SUMiT : a national reference for good practice
Within the Digital Education Directorate, SUMiT is described as a shared ITSM service covering both the operation of national information systems and the regional and national support desks. It rests on a single data model, which lets the Ministry rationalise its tooling nationwide, bring consistency from one support desk to the next, and keep a complete audit trail of user requests.
The framework is designed to evolve steadily and without disruption, staying close to what the services using it actually need. The shared operations service runs on iTop, the open source ITSM software, and follows ITIL good practice. By mid-2023, eight regional authorities were using it, two regional groupings – Normandy and Nouvelle-Aquitaine – were about to migrate, and two further authorities were preparing to follow.
One iTop instance per regional authority
“This offering shapes how the regional authorities and the Ministry itself operate,” says Claude Saive. “It contributes to rationalising and standardising our tools at national level.”
In practice, each authority that subscribes gets its own iTop instance, with its own CMDB and its own help desk. “That gives them real efficiency in supporting their users and managing their IT services,” he adds.
The whole estate is backed by a central support team in Rennes, responsible for running and maintaining the iTop instances and for helping the regional authorities get the most out of SUMiT. Other national support services benefit too, among them the rollout of new applications modernising financial administration in schools, and support for parents using the Ministry’s online services.
Why SUMiT runs on iTop
The decision dates back to mid-2017. The National Service Centre was facing runaway costs on its existing commercial ITSM platform. Several regional authorities had already adopted iTop independently and were happy with it.
Beyond being what Claude Saive calls a reasonable investment, iTop meant choosing sovereignty: a French open source tool that can be hosted on premise. “It supports the French economy,” he says.
The deployment philosophy is to stay close to the product. “We develop very few bespoke functions, so that we stay as close as possible to Combodo’s own vision for the tool.” Where iTop has to be adapted to how the regional authorities work, that happens through extensions, which makes version upgrades straightforward.
Flexibility was the other argument. “SUMiT supports different uses at different volumes, which covers a very wide range of cases,” Claude Saive confirms. The same platform runs instances serving anywhere from a few dozen users to more than 200,000.
Governance and ecosystem
SUMiT is built as a community project, with a skills-sharing network running across the regional authorities. “They share good practice and between them cover the full range of needs,” Claude Saive explains.
To deliver it, the National Service Centre assembled a complete ecosystem. Its in-house operations team of five works alongside Mathieu Berthe of Absoloote, a certified iTop expert acting as business analysis consultant, who contributes to major changes and validates that they conform to the framework. Synairgis, an iTop integrator, handles development work. And the Centre holds a support contract directly with Combodo, giving it access to the iTop Professional and Enterprise extensions, maintenance, smoother migrations and direct support when it is needed.
