Successful ITS Certification
The IT Services at ETH Zurich (ITS) have successfully achieved two re-certifications and new certification of the Network Security Group. Thus the ITS is the first service organization within a Swiss university to receive all three certificates.
The ITS management system first achieved ISO 9001 certication in 2006, following several years of intense development. While working on this certification, it became apparent that ISO 20,000, an IT service-oriented standard, was pretty much in line with our ITS service tasks. Consequently in 2008, management decided to have the ITS also ISO 20,000 certified. In the record time of just one year, in 2009, ETH became the first Swiss university to have its IT Services ISO/IEC 20000 certified and its management system recertified according to ISO 9001:2008. By 2011, emergent IT developments and global exposure convinced the ITS management to support ISO 27001 certification (an information security standard) of the Network Security Group. In 2012 this very ambitious goal has been reached on the occasion of re-certification of the entire ITS according to ISO 9001 and ISO 20,000. This success is due in large part to the intensive preparatory work done by Beat Müller, working under the Rector of ETH Zurich and in charge of Quality Assurance at Executive Board level and Stephen Sheridan, group manager ITS Network Security.
What do these certificates actually mean?
The theory behind the above standards suggests that as a result of various developments every organization still has some potential for improvement. Conform to the system approach „PDCA cycle“, this potential shall be realized in an iterative four-step management method „Plan, Do, Check, Act“ and thus provide, or respectively, obtain the best possible service. Annual internal audits and external intermediate audits shall indicate possible improvement areas.
What are the next steps?
The above certifications confirm that the ITS can successfully be measured against international standards. At the same time this is also a commitment for the ITS to maintain the continuous improvement process as outlined in the „PDCA cycle „. The ITS can be proud of its achievments. We are the first service organization in a Swiss university with all three certificates.
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