Seit heute liegt die Studie des ISPRAT Instituts zu einer einheitlichen, behördenübergreifenden Servicerufnummer (115 Bürgertelefon) zum download bereit. Ich bin gespannt auf die Kommentare und das Echo in der Presse.
Aktuell ist auf Faz.net ein Artikel über Public Policy Schools in Deutschland zu finden. Ich habe längere Zeit an der Kennedy School of Government (KSG) verbringen können und bin bis heute begeistert von dem dortigen Umfeld. Auch Erfurt (ESPP) und die Hertie-School konnte ich mir bereits anschauen. Dort ist man auf dem richtigen Weg. An dieser Stelle sei auch auf Speyer verwiesen. Von der deutschen Politik bzw. der Verwaltung aus sollte die Weiterbildung und rege Austausch (an der KSG gibt es diverse Executive Workshops in denen zu aktuellen Themen Verwaltungskräfte und auch teilweise Wirtschaft für 2-3 Tage zusammen kommen) stärker gefördert werden. Für Schulen wie Hertie und ESPP bedeutet eine vermehrte Nachfrage aber auch, eine größere Stückzahl an deutschen bzw. europäischen Fallstudien zu generieren um Attraktiv zu bleiben. Hier könnten Hertie oder ESPP in Zukunft klar gegenüber KSG punkten, da man an der KSG aktuell meist auf Fallstudien aus den USA bzw. dem angelsächsischen Raum zurückgreift.
While CRM has been researched and applied in private enterprises for years, it has only recently gained attention as a concept for government. Concurrent with the emergence of eGovernment and the general tendency of transferring more and more business concepts into the government domain, articles and studies started to address the topic. Many articles on eGovernment briefly address CRM when referring to aspects such as one-stop government or a multi-channel environment directly or indirectly. Besides CRM, authors introduce slightly altered terms like Citizen Relationship Management (CiRM), Constituent Relationship Management (CRM), Public Relationship Management (PRM) or Citizen Encounter and Relationship Management (CERM) to underline its government orientation and application.
Private sector CRM literature is highly fragmented and lacks a common conceptualization (Zablah/Bellenger/Johnston 2004). It is, therefore, somewhat unsurprising to find the same characteristics in its application to government. Truly sarcastic oberserves might say “garbage in, garbage out”. The literature on CiRM currently lacks a common definition, conceptualization and set of goals. I define Citizen Relationship Management (CiRM) as,
a strategy and set of management practices, enabled by technology with a broad citizen focus, to maintain and optimize relationships and encourage new forms of citizen participation.
Most articles on CiRM review private sector CRM, technological aspects (CRM systems) and expected benefits in government. There is a general agreement that many aspects of CRM are not sector-specific. However, they need to be translated into the context of each sector. Customer segmentation can serve administrators to identify those needing help or who are about to do so. Customer retention strategies can be directed at preventing citizen’s from using a service again. Yet, the termination of unprofitable customers, data mining, broadening the service range and thus choice, the issue of externalities or conceptualizing the citizen as customer are believed to be harder to transfer to government.
Another issue is that term CiRM is applied to describe any citizen-focused initiative or interaction. For instance, public service provision through an online portals are presented as successful CiRM projects. Administrators struggle with the lack of knowledge on CRM, in addition to their discomfort with CRM terminology. Public administrations, which claim to engage in CiRM, connect it to single customer service initiatives, online portals, electronic case management, call centers, physical one-stop service centers and CRM software. However, the literature offers little to no insights into organizational, cultural or process related changes in CiRM initiatives in terms of a holistic understanding of CRM.
King (2007) analyzed the results of the British CRM Pathfinder program (2001-02) and the CRM National Programme (2003-04). The majority of CRM projects focussed on adding CRM capabilities to call centers and one-stop shops. Participating municipalities can be in different stages of a proposed CRM development path which do not build upon each other. Therefore, a contact center and multi-channel environment may be realized without the changes towards a customer centric organization. In addition, there was little evidence for citizen analytics (segmentation, needs analysis), organizational changes (bridging departmental silos) or true multi-channel access. Janssen and Wagenaar (2002) found similar results and concluded that Dutch CiRM efforts are in an “embryonic stage”. Along these lines, in their survey of the status quo of CRM in German public administration, Bauer, Grether and Richter (2002) reported that the CRM elements implemented are far from meeting the holistic concept of CRM. Per-sonalization and a closer analysis of commonly used public services are frequent practices, while segmentation or profitability analyses remain untested concepts. Among the biggest barri-ers to exploring CRM, German administrations mention their lack of human resources and time constraints. In the United States, CiRM is mostly connected to 311 non-emergency number call center initiatives and innovations such as the performance management concept CITISTAT.
Based on some of these facts, I strongly recommend making sure to come up with a clear definition and concept of CiRM before communicating it throughout the organization and attempting an implementation.CiRM is more than a contact center and it is also different to eGovernment although both can certainly enrich each other.
Yesterday, our teaching case on aSmallWorld.net was released. It is publicly available on the PNG working paper series site.
The case addresses several issues from the social network and online social networking literature. The case’s objective is to help students understand how existing offline social ties and interpersonal relationships can be transformed into a powerful online social network/online community which is attractive from several perspectives, such as social networking, online advertising, and entrepreneurial activity.
Alexander Schellong and Thomas Langenberg have jointly developed the case in close collaboration with the Program on Networked Governance as well as the support of Erik Wachtmeister, the CEO of aSmallWorld.net, and Louise Wachtmeister, Marketing Director and Co-Founder of aSmallWorld.
Jane Fountain’s book “Building the Virtual State” introduced social science researchers to the technology enactment framework (TEF). This working paper presents further modifications to the revised TEF by Okumura who introduced key actors that influence technology enactment. I propose a fourth actor group, the citizen and further causal relations between existing actors and the organisational setting. The revisions towards a more hybrid TEF between an actor-centric and institutional approach allows overcoming some of the limitations brought up by the framework’s critics such as the absence of socio-technical systems theory.