Northern Ireland urges more councils to join in

Councils across Northern Ireland are being encouraged to join an open-source software movement

Belfast is leading the adoption of open source CRM

The Northern Ireland Department of the Environment has advised the province’s 26 councils to join the Local Authority Customer Relationship Management (LA CRM) partnership, which develops its system collaboratively with councils across the UK under the lead of Belfast City Council.

John Price, modernisation lead in the local government policy division of Northern Ireland’s Department of the Environment, said he had encouraged Northern Irish councils to adopt LA CRM.

County Antrim, the one other council in Northern Ireland that has implemented LA CRM, is being used to promote the software.

“We are showcasing it and encouraging other councils to use it,” said Price. “We suggest it might be a good idea to at least try a pilot of LA CRM.”

The government was attracted by the collaborative ethos embodied in LA CRM, according to Price. “We can build a community with it, and the community keeps building it, developing it and keeping it alive,” he said.

This would allow councils to influence the development of CRM systems to match their needs more closely.

Alan Neilly, who runs LA CRM from Belfast City Council’s IT section, said: “With the comprehensive spending review, a lot of funding for customer relations has dried up. Councils are asking how to continue their CRM strategy and what might be cost effective.”

In the 10 years since LA CRM was implemented at the London Borough of Newham Council, it has gone into 17 councils around the UK, including Barnsley, Leicester, Sheffield and Wolverhampton.