriculture, air quality, construction, education, energy, engineering, forestry, health, insurance, landscape design, livestock management, manufacturing, recreation and tourism, retailing, transportation, and water resources management among other areas.

The services provided by NCDC are made possible by a dedicated staff of meteorologists, physical scientists, computer analysts, and technical and administrative personnel whose goal of providing superior service has led to the world-wide recognition.

Goal

To maintain its reputation for service and data quality, NCDC is focusing on industry best practices such as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) as a means for achieving substantial progress in maturing its IT service provider capability. It sought ways to implement best practices and leverage technology to transform the way IT services are provided across the Center. After a thorough selection process, MCT Solutions was selected as the strategic consulting partner to guide NCDC in its journey for continual service improvement.

With MCT’s help, NCDC began looking at its Service Desk, Service Level Management, Incident Management, Change Management and Configuration Management processes. Executive leadership, IT management, and business consumers developed a long list of important objectives they wanted to achieve, including:

• Improve the customer experience in using the Portal to log incidents, monitor progress, and communicate with IT support staff.
• Increase the proportion of incidents logged via the Customer Portal.
• Improve communication with the customer.
• Increase customer satisfaction.
• Move from a relational to a rules-based service model.
• Roll out a centralized Service Desk.
• Move closer to 100% recording of Incidents, Service Requests and Changes.
• Improve incident assignment accuracy.
• Improve operational efficiency. Streamline processes, adopt best practices, and utilize workflow automation to ensure timely resolution of customer issues.
• Reduce duplication of tickets and efforts.
• Develop and deploy SLA-based automated notification and escalation rules.
• Implement a unified CMDB to store the Configuration Item data, and utilize the latest in IT service management technology to record Incidents, Service Requests and Changes and share Configuration Item data across processes.

Action

Considering NCDC’s objectives and current service operational challenges, MCT developed a customized project strategy drawing from its broad industry experience and comprehensive service portfolio. MCT also hand-picked a team of experts, each with a carefully selected set of skills and knowledge, to build a consulting team fit for this unique client. Then, with guidance and tools from MCT, NCDC also formed its project team and identified those individuals who would fill key project roles, including the Executive Sponsor.

Shortly after the kickoff meeting, MCT began the project by having an internationally renowned ITIL Expert facilitate the education of the organization on ITIL. This laid the foundation for improved communication between IT, the business, and executive leadership. It also introduced many of the best practices that NCDC would be striving for and helped set expectations for both the providers and consumers of IT services. With this fresh awareness and understanding of ITIL best practices and the project goals, NCDC was primed and ready for the project’s next phase.

The project continued with MCT working with a cross-functional NCDC team to assess the maturity of five of its IT processes against ITIL guidance. The team painstakingly put its Service Desk, Service Level Management, Incident Management, Change Management and Configuration Management processes under the ITIL microscope.

“It helped us have discussions we would not normally have” commented Shane Wise, head of NCDC's Windows Administration Team. The result was a detailed gap analysis with specific recommendations and “how to” instructions, presented to all stakeholders. The team’s findings and recommendations provided clarity for the process changes and refinements needed for NCDC to reach its goals.

“It gives us a good pathway for where we are going.” – Mark Smith, IT Branch Manager

The knowledge gleaned from the process maturity assessment was significant value to the next project phase as MCT guided NCDC through a series of process design (or redesign) workshops. In these workshops, NCDC made prudent decisions on changes to its Incident Management, Change Management and Configuration Management processes. The changes reflected the adoption of several ITIL best practices, and were focused on improving the customer experience while achieving improvements in service efficiency and effectiveness. NCDC's project manager, Theressa Coren, praised MCT’s ability to expertly “gear the ITIL guidance to our particular IT environment – current and future state.”

The new and improved processes for Incident Management and Change Management became the models for the configuration of NCDC’s new service management tool, VMware Service Manager (VSM). (VSM, along with VMware ADM, was recognized by Pink Elephant as the 2009 Innovation of the Year.) Fortunately, MCT has a decade of experience performing installs, configurations and customizations in VSM. MCT facilitated detailed configuration workshops, where NCDC’s system administrators received hands-on technical training while they configured VSM to match their refined processes and automate their workflows. A simplified Customer Portal was designed to facilitate the logging of requests, monitoring the status of requests, communication between customer and support staff, and the search for knowledge.

After thorough testing and the delivery of customized training classes for support officers and for business consumers, NCDC’s new processes and service management solution were successfully moved into production. Throughout the project, MCT provided NCDC with templates, messaging and guidance for frequent and deliberate communication to business consumers, project team members, management, and stakeholders. This was a major factor in helping the organization successfully manage through the change of new processes and technology.

MCT’s consultants rock!

“MCT’s consultants rock! They have great people and are easy to work with!”

Ken Schmidt, NCDC System Administrator

Result

Eight weeks of hard work later, NCDC was well on its way to achieving its goal of transforming the way IT services are provided across the Center. The customer experience has been improved with the design of a simple yet information-rich Portal, with more consistency in service quality, and with the more timely resolution of requests resulting from process improvement efficiency gains and automation.

Early reviews appear to demonstrate that 100% of incidents and service requests are now being logged. This is up from an estimated 80% compliance prior to the new process and tool suite being implemented. The proportion of requests logged using the portal is at an all-time high of 91%. This is up from an estimated high of 75%. Incident assignment accuracy has risen as well; up from an estimated high of 60%. These positive gains in recording, use of the portal, and accuracy, translate to better reporting, less rework, and more efficient handling of customer requests. Theressa Coren, NCDC’s project manager, summed up her experience working with MCT as "impressive.”