E-government targets double CRM systems in local government

Adoption of customer relationship management (CRM) systems in local authorities has almost doubled in the last year because of the impending 2005 e-government targets.

The findings are in the fifth annual 'Index of Application Software' survey of 314 local authorities by local government user body, the Society of IT Management (Socitm), which is due to be published next month.

By 2005 all government services must be available online and councils see CRM as key to this, with CRM systems now used in 54 councils, compared to 30 last year. However this still only represents a quarter of respondents.

The other major finding of the research is that the use of in-house developed software is continuing to decline, although it varies from nine per cent for payroll systems to 31 per cent for social services client software.

Brian Westcott, editor of the report, said in a statement: "The proportion of in-house systems varies considerably between functions, suggesting that externally provided software is better in some areas than in others. With a mature market for local government software these days, we believe that most replacement systems will, in the future, be bought in"

Consolidation among IT vendors is also reflected in the survey. As part of the trend for mergers and rationalisation just 12 suppliers now provide 78 per cent of general ledger systems.