PITTSBURGH-Carnegie Mellon University's IT Services Qualification Center (ITsqc) has authorized Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL) to evaluate organizations that are adopting the university's eSourcing Capability Model for Service Providers (eSCM-SP). UL is joining a select group that the Carnegie Mellon center is establishing to ensure that there are highly qualified professional teams conducting evaluations that may lead to certification of service providers.

Carnegie Mellon established the ITsqc to create capability models and qualification methods to improve sourcing relationships for global IT-enabled sourcing transactions. Leading international corporate, government and academic entities have joined ITsqc researchers in the development of the Capability Models.
The eSCM-SP includes 84 best practices that the ITsqc has identified as being associated with successful sourcing relationships. It is expected that the model will be adopted both by service providers to assess and improve their current capabilities and by client organizations to understand the capabilities of prospective and current service providers. The model has already been adopted by industry leaders across the globe, including members of Carnegie Mellon's ITsqc Research Consortium.

ITsqc Associate Director Bill Hefley worked to bring UL into the ITsqc as an Authorized Organization (AO). He said, "It is essential that organizations like UL become qualified and are available to work with service providers, as well as clients, to assess their eSCM performance." He also noted that, as soon as the eSCM for Client Organizations is released, there will be a need for UL to assist client organizations with external evaluations of their capabilities related to best practices in sourcing management.

"We are excited to have UL professionals working with us to assess service providers," said ITsqc Director Jane Siegel. "We value the reputation and expertise that UL brings as a leading evaluation and certification entity renowned for its integrity and setting of industry standards. UL has been a leading conformity assessment body for more than 100 years and has conducted management system evaluations for more than 20 years. We expect that their involvement will reinforce the Code of Professional Practice that the ITsqc uses to ensure objectivity and rigor in examining service providers' performance." Siegel pointed out that with the eSCM the ITsqc has the only program focused on the entire sourcing lifecycle that certifies the capability of service providers, as well as clients, who wish to measure their sourcing effectiveness.

August Schaefer, UL's senior vice president of Global Services & Administration, said, "Enabling organizations to achieve this certification fits in very neatly with UL's ongoing role as a high integrity audit body providing services that help facilitate global trade."

Underwriters Laboratories Inc. is an independent, not-for-profit conformity assessment organization that has been testing products and writing safety standards for more than 110 years. UL tests more than 18,000 types of products annually, and more then 19 billion UL Marks appear on products each year. Staffed by highly experienced and industry specialized assessors, UL's Management Systems Registration Service is synonymous with integrity and reliability the world over. UL's family of companies and its network of service providers include 60 laboratory, testing and certification facilities. See www.ul.com for more information.

For more information on Carnegie Mellon's Information Technology Services Qualification Center (ITsqc), see: http://itsqc.cs.cmu.edu. Carnegie Mellon is a private research university with a distinctive mix of programs in computer science, robotics, engineering, the sciences, business, public policy, fine arts and the humanities. Carnegie Mellon has contributed to development and use of other successful quality standards, such as CMMI, SW-CMM and People CMM?. For more information, visit www.cmu.edu.

Capability Maturity Model, Carnegie Mellon, CMM and CMMI are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by Carnegie Mellon University.