Discussion on:

Introducing ITIL standards for service to your clients

I have a strong background in systems management and availability management, especially dealing with problem and change management and SLA's. I was just recently introduced to the ITIL, and found it very useful. It is easy to understand, well documented, and coincides very closely my own experience and understanding of these topics. I am delighted to see this excellent resource being reviewed, and hope to see more in the future.

I think the article represents a great way to encourage more business from existing clients. I would love to check it out more but the URLs are not valid.

Not sure what Robert's problems were. I tried all of the links and they were ok.

I notice one of the links pointed to the UK bookstore. itSMF Canada www.itsmf.ca also sells the books, and pricing is favourable.

Use of ITIL is growing in North America with Canadian Federal and Provincial governments adopting it. itSMF is holding national conferences in both the US (sept 23-25)and Canada (Nov 27-28).

Bob,

It's a shame about the links, but here are some non-commercial resources which might help:

The International ITIL User Community
http://www.itilcommunity.com

The ITIL Open Guide
http://www.itiler.com

For more commercial respurces, simply search Google/etc for 'ITIL'.

Hope this helps.


Louise

I came to ITIL through quality assurance consultancy in the early nineties. While ISO9001 lays down the minimum level for quality systems, ITIL provides detailed practical processes to help you implement the theory.
The individual books are not cheap, but the CD bundles are good value.

Everything I read about HIPAA would seem to be concerned with the unauthorized disclosure of individually identifiable patient information -- but I _thought_ there were some pretty specific requirements as to the PROTECTION of the INTEGRITY of that same data. Am I (1) mistaken or (2) not looking in any of the right places? Granted, there are several sections dealing with getting data corrected -- but isn't there any responsibility for the "covered entities'" (and, their Business Associates) to ensure the security of the info?

The author states that "I learned that there were no user?s groups in my region"

This is always likely to happen with international publications like this: the world is a big place and most of it won't be covered by a geographically handy user group.

However, there are online options. I know of three international web based user groups for ITIL:

http://www.itilcommunity.com
This is by far the biggest.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ITIL-Service/
Good old Yahoo.

http://www.15000.net
This embraces both ITIL and BS15000

I would guess that these suit many needs, particularly where there is nothing local.

I hope this helps.


Louise