He forgets the other side of the coin, however: that that user-captured data ends up being self-serving unless there is a good reason for it not to be: the people who run and manage CRM systems tend to run them for their own convenience, not that of the individuals they are purportedly serving. VRM is one way of creating a balance.

The trouble with people who have seen it all before is that they are so convinced that they’ve seen it all before they can’t recognise what’s new, even when it’s right in front of their eyes.

I would go further and say that whatever system is applied if it does not freely allow people to choose to effectively ‘opt out’ then it is little more than a bureaucratic wolf, whether dressed in sheeps clothing or not. In other words a ‘free’ citizen should be able to conduct their affairs and live their day to day life without monitoring by the state (or other agencies), unless their is evidence to suggest illegality (or harm to others), in the conduct of those affairs. It is not the job of the state to rule people’s lives, but simply to defend the nation from violence and criminal attack, to ensure that the weak and vulnerable are properly cared for by the nation as a whole, and to maintain the system of justice to a good standard. Beyond that there is plenty of scope, but as a matter of principle the state should keep its nose right out of the private lives of the people it serves.

When you’ve been in the IT industry as long as I have (and I’m only a mere youngster with just 20 years under my belt) most things labelled “new” have been tried before. Occasionaly the planets line up and previous failures succeed, but rarely.

Some random thoughts…

“The big centralised databases of CRM have their limitations. There’s massive reduplication as every organisation seeking a relationship tries to maintain largely overlapping database records about the same person.”

Well, duh. Much as tat peddlers might like to have a super-centralised database of everyone and everything, the data protection act prevents it.

“At best CRM systems record a slice of history. Amazon’s state of the art CRM might know what you bought from Amazon, but not from Barnes & Noble, nor whether the books reflect your own interests or were a gift, nor how your interests have changed.”

Obviously only “history” can be recorded, but these systems do make a fair stab at predicting your next purchase based on what others with a similar history to you went on to buy. Esteemed persons with eclectic tastes are less predicatble but the money is where the herd is, or rather, where the herd is going to. All Amazon have to do is prevent you going to Barnes & Noble for your next book – nothing more – so I wouldn’t want to use them as a model for what may or may not be possible for Central Government.

“The news coming over the hill is that CRM is about to be turned on its head by a user-driven model of relationship data. In this “vendor-relationship management” (VRM) model the individual maintains the one comprehensive and up to date version of the ‘truth’, selectively sharing what they choose to with their preferred suppliers and partners. It avoids duplication, keeps the facts up to date, and can make marketing demand driven and therefore far more relevant and effective.”

This is the paragraph that really made me snort. There is nothing here that wasn’t touted for CRM systems when they were first being pushed as the great cure-all. I don’t see anything that will make VRM any different.

“A buyer-centric, citizen-centric or VRM approach to public services cannot be a universal answer for many reasons. There will remain a digital divide perhaps for generations. It’s essential that services are seen to be fair and equitable, challenging those who try to play the system, and that the benefits of new ways of doing things should not broaden yet further the gap between the haves and the have-nots.”

The problem with sharing a ‘buyer-centric- system is that different departments have such different requirements that the overall cost is much higher than that of separate systems. Let me try to give you an example. Imagine a system for schools that allows parents to update their own address. That is fine for a school – letters home still go to the parent and the school is saved the admin overhead of maintaining address details. Not so fine for the Local Authority that has an admissions policy based on catchment areas. (I know, not the case now, but it serves as an example). If the prospective parent can easily ‘forge’ their address then the LA is stuck. So what happens is that the LA introduces some sort of extra security/verification/whatever to the address field. The problem with these big shared systems is that almost *every* field has some sort of special case requirement, with the result that the whole system is incredibly complicated. And therefore expensive, hard to change, slow to react etc etc etc.

Unless VRMs have a magic cure for this then they won’t be any better than CRMs or even plain old ‘databases’.

I’m sorry to be so negative but it’s a reality of the world that user-supplied data will be self-serving unless there is no reason for it to be so. In which case there is no reason to supply it. Catch 22.

The best CRM systems – like Amazon’s – work because the data is supplied as a side-effect of a transaction such as buying a book. Government CRM/VRM systems must expect to work the same way if they are expected to work.