Success story: optimization of maintenance of information systems of FCU Sotstekh with the help of ITSM SimpleOne

The Federal State Institution "Information Technologies in the Social Sphere" (FKU "Sotstech") has successfully automated the processes of maintaining information systems and provided a single point of reception of appeals in social block organizations. These include the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation, the Federal Service for Labor and Employment (Rostrud), the Pension and Social Insurance Fund of the Russian Federation and the Federal Bureau of Medical and Social Expertise of the Ministry of Labor of Russia (FGBU FB MSE). The foundation was the ITSM-system of SimpleOne company, which allows to independently improve the basic functionality of the platform and customize the processes in accordance with the requirements of the implemented tasks. ## Customer: FCU Sotstech

FCU Sotstekh performs the functions of a technical customer and is engaged in the development and maintenance of individual information systems, the operators and owners of which are organizations that are part of the social block: the Ministry of Labor of Russia, Rostrud, Social Fund of Russia, FGBU FB ITU. ## Prerequisites and goals of the project Organizations that are part of the social block have organized the process of technical support in different ways. In some of them, technical support services were created internally and formed in accordance with their own standards, while in others, they were outsourced. In this case, full access to data was limited. Besides, in case of external service, there were no uniform requirements to the conditions of support and quality of service. When creating information systems within organizations, different software, often of foreign development, was also used, which contradicts the strategy of import substitution of IT solutions in the public sector. Given the close information integration of social block organizations, problems and incidents arising at the intersection of information systems, the need to synchronize data transfer protocols and harmonize standards for the presentation of this data, reduced the efficiency of all organizations. **Project objectives:** - Improving the quality of information system maintenance services and services by promptly controlling the fulfillment of user requests; - reducing the time required to resolve requests and incidents on issues that require the involvement of technical support services of several organizations of the social block. As one of the possible IT solutions, we considered a unified information system of technical support for all organizations, operating in the specified format of rules and standards and ensuring a high level of service quality. Creation of such a system became one of the key tasks set for FCU Sotstech. ## Choice of solution FCU "Sotsteh" defined the following criteria for selecting an ITSM-system: - **Domestic solution.** One of the key requirements was to use software developed in Russia and supported by domestic vendors; - **Possibility to independently modify and develop the system. **ITSM-system should be flexible and adaptive, with the ability to add functional modules and customization of settings; - **Short implementation period** (not more than 6 months). According to the results of tender procedures, a software product that meets the requirements set by FCU Sotstech was identified: ITSM-system SimpleOne. The contract for the supply of licenses and implementation of the ITSM-system was signed at the end of 2021. The general contractor of the project was INLINE GROUP. ## Project Stages The project team divided the implementation process into several stages, each of which was focused on achieving specific goals and results. 1. Assessment of user needs and formalization of tasks into unified technical requirements; 2. Approval of the Passport and Project Plan; 3. Deployment and customization. ITSM-system SimpleOne was installed in the infrastructure of FCU "Sotsteh", the processes of incident management and service requests were customized to meet the needs of the Institution; 4. Implementation into operation. The second half of 2022. Having started in June, by December specialists of the contractor-executor of the project completed integration of internal IT services and services of FCU Sotstekh into the ITSM system, as well as processes of maintenance of separate information systems of the Ministry of Labor of Russia and FGBU FB ITU, which were supported by FCU Sotstekh. 5. Development. In 2023, integration of separate information systems of the Pension and Social Insurance Fund of the Russian Federation and the remaining IT services of the Ministry of Labor of Russia into SimpleOne was performed. In 2024, the transfer to the new platform of support of other information systems of social block organizations by decision of the Ministry of Labor of Russia will be continued. The result will be the complete abandonment of the use of foreign IT solutions IBM Tivoli, JIRA and others.

## Scenarios of use Three scenarios of using ITSM-system of FCU "SotsTech" have been realized, depending on the conditions of support. - **Full cycle of support.**
FCU Sotstech provides ITSM-system and ensures a full cycle of support for individual information systems of social block organizations. For this purpose, the institution has a staff of specialists, three technical support lines and a dispatch center; - **Dispatch center** (registration, processing, routing of requests).
FCU "Sotsteh" provides ITSM-system and ensures routing of appeals to external executors; - **Provision of ITSM-system** (various projects).
FCU Sotstech provides an ITSM-system for maintenance and monitoring of service quality of individual information systems of social block organizations. FCU Sotstech customizes the ITSM-system according to the requirements of maintenance contracts and provides technical support of the ITSM-system. ## System customization SimpleOne platform capabilities allow to customize ITSM-system using no-code and low-code mechanisms without involvement of vendor's specialists. Preliminary system customization by the integrator team of INLINE GROUP JSC - **E-mail.** The**main** part of requests comes by e-mail. The system automatically creates an application card and fills it with all necessary information about the applicant; - **User portal. **Adaptation and design of the user portal for registration of appeals and control over execution of applications according to the requirements of FCU "Sotsteh". The form for submitting an Application was developed, the necessary information fields were displayed for the user's convenience when working with applications on the portal; - **IT services catalog.** Setting up a three-level hierarchy of the IT services catalog for detailed classification of requests and obtaining detailed reports on the services provided; - **Dashboards. Customization of **dashboards for monitoring the quantity and quality of requests execution in selected reporting periods. ## Development of the system by the SOCTECH team - Convenient registration of requests received by phone. A separate module was developed for telephone requests, which allows to register them in the system quickly and conveniently by specifying the type (incoming/outgoing) of the call and its category (new request/for an existing request/not addressed/redirected to mail/other). Further, depending on the selected parameters, the interface visualizes the form fields required to register a request, as well as the possibility of automatic registration by pressing one button; - Creation of chains of related requests. Let's consider the example of hiring a new employee. When an employee is hired, the system automatically creates a chain of requests for executors responsible for organizing the workplace, access to information systems, setting up and issuing equipment, etc. The solution significantly reduces the time spent on processing requests in the process of hiring new employees; - Integration with the events calendar. The system automatically creates requests for booking conference rooms, timing of video conferences, organization of other events; - Integration with chatbot in Telegram. Operational notification in messengers of managers and executors of tasks about reaching 70% and 90% of the SLA deadline and about overdue fulfillment; - IT Assets module. A separate IT Asset Management module was developed to account for the full life cycle of fixed assets and consumables in the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation. The ITSM system was successfully integrated into the working regulations of FCU Sotstech. The solution increased the efficiency of interaction, made work processes more convenient and understandable for users.

## Implementation results and development prospects Thanks to the implementation of the SimpleOne ITSM system, FCU SotsTech controls the quality of services provided online. For ITSM-systems of organizations that are independently supported by FCU SotsTech, the KPI indicator for processed requests in 2023 reached 99%. In total, more than 8,000 user requests were processed in 2023. External performers started working in July 2023 and during this time they processed more than 5000 requests. Comprehensive real-time monitoring of the work of external executors is ensured.

In the future, FCU Sotsteh plans to scale the system to support other information systems and IT services of social organizations for which the Russian Ministry of Labor will make such a decision. The implementation of the Russian ITSM system resulted in the creation of a unified support service, standardized interaction processes between departments, optimized monitoring of user requests, and improved the efficiency of information systems maintenance and service quality.