Information Technology Service Management (ITSM): contributing Factors to IT Service disruptions - a Case of Malaysia Public Service Agencies

Researchers have highlighted that the main factors that contribute to IT service failure are the people, process and technology. However, relatively few empirical studies examine to what degree these factors contribute to service disruptions in the public sector organizations. This study explores the IT service management (ITSM) at eight (8) Front-end Agencies, four (4) Ministries and six (6) Departments in Malaysian public service to identify the level of contribution of each factor to the public IT service disruptions. This study was undertaken using questionnaires via stratified sampling. The empirical results reveal that human action, decision, management, error and failure are the major causes to the IT service disruptions followed by an improper process or procedures and technology failure. In addition, we can conclude that human is an important factor and need to give more attention by the management since human is the creator, who uses, manages and maintains the technology and process to enable the delivery of services as specified in the objectives, vision and mission of the organization. Although the literature states that human failure was due to knowledge, skill, attitude and behavior of an individual and the organization environment, but no literature was found studies on what characteristics of human and environmental organizations that make up the resilience service delivery and the creation of an organization that is resilient. Future research on what characteristics on human and organization environmental that contribute to organizational and business resilience is suggested at the end of the paper. However, this paper only covers literature that discussed in depth the type of human failure and the cause of failure. Nevertheless, it is believed that the findings provide a valuable understanding of the current situation in this research field.