The business process improvements are part of an IT transformation project that began in 2005 and is scheduled for completion in 2007.

Delivering the keynote address at the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF) in Sydney yesterday, Transgrid Chief Information Officer (CIO) Tony Meehan said the project's value is in combining best practice frameworks and sound IT planning.

Meehan said before implementing the frameworks to provide a higher level of IT service management, the IT department was unable to get any traction with business.

"You might think the strategy of delivering business performance improvement and reducing ongoing IT costs was pulling us in two different directions; we couldn't have done this when we began our ITIL journey a few years ago," he said.

"A lot of the time we [IT] would start to get traction with the business about value-adding and making a contribution, then the mail would fall over or we would have some sort of problem so we would never really get to a point where we could deliver the sorts of things IT can do for a business. Our service management was not doing the job.