The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has invited bids from councils to take over the £4.25 million Customer Relationship Management National Project.
The search is on for a new owner after the London Borough of Newham turned down the opportunity to remain as lead local authority for the project. Newham was given first refusal on the chance to own and exploit work developed by the CRM National Project, but declined this.
Geoff Connell, the project's director based at the London Borough told eGov monitor that the Council's decision was based on a number of factors.
Foremost, Newham believed it would not be able to give the work the attention it felt was needed. The Council also has enough on its plate already, with the East London borough being one the key locations of the 2012 Olympic Games.
"Having been involved in the project since its outset, we feel we've done our part and certainly helped to spread the word about CRM", he said. "For the next stage, I believe there will be far amount of work to do to get councils really involved in how to exploit CRM."
"I don't think that is a priority for us right now when we have such a lot of work going on elsewhere", said Mr Connell. "At the end of the day, we don't think we'd have the capacity to prioritise it as it would need to be done."
As a fall-back, the ODPM is now extending the offer to other councils, in line with a strategy to enable each of the 22 National Projects to continue beyond 2005.
Local authorities have been asked to register expressions of interest in ownership of the CRM National Project by the deadline of next Monday, 8 August.
In a open letter dated 27 July, Julian Bowrey, Divisional Manager for Local e-Government at the ODPM, said that both individual or joint submissions from councils would be accepted.
Mr Bowrey said: "Short-listed authorities will need to support their expressions of interest with a strategy for long-term sustainability, demonstrating how they propose to sustain the project's products through continued promotion and roll out across the Local Authority community."
Under the announced timetable, potential bidders would meet with ODPM representatives as early as next week.
They would then have to supply their proposal, along with a long-term sustainability strategy, by no later than Thursday, 26 August.
The proposals would be evaluated by 2 September, with ownership awarded, Mr Bowrey said, to the council whose strategy "best satisfies the ODPM's criteria".
The CRM National Project, unlike others in the programme, has not concentrated on producing a specific technical solution for local government.
Instead, its activities have focused more on providing guidance, advice and support to help councils in planning and implementing CRM successfully.
In March 2004, the National Project launched the CRM Academy website, making available a portfolio of 41 products, including standards, toolkits and best practice.
According to ODPM figures, virtually every council in England will have fully implemented CRM within their organisation by the end of 2005.
Newham has not ruled out taking a supporting role in the project if another local authority takes over the work.
A possible contender lined up is understood to be Leeds City Council, which has been heavily involved in the project and championed the cause of CRM in local government.
Quelle: eGov monitor, 01.08.2005
