Customer Relationship Management Adoption in Local Governments in the United States

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is part of the use of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to transform government. This chapter examines the common characteristics of the New Public Management (NPM) and e-government models applying them to CRM adoption in local governments in the United States. Both of these models are commonly cited in the public administration literature as drivers of organizational reform and change. Some of the common characteristics of the NPM and e-government are examined with data from a survey of local government chief administrators. The results of this chapter indicated that more of the characteristics identified in the e-government literature were exemplified in CRM adoption in local governments. In addition, local governments that used more advanced CRM technology were more likely to report organizational changes from these models. The implications of these findings are that researchers should understand both the NPM and e-government principles as important for understanding organizational change.

The Didactic Approach to Manage Strategic Inconsistencies in ERP

This chapter addresses the fundamental question of how the didactic approach can help in managing the impediments and fallouts in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of ERP especially for the societal progress. Further the role of e-initiative is inbuilt in its advocacy for effective delivery. The building blocks of any institution are individuals who must have training in ethics and morality. This is a normative and idealistic analysis but predestined due to continually changing socio-economic dynamics of complex society in modern times. It proposes ERP III with moral epicentre assuming that humanity can be attained if individuals are trained in the moralistic values which eventually redefine the entrepreneurial goals such that it adopts befitting approach in pursuing the specific targets. It includes three sub-areas first focusing on conceptual prologue of ERP, introductory note about didactic approach to see how it directly affects the existing schemes of individuals in the organization; second the major strategic inconsistencies along with finding out the reasons for these irregular variations; and third deals with the e-solutions managing these inconsistencies by designing and planning for institutions in a prudent manner. Precisely, this chapter highlights concept, strategic paradoxes, rebuilding through didactic approach by e-initiative and prognostic strategy for ERP III.

Information Security Threats in ERP Enabled E-Governance

E-governance offers different e-Services to its citizens so that they can interact with the government in a more effective way. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), when implemented in the e-governance domain, combines all the government functions together into one single integrated system with a central database. This system serves the information needs of all the departments across geographies, while allowing them to communicate with each other. For this it is necessary to understand that government has become more dependent on modern technologies that have the potential to create seamless, responsive, and citizen-centric government for the benefit of all. At the same time, it has become increasingly vulnerable to a range of risks, from interruption of operations that are based on computers to loss of confidential data. Government agencies at all levels (national, provincial, and local) must protect the computer systems that they own and operate. Information security requires a combination of business, management, and technical measures in an on-going process. Security is costly, but like privacy, it should be addressed in the design phase and periodically reviewed. This chapter contributes to the ERP enabled e-governance literature for understanding threats and risks, clarification and investigation of the techniques in mitigating these challenges and issues involved in improving e-governance security. The interest generated by the ERP phenomenon in the public sector, and the peculiarities of this sector make specific studies of ERP in government organizations necessary. This is an issue which has not yet been widely addressed in the open literature.

Architecture for ERP System Integration with Heterogeneous E-Government Modules

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems consist normally of ERP modules managing sale, production and procurement in private businesses. ERP systems may also have modules for special lines of business or modules for the different sectors of E-Government. However, the ERP systems of today use a common database and therefore, it is normally only possible to use modules supported by the ERP supplier. This limits the possibilities for special lines of business like the different sectors of