JOB TITLE: Service Level Manager

REPORTS TO: Head of ICT Technical Services

DEPARTMENT: Finance & Resources

SECTION: ICT

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PURPOSE OF JOB (Give in one or two sentences the basic reason why the job exists.)

The implementation and maintenance of a Service Level Management (SLM) process to the level required by the Council and users of ICT Services including the development of business partnerships and relationships to evaluate the strategic ICT service needs of the entire Council.

To be responsible for the strategic and operational management and development of a team providing technical support functions; ensuring the provision throughout all areas and levels of the organisation of a professional, comprehensive, responsive, efficient and effective, high quality ICT support service.

2. PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTABILITIES (Please list the key areas of contribution of the job. These would normally be 6-10 statements, listed in order of importance and approximate percentage of time spent on each.)

1. Lead the strategic development and monitor and review standards of customer care ensuring these are consistently high to guarantee customer satisfaction and to achieve or exceed expectations; ensure that the support provided to the council staff and Members is monitored and developed over time in response to business need.

2. Take a lead role on the implementation and administration of an ITIL compliant service management platform to ensure optimum service delivery to the council’s user population; feed into and support the infrastructure change management process by analysis of the data within the system.

3. Lead on and negotiate with customer departments and external third parties in order to develop and constantly review SLA’s in order that they remain useful and valid, both from a provider and customer perspective.

4. Develop, maintain and advise on the strategy for support policies and procedures for new technologies as and when adopted by the Council in order to ensure these services can be supported effectively and cost-efficiently throughout their lifecycle.

5. Develop and control a team of ICT Support staff, including recruitment, appraisal, allocation of workload and production of rotas to deliver a high quality, customer focused service. Identify staff training requirements and produce training programmes to meet the service requirements and the personal development of staff in line with business needs.

6. Strategically inform the formulation of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plans with regard to key business corporate information systems and their usage. Ensure that the appropriate skills and effort are made available to effect a solution to a problem with the objective to restore access to the systems with minimal impact to corporate customers and the public.

7. Devise, implement, measure and report against KPI’s for Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for key business services following discussions and agreement with customers, ensuring that expectations are managed in line with the capabilities of the ICT department.

8. Measure and report against Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) for internal and 3rd party ICT functions delivering clear processes for escalation and communication of issues and faults impacting service availability.

9. Authorise and monitor ICT expenditure relevant to the service area and manage within budget.

10. To be responsible for the enforcement of the Use of ICT Policy, as appropriate to the area of service, to prevent abuse of council ICT resources.

11. Devise and implement a strategy for the support and development of the corporate electronic mail system in accordance with the council’s business strategy.

Management Development

To assess and develop your own management/leadership skills in line with the Council’s Manager and Leaders Standards on an annual basis to ensure continuous improvement

Equalities

To develop practices within the directorate/division that uphold and develop the principles of the City Council’s Inclusive Council Policy.

To work within and actively promote the City Council’s Inclusive Council Policy in relation to service delivery and staff management.

Health & Safety

You must be prepared to be responsible for the implementation of, and compliance with, the provisions of legislation relating to the health and safety of such employees and areas of the workplace as fall under your direct control and for complying with legislation relating to such works and contracts as are within your direct responsibility.

General

The list of duties in the job description should not be regarded as exclusive or exhaustive. There will be other duties and requirements associated with your job and, in addition, as a term of your employment you may be required to undertake various other duties as may reasonably be required. Your duties will be as set out in the above job description but please note that the Council reserves the right to update your job description, from time to time, to reflect changes in, or to, your job.

You will be consulted about any proposed changes. POST TITLE: Service Level Manager

DIRECTORATE: Cultural Service

SECTION: ICT & eGovernment

ESSENTIAL CRITERIA

Job Related Education,  Have achieved the ISEB Managers Certificate in IT Service Qualifications and Management at Version 3 of the IT Infrastructure Library Knowledge (ITIL)  Educated to degree level or equivalent skills gained through proven and substantial experience  Excellent understanding of IT service management (ITSM) techniques as set out in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)  Extensive and current knowledge of modern ICT hardware and software and infrastructure development

Experience  Extensive experience gained in a strategic IT Service Management role  Extensive experience gained in a supervisory/management role over staff dealing with the public or internal customers  Experience of using modern reporting tools  Experience of managing an ICT technical support function in a large organisation  Proven experience of successful negotiatons with suppliers, colleagues and customers

Skills/Abilities  Exceptional ability to interact successfully across all levels and influence the strategic direction based on informed decision making.  Thorough understanding of the business, ICT’s contribution to the delivery of the services and the role of IT Providers services.  Excellent written and oral communication skills including presentation and negotiation skills to negotiate with suppliers, colleagues and customers  Proven staff management skills, especially in the development of less experienced staff and in fostering customer care skills  Excellent Relationship Management skills  Very good technical understanding and an ability to translate technical requirements and specifications into easily understood business concepts and vice versa  Assured ability to respond efficiently and effectively to queries and complaints; professional and competent handling of multiple stressful situations and remain calm and objective under extreme pressure  Diligence and the motivation to see things through to their conclusion  Assertiveness, diplomacy and sensitivity when seeking resluts from staff not directly line managed by the post holder

Equalities  To be able to demonstrate a commitment to the principles of Equalities and to be able to carry out duties in accordance with the Council’s Equalities Policy.

