Germany’s Federal Employment Agency has updated its IT operating processes with support from T-Systems so that these processes are now more cost-effective than those of comparable private-sector companies. This is the result of a benchmark study conducted by the Maturity consulting firm. With a network of 170,000 workstations and 11,500 servers at 1,900 sites, Germany’s largest authority has one of the country’s most extensive ICT landscapes.

The study establishes the technical and financial efficiency of the IT operating processes in change, problem and service-level management which were restructured with the assistance of T-Systems. For this purpose, Maturity compares the process costs at the Federal Employment Agency to those at eight European companies, primarily in the insurance sector, which have similar volumes, quality requirements and IT complexity.

"The study demonstrates that a government agency today can structure its IT operating processes more economically and more effectively than a company," says Klaus Vitt, CIO of the Federal Employment Agency. "Comprehensive standardization and automation are essential levers in this context. This makes all IT operating processes more transparent and allows the employed resources such as hardware and software to be better allocated."

In the past, T-Systems worked with the Federal Employment Agency for three years to restructure all of the agency’s IT operating processes based on ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) and align its legacy IT landscape accordingly. ITIL is the internationally recognized benchmark for the operation of IT infrastructures and defines a framework for the best possible technological and economic management of IT processes.

The Federal Employment Agency project, completed in 2010, was distinguished by the IT Service Management Forum in Germany (itSMF) for its integrated approach.

Service, problem and change management
The required properties of a service such as availability and performance are agreed upon, monitored and established in service level management. Problem management investigates and eliminates causes of real and potential incidents. IT-related change requests are implemented pursuant to defined criteria in change management. 

About Deutsche Telekom AG
Deutsche Telekom is one of the world's leading integrated telecommunications companies with around 129 million mobile customers, approximately 36 million fixed-network lines and more than 16 million broadband lines (as of December 31, 2010). The Group provides products and services for the fixed network, mobile communications, the Internet and IPTV for consumers, and ICT solutions for business customers and corporate customers. Deutsche Telekom is present in over 50 countries and has around 247,000 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenues of EUR 62.4 billion in the 2010 financial year - more than half of it outside Germany (as of December 31, 2010).

About T-Systems
Drawing on a global infrastructure of data centers and networks, T-Systems operates information and communication technology (ICT) systems for multinational corporations and public sector institutions. T-Systems provides integrated solutions for the networked future of business and society. The company's some 47,600 employees combine industry expertise and ICT innovations to add significant value to customers' core business all over the world. T-Systems generated revenue of around EUR 9.1 billion in the 2010 financial year.

About Maturity
Maturity is an international consulting firm which specializes in IT benchmarking, IT controlling and IT governance. Maturity uses IT profitability analyses to compare the effectiveness ("doing the right thing") and efficiency ("doing it right") of the IT employed by its clients with selected key performance indicators of companies that exhibit similar requirements and a comparable level of complexity. The objective is not to achieve a reduction of costs at any price but rather the strategically prudent optimization of the cost/benefit ratio while taking into account all economic aspects.

Maturity’s clients are medium-sized companies as well as large international corporations from all industries. The Maturity team consists of experienced computer scientists, MBAs and industrial engineers who successfully completed far more than 2,000 benchmarking projects in recent years.

About the IT of the Federal Employment Agency:
The IT of the Federal Employment Agency is comprised of IT management, the IT system house, and regional IT service. The IT system house is the Federal Employment Agency’s operational IT service provider and is in turn made up of the following departments: system development, operation/infrastructure and internal service. Operation/infrastructure also includes the network infrastructure and the workstation systems. The Federal Employment Agency’s IT provides the complete data center capacity for 1,900 connected buildings. With a network of 170,000 workstations and the associated infrastructure (e.g. 11,500 servers, two central high-performance and 178 local data centers), the Federal Employment Agency IT operates one of Germany’s largest IT landscapes and is continuously expanding it further. The vision of the Federal Employment Agency’s IT department is to be the most effective and most efficient IT service provider in the public sector. For more information about the Federal Employment Agency’s IT, please call Wolfgang Puff on +49 (0) 911 179-4553 or send him an email at wolfgang.puff@arbeitsagentur.de.