The Central Computer and Telecommunication Agency (CCTA), now called the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), created the ITIL framework in late 1980's. The original need was to improve the quality of IT services provided to the British government. The OGC created ITIL as an approach independent of vendor technology and caters to organisations with differing technical and business needs.

Identifying best practices that worked across the IT service industry developed ITIL version 1. Thus, ITIL is in true sense a representative of industry "best practices".

ITIL version 2 is the current publication by OGC. OGC made significant improvements to the original ITIL publication to reflect the new developments and changes in the IT services industry.

Today, IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) provides a framework of “best practice” guidance for IT Service Management and is the most widely used and accepted approach to IT Service Management in the world.