Sheffield City Council embarks on open source CRM development

Sheffield City Council is leading a project to develop an open-source based CRM solution for the public sector as part of the EU funded Citizens Advanced Relationship Management (CARMEN) project.

CARMEN has been set up to develop an "innovative, knowledge-based multi-media service" based on the private sector approaches to the use of CRMs. Sheffield will partner with Saarbrücken, Prato, the Black Country, among others, to combine CRM expertise and experience to develop a common, open source CRM platform for deployment throughout Europe. Once developed, this new platform will be made available to Public Administrations in a cost-effective and easy-to-use ASP format that can be readily integrated into pre-existing applications.

CARMEN is part of the EU's eEurope 2005 Action Plan for the development of pan-European Government Services. The partners in this project are City of Saarbruecken and Deutsches Forschungszentrum Fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz Gmbh from Germany, Comune di Prato, ANCITEL SpA and Laboratori Guglielmo Marconi SpA from Italy, and Black Country Consortium ltd from the UK.

The Euro 2.5 million initiative will help local council back offices integrate new multi-media channels such as text messaging, call centres and mobile web portals, with traditional methods of contact. The new solution will also offer citizens a personalised means of doing business with their local authority.

Ken Bellamy, Director of e-Government, Sheffield City Council said: "By allowing administrators to deal with the public in a more personalised and integrated manner, CARMEN will help to revolutionize the public sector in much the same way that CRM revolutionised the relationship between businesses and their clients."

CARMEN kicks off with an 18 month Market Validation phase wherein each participating city will pilot a number of services including but not limited to the environment, traffic and mobility, personal services and eDemocracy. These services will be integrated into the CARMEN CRM platform and evaluated with a view to replicating them in one or more cities, and ultimately addressing the viability of the services at the European level.