State agencies manage an increasingly diverse technology landscape—large enterprise platforms, small SaaS solutions, cloud services, AI-enabled tools, and legacy systems that still support critical mission needs. With so many moving parts, agencies need a dependable governance model to ensure consistency, reduce operational risk, and deliver reliable, mission-aligned services. This session demonstrates how ITIL Version 5 provides a modern, adaptable framework for governing any service environment. Whether an agency is deploying new software, maintaining long-standing systems, expanding automation, or introducing AI, ITIL offers principles and practices that help teams stay organized, aligned, and focused on delivering public value. Attendees will learn repeatable methods they can apply to software implementations, ongoing operations, vendor management, cross-team coordination, and modernization initiatives.

Texas agencies vary widely in size, funding, technical maturity, and service complexity—but they all face similar governance challenges: keeping operations predictable, adapting to new technologies, managing risk, and ensuring decisions align with mission and statutory requirements. ITIL Version 5 helps agencies address these challenges through principle-driven governance that works for environments of any scale.

This session explores four foundational ITIL principles and how they support effective service management across broad technology landscapes:

1. Focus on Value: Agencies often implement new software or enhancements without clearly defining expected outcomes. We will cover practical techniques for identifying value, prioritizing service improvements, aligning vendor activities with mission needs, and ensuring software features or AI capabilities support measurable business goals.
2. Optimize and Automate: From routine system maintenance to workflow automation, agencies must optimize processes without compromising stability. This section covers how ITIL guides practical optimization—improving monitoring, reducing manual effort, streamlining service requests, and introducing automation or AI in safe, sustainable ways.
3. Collaborate and Promote Visibility: Modern service operations require coordination between program areas, security, data teams, procurement, and external vendors. We review governance practices that improve transparency, operational dashboards, communication rhythms, and shared responsibilities—helping agencies make decisions with clearer insight and fewer surprises.
4. Think Holistically: Implementations and system changes affect more than just IT. This principle helps agencies design service models that account for integrations, manual workarounds, data flows, cybersecurity, business processes, compliance, and long-term maintenance. The holistic view ensures agencies avoid fragmentation and maintain stable, end-to-end service delivery.

Key Takeaways

• A practical framework for governing software and digital services using ITIL v5
• Tools to assess value and align system features, AI capabilities, or vendor proposals with mission needs
• Methods for optimizing operations and introducing automation responsibly
• Visibility and communication practices that strengthen collaboration across teams and programs
• Holistic service modeling techniques that support sustainable operations for systems of all sizes