European Court sets service levels to rights

The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has overhauled the service desk function within its IT department.

The court, which deals with allegations of human rights violations against the Council of Europe's forty-seven member states, has replaced an existing IT system to centralise, streamline and automate its IT service desk operations.

The ECHR's IT department, which provides helpdesk services to over 800 user clients, is using e-Service Desk IT service management software from ICCM. The customised implementation records and processes all calls sent to the service desk, via a web-based portal, telephone or email, assigning queries to the service desk team.

John Hunter, the head of the ECHR's IT department said: "We have seen a dramatic change in the department, resulting in both quantitative and qualitative efficiency.

The new system, based on business process management (BPM) software from vendor, Metastorm enables users to have visibility of how their query is being resolved. The IT department have found its tools effective in improving service desk management, reporting and monitoring functions. And e-Service Desk also performs statistical analysis of users' needs, recurring problems and resourcing issues, allowing the IT department to increase visibility of issues and make more effective decisions around service improvements.

The new service desk software is also compliant with the IT governance framework ITIL, which Hunter said had enabled additional benefits: "The service desk's reaction time to queries has reduced considerably, allowing the department to formally put in place service level agreements for its user base - unthinkable before. This greater efficiency, enabled by customised automation of repetitive processes, now allows the staff to concentrate on the mission critical IT tasks, resulting in huge savings in time."

He added: "Further, this tool has made management and reporting a breeze. There is complete visibility of the effectiveness of service being provided by the department."

The ECHR now plans to extend its service desk functionality to include more detailed management and reporting functions, loan pool booking and forward planning features, such as scheduled outages and maintenance cycles.

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