In the meantime...

While we wait for resolution on the SPAIT (Single Point of Accountability for IT, known elsewhere as CIO) issue, there are things we can do.

One of the most pressing is to start working on service management issues:

• Service catalogs
  
• Service level agreements
• Operational level agreements
  

We'll need these whatever plays out with a CIO. I mean, a SPAIT.

Some good resources:

• Service catalogs
• IT Service Catalogs in 5 Steps, by Hank Marquis of itSM Solutions.
• The Open Source Service Catalog Community has a number of interesting articles.
  

• SLAs
  • Guidelines, templates
    • Establishing Service Level Agreements, by Naomi Karten.
      
    • Guidelines for Public Sector Organisations from New South Wales, Australia [PDF]
    • SLA toolkit
  • Examples
    • USG OIIT Service Level Guidelines (PDF)
    • Earlham College
    • GeoNOVA Service Level Agreement Template (PDF)
    
    
• OLAs
  • Solving the IT Silo Problem
  • Operational-level agreement: An IT game plan for CIOs
  • Duke University

The guidelines from New South Wales provide a good summary of the benefits of SLAs. An SLA:

1. Sets clear performance expectations of the customer and service provider .
2. Clarifies the roles and responsibilities of both parties.
3. Focuses attention on customer's priority needs.
4. Encourages a service quality culture, and continuous improvement.
5. Provides a mechanism for both parties to plan for the future.
6. Puts purchasing power into the hands of the customer.
7. Provides a useful tool for the customer to monitor performance.
8. Puts service providers in a better position to plan their delivery functions.
9. Can provide greater certainty of income for service providers.

Karten's article gives a good overview of how to create successful SLAs. I especially like these sections:

• How Not to Establish an SLA
• Key Steps in Establishing a Service Level Agreement