OGC CAR - Negotiated Procedure, the rocks and the rapids of community perception

There has been a certain amount of debate in recent weeks as to the effect of the OGC CAR project on the future of ITIL. Some of this debate, in my own opinion only has bordered on hysteria and so I think that it might be helpful to try to add my own understanding to that that has been already published with regard to what OGC is actually trying to achieve through these two paralell processes and how it is going about it.

My understanding, and that of those 'in the know' who I have spoken with about this is that the CAR European Journal Adverts were seeking:

"expressions of interest in the provision of accreditation and publishing services related to a portfolio of OGC best practice products."

The two key words here are:

1) Accreditation
2) Publishing

Against this backdrop, I believe that:

1) The OGC is retaining complete editorial control of ITIL
2) The OGC will continue to 'own' ITIL
3) The publication rights are being negotiated with TSO (formerly 'The Stationary Office') who have been responsible for publication for the past 10+ years in anycase, the issue here is rights to produce new media etc etc.
4) The biggest change is with regard to the 'Accreditation/Certification' control that is being negotiated with APMG.

Some commentators (see the debate at the ITSM PORTAL) have suggested that all the rights will go to one party, this is not what I am reading in the OGC press releases that I have read - I think it is very much 'accreditation/certification' to APMG and Publication to TSO.

Accreditation/certification:

A) APMG is already responsible for Prince II, MoR and MSP guidance from the OGC and has been effective in promulgating Prince II based appraoch as a standard.
B) It has been suggested that the APMG has not managed a qualification as 'credible' and 'solid' as the Managers Certificate (ITIL) - specifically they seem to have done okay on Foundation and Practitioner levels with the other areas but they are not (i believe) as rigourous as the ITIL ones. It has been suggested that there is a risk - that ITIL qualifications will be devalued and practitioners/managers will become less well respected as a result.
C) There is a possible 'counterbalance' to this in that I haven't read anywhere that the ITIL Certification Management Board (ICMB) will be disbanded, this provides BCS, EXIN (and I think ITSMF) input to the qualification scheme. If this is maintained, even if the scheme is managed/run by APMG then an element of independent quality control will remain.

Publication

On the publication side, and depending on the freedoms offered in the contracts (which will typically be restricted rights licenses):
A) Contrary to many suggestions that I have read posted over the past few weeks - as far as I understand ITIL is not being sold (it is reported that OGC was offered a lot of money by Microsoft some years ago and if they were going to sell they probably would have then).
B) It is possible that with a little more freedom, TSO will improve the quality and usability of the electronic references and be able to invest more heavily in common diagramatic themes etc, making the works more acessible.

Commentators have raised concers that the ITSMF may loose its close ties to ITIL, (in my oppionion, this would be a great shame), but similarly it is perhaps time and a good idea that the ITSMF considers widening its umbrella and comments/reviews/QAs other best practice frameworks as ITSM ceases to just be about ITIL and encompasses guidance and audit within ITIL, CoBIT, MOF and other frameworks.


The effect on the historic success of ITIL

ITIL has historically beed adopted and adapted and is well regarded as a good volume of work because:
- it isn't shelf breakingly large,
- it covers much (but clearly not all) of the territory required of a good IT-ERP practice guide,
- it is produced by an independent (of vendor bias) body,
- it is commercial only through publication and certification not in it's objective
- it carry's a government seal of approval making it's promotion in large corporates / public sector easier than some 'consultant babble'.
- there is (currently) some significant value in certification making it easier to encourage staff to train in it.
- it has been tried tested and evolved over a considerable time.

Some of these have negatives:
- it's organisation sometimes means moving between 'books' to gain a complete picture of the activities, processes and approaches reccomended to address a particular service management need
- consistency in format, presentation, tone and occasionaly content is not perfect as a result of the multitude of authors, the temporal distance between publications and perhaps a lack of editorial oversight
- the lack of an 'active' sponsor marketing ITIL (other than the ITSMF) means that 'promotion' ends up being done by consultants or worse still vendors with an agenda so sometimes it is mis-represented.
- the 'government' processes for update, review and management sometimes make it slow moving and slow to respond to real world needs (e.g. Security Management is woefully inadequate for electronic integrity, privacy and confidentiality discussion).
- staff 'adiction' to process can emerge resulting in processes hindering rather than supporting the business if ITIL is adopted as an objective, rather than as an aid to supporting an improvement programme to support the business.
- it's longevity has led to some inconsistency, weakness in some areas and some 'baggage' that some practitioners are attached to making change more difficult - we will have to see how the refresh deals with this without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
- The current focus on Service Management (Red+Blue) in the 'wild' means that there is a risk that attention is not paid (especially) to the 'Orange book'. - I have a collegue who after reading (yes he did) the Red and Blue books said, okay so i've hired, nominated or appointed all of these process owners and managers now where does it tell me who does the work and what they need to do?


ITIL and the OGC

The OGC CAR is clearly a 'change' in the commercial relationships around ITIL, but the proof of OGC's intention will be in the 'eating'. If, in two years time, we still have :
- High quality not exhorbitantly priced manuals
- Good electronic access options
- Independent editorial control with a wide range of industry representation
- attention to the 'small guy' as well as large corporate, consultants and government
- a certification system that is respected and where the top level qualifications are still considered 'hard' work and 'valuable'.
- a significant degree of industry 'buy in'.

Then the project will have been a success.

As with any big 'change','project','deployment','programme' we must consider the risks and the impacts, the costs and the benefits (in this case to both the OGC and the community) and respond on the basis of fact and information rather than emotion and 'fear of change'.

I wasn't involved in any bids and so can't comment on what APM, ITSMF, TSO or others will or will not have included in their bids, but (from the OGC):

"The licences will include the right to publish books, CDs and other reference material under the OGC brand, in addition to providing accreditation services on behalf of OGC."

It appears that some people have 'gotten' the wrong end of the stick and believe that editorial or content control is being handed over. OGC directly will retain full control of the (c)Copyright and so the integrity of the 'Best Practice' should be protected. In fact, TSO have held the publishing contract for as long as it has existed and the core works have existed within that framework without problems, while clearly the spirit of 'community' and some commentators desire to see 'best practice' become a pseudo 'open source' type endevour there is a belief that these publishing rights to be held by the community perhaps such as the ITSMF to whom they might represent a welcome boost to income and therefore the promotion, support and development of the community - I personally don't see why it is neccessary.


The ITIL Community

The ITIL community has a lot of valuable input to bring and the OGC would be ill advised to ignore it as would any commercial partner that they appoint. It will however be too easy for them to brand us with labels:
- Disgruntled ITSMF member
- Indignant IOSM member
- Excluded vendor
- Biased consultant / third party author
- etc
and use these to ignore the community. Probably the most powerful defence that the SM community has to protect its interest is it's experience, strength of feeling, influence and the fact that by and large it is populated with well educated, erudite individuals with much real-world experience. Unlike many other areas (e.g. in SW development) ITSM is not as far as I have seen overburdened by academics (* note to academics - academic research, evaluation and input is without doubt valuable - but in creating best practice I believe that experience and empiricism trumps all theory).

Like others, I have the same concerns with regard to the editorial future control of ITIL, but believe that in light of the considerations (above) they may well be unfounded. I believe that best practice *MUST* draw on the wider community both the existing community and emerging broader international community.

A Personal View

Most of us who contribute to Best Practice do so because we develop it as a part of our job, engaging within and without our employers and as a common basis that we can share, debate and improve by working with our peers. The ITSMF is an excellent forum for this and I don't see this role being threatened. Indeed, the ITSMF's right to publish in the area of Service Management also won't be affected and I suspect that OGC will continue to be generous with the use of the ITIL trademarks etc, provided that the commercial value of the publication rights for the core works are protected.

With regard to certification, the water seems a little more muddy. Again, currently this is done more 'directly' by OGC for ITIL (not for PrinceII, MSP or MoR which have been with APM for some time already). The level of change to the current arrangements remains to be seen, but, again quality should be our concern here and as far as I am aware it is not clear, but it seems to be expected that both ISEB and EXIN will be retained by the successful bidder as 'Examination Institutes', perhaps with a little more centralisation of Sylabus and Examination content. Having looked at several ITSM and ICTIM Managers Exams over the past year from both institutes, there is certainly considerable room for improvement, although I think that the rigour and level is good, often the quality of questions and case studies could be improved. This is probably a symptom of the financial constraints and level of peer review of the papers before publication so there may be opportunities that arise if the commercials are more clearly sorted out. . . Again, I haven't looked at the documents recently and certainly don't know the contents of any bid. It seems likely that EXIN / BCS bids for the accreditation may have been weakened by excluding (either actually or practically) the other from involvement, while APM may have left collaboration with both open. APM, while small has a track record of operating and certifying large numbers of people within the disciplines that they do understand, and (as an aside), it would be poor judgement to ignore the overlaps between Prince2, MoR and ITIL; there is much in ITIL 'Deployment' that overlaps with Prince2, much from MSP that should be included in the 'Orange Book' successor either by reference or inclusion and Risk Management is currently sorely lacking from ITIL and a vital inclusion. There is common ground and APMs existing qualification schemes and infrastructure may well allow it to operate on a better commercial footing than BCS/EXIN/ITSMF in offering certification. Perhaps they didn't make a cash bid but made a 'profit share' bid supported by their Prince2 experience and as a result of savings in scale and across multiple qualifications were able to reduce their costs and so tender more in total, perhaps ITSMF bid only for one element (ITIL) and OGC are legally bound to seek efficiency and so a credible bid for all qualifications would be a 'better deal' for them.

I believe that excluding ISEB(BCS)/EXIN from the examinations (as partners or providers) will simply result in fragmentation; there would be nothing to stop them offering very credible 'Service Management' examinations based on their experience to date. In fact in Project Management, BCS/ISEB already offer a very credible qualification that subsumes Prince2 (and so demonstrates that they can work effectively with APMG) by providing detailed PM training and covering the Prince2 process at the same time.

So to summarise, as I read it : Nothing is changing with regard to Prince2, MoR, MSP or the ITIL Core Texts, all of which will continue to be published by TSO. Nothing is changing with regard to Prince2, MoR or MSP accrediation/qualification which will continue to be administered by APMG. It seems likely that ITIL accreditation/qualification will move to APMG as well, it is unclear whether this will result in APMG adopting the chair of the ITIL Certification Board and accrediting the Examination Institutes (similar to current model), or whether it will go further with them actively setting syllabi and exams to be administered by existing EI's, whether they will seek to do everything themselves or whether something different will emerge.

It's good to see this issue raising such passion, unusual for Best Practice to arouse such strong feeling but a 'sense of ownership' within the community is surely only a positive thing for the future.

References:
ITIL CAR at www.itil.co.uk
OGC CAR Statement at www.ogc.gov.uk

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