Support Services based on ITIL 2011
The NCI Agency has adopted ITIL 2011 as best practice for IT-Support Management.
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) 2011 is a set of practices for IT Service Management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business.
ITIL 2011 describes processes, procedures, tasks and checklists that are not organization-specific, used by an organization for establishing integration with the organization's strategy, delivering value and maintaining a minimum level of competency. It allows the organization to establish a baseline from which it can plan, implement and measure. It is used to demonstrate compliance and to measure improvement.
Assistance Using Service
Assistance in using the service is provided in the respective service provision agreement (SLA, LOA, MOU etc.)
Levels of support for C4ISR Services
The standardization of Support structures over various parts of the current NCI Agency is based on ITIL 2011. NCI Agency has adopted a simplified Support Services Structure that depicts current practices.
- Level 0 Support
- Level 1 Support
- Level 2 Support
- Level 3 Support
The levels of support delivered to customer are in line with the agreed levels below and differ for INTERNAL and EXTERNAL Customers.
Levels of Support for INTERNAL Customers
Level 0: This level comprises the customer/user self-service.
Level 1: Is user facing and is the first line of technical support. This level is offered by the Service Desk. They will log, categorize, prioritize, diagnose and resolve incidents within the boundaries of their training and permissions. This level is responsible for escalating incidents to Level 2.
Level 2: Applies specialist skills to provide technical support to incident investigation and diagnosis. This level performs End to End service monitoring and takes actions to resolve the incident and recover the services impacted. This is offered by Network Operations Centre (NOP) and by Network and System Operators. Level 2 will be responsible for escalating incidents and identified problems to the engineering level of support (Level 3).
Level 3: This level provides specialist service and resource support for individual services and systems. They will normally be the service, System Managers or SMEs. This level will liaise and work with external product and service suppliers.
Levels of Support for EXTERNAL Customers
Level 0: This level comprises the customer/user self-service.
Level 1
: Is user facing and is the first line of technical support. The core assumption is that Level 1 support will be present in the nation itself taking care of its national C4ISR architecture. Another assumption is that national Level 1 support will be able to take on (part of) the Level 1 support needed for NATO C4ISR capabilities. This last assumption depends on national preference. Nations can choose to invest in proficiency level of their own national support staff, or outsource (part of) Level 1 support for NATO C4ISR capabilities to NCI Agency.
Level 2: Applies specialist skills to provide technical support to incident investigation and diagnosis. This level performs End to End service monitoring and takes actions to resolve the incident and recover the services impacted. The core assumption is that this level of support will be present in the Nation itself taking care of its national C4ISR Architecture. When related to NATO C4ISR service support, we can limit the scope to software problems (excluding hardware issues).
Since currently there are no networked solutions the NCI Agency could use to support remotely, this support level probably has to be executed locally while consulting external expertise (e.g. NCI Agency or industry). With adequate training and with the right reference material regarding known problems and solutions, most issues are probably solvable with national support personal. The NCI Agency or industry could possible support this by providing a reference database, telephone support, email support etc. to local national Level 2 support personnel.
Level 3: This level provides specialist service and resource support for individual services and systems. They will normally be the service, System Managers or SMEs. If coordinated efforts between local Level 2 and external Level 2 personnel do not solve the issue, this issue can either be raised to Level 3, or be raised to on-site support (as part of Level 3 support). On-site Support is physical intervention at a specific national site to solve issues that are site related/isolated. Specific for this on-site support is that it is ad-hoc; therefore resources cannot be planned in advance.