ISO/IEC 20000 is the first worldwide standard specifically aimed at IT Service Management. It describes an integrated set of management processes for the effective delivery of services to the business and its customers.

ISO/IEC 20000 is aligned with and complementary to the process approach defined within ITIL from the Office of Government Commerce (OGC).

ISO/IEC 20000 consists of two parts:

ISO/IEC 20000-1 is the formal Specification and defines the requirements for an organisation to deliver managed services of an acceptable quality for its customers.
The scope includes:
– Requirements for a management system;
– Planning and implementing service management;
– Planning and implementing new or changed services;
– Service delivery process;
– Relationship processes;
– Resolution processes;
– Control processes; and
– Release processes.

ISO/IEC 20000-2 is the Code of Practice and describes the best practices for Service Management processes within the scope of ISO/IEC 20000-1. The code of Practice will be of particular use to organisations preparing to be audited against ISO/IEC 20000 or planning service improvements.

ISO/IEC 20000 is applicable to any organization, large or small, in any sector or part of the world which relies on IT services. The standard is particularly suitable for internal IT service providers, such as IT departments, and external IT service providers, such as IT outsourcing organizations.

The standard is already making a positive impact in some of the leading IT-dependent sectors, such as the business process outsourcing, telecommunications, finance and public sectors.

ISO/IEC 20000 is increasingly seen as the quality standard for IT Service Management and many companies are striving to adopt ISO/IEC 20000, not only for their own benefit but also to help qualify and choose suppliers and partner organisations.

Any organisation is able to claim compliance with an industry standard such as ISO/IEC 20000 and may put such claims in their documentation and other collateral.

However, it is clearly more valuable for such claims to be independently verified as part of a formal certification scheme. ISO 9000 and ISO 27001 are examples where such certification schemes have already been established.

Many accredited certification bodies offers ISO/IEC 20000 IT Service Management Certification Scheme (the scheme) which provides this independent verification against ISO/IEC 20000. Operation of the scheme is closely monitored by these certification bodies to ensure consistency of implementation.

Any organisation wishing to be formally certified against the scheme will need to be assessed by an Registered Certification Body (RCB). Once the requirements of ISO/IEC 20000 have been satisfied, the RCB will issue a certificate of conformance and the organisation will be eligible to use the ISO/IEC 20000 logo as a sign of their achievement and may also request a listing on this web site, enabling instant verification by visitors.

ISO / IEC 20000 – Framework