Other Requirements  Experienced in delivering measurable improvements to service quality  Strong leadership with exceptional strategic vision supported by experience and knowledge  Energetic, enthusiastic, passionate (about service delivery), well presented and articulate. 3. ORGANISATION CHART

4. HARDEST PART OF THE JOB

The hardest part of this position will the post holders ability to negotiate and influence the design of IT services with all parties to ensure they meet the needs of the business whilst remaining within the bounds of ICT’s ability to deliver and provide the expected on-going support for the service.

The post holder will be required to negotiate with Customers on behalf of ICT and to initiate and follow through actions required to improve or maintain agreed service levels. This requires adequate seniority within the organisation.

The role requires the post holder to own and be accountable for the day to day provision of services including activities such as problem management, change, reporting and interacting with all service providers to deliver the end to end service to the business. The role also involves significant relationship management and is the primary service interface with multiple stakeholders both within the business and ICT.

6. DIMENSIONS

Staff Management

3 Senior Analyst Posts (M9/M10) 10 Analyst Posts (SO1/2 – M11) 7 Assistant Analyst Posts (Scale 5/6) 3 Operations Analysts The post holder will also be required to manage variable contract positions as required

IT Services

 Over 300 supported IT Services  5000 Service users  Approximately 25 IT systems supporting public facing council services

Equipment Supported

 Equipment at c. 300 sites  4500 desktops used within the council, all printers and other peripherals attached  All telephone equipment  In excess of 100 servers, each supporting between 5 and 1000 users  In excess of 4500 e-mail accounts Customers supported:

 Any council employee who makes use of ICT equipment or systems to support the delivery of Business processes

Budget management

Can signoff individual purchases up to the value of £7,500 including hiring contract staff. Has some input into budget expenditure but it not ultimately the budget holder

7. SCOPE FOR IMPACT

ICT equipment and systems underpin the vast majority of services provided by the Council. The ICT Service Level Manager has an essential role to ensure these services are delivered as and when required by the business in accordance with their expectations. Some customers have legal and financial obligations to process work within strict timescales and may be liable for legal actions and/or financial penalties if there fail to meet their commitments.

A key computerised system, ie Council Tax affected by a problem rendering it unavailable for any period of time may have a impact on the councils’ ability to bill, recover monies or even receive general enquiries. This is likely to result in a poor public perception of the council’s ability to deliver the services paid for by public funding.

The significant reliance on the corporate email system for communication internally across all parts of the council and externally in our dealings with the public requires that any outage requires careful planning and impact assessment. The Service Level Manager is ultimately responsible for managing the resolution of any unplanned outages and directing solutions to prevent any reoccurrence of the issue.

The post holder is responsible for negotiating and regularly reviewing SLAs with external collaborative agencies (e.g EB4U, PCT and Southdowns Health Trust) and ensuring our compliance as well as the current validity of the agreement. These agencies will have their own specific needs and legislative requirements that will come to depend on the services provided by ICT. The Service Level Manager will ensure that adequate procedures exist to deal with any interruption to the supply of these services within the terms of the agreement. The reputation of the council with our business partners could be adversely affected If this service is not of the highest quality.

8. JOB CONTEXT

This is an ITIL (IT Infrstructure Library) key management role. ITIL is an international set of guidelines for IT Service Management & Delivery. IT Service Management qualifications are awarded by the Information Systems Examination Board (ISEB).

The Service Level Manager is accountable for maintaining and initiating improvements to ICT Service Quality through agreement, monitoring and reporting of IT Service achievements and the Instigation of actions to eradicate poor service.

Service Level Management is the term given to planning, coordinating, drafting, agreeing, reporting and managing SLAs. It is through the iterations of these processes that ICT will benefit from improved performance and will be seen as a partner to the business. It is by negotiating with customers that we will understand what it is they want, not what we think they should want!

It is through the review of achievements that ICT will be able to develop it’s Continuous Service Improvement Plan. This is a key role in supporting the plan.

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APPROVAL:

We confirm that this Job Description, Person Specification and additional information conveys a full and accurate description of the job at this time

Signed:...... Signed: …………………………………….

Date:...... …………...... Date: ……………………………………….. (Line Manager) (Jobholder)

Signed:......

Date:...... ………….... (Head of Service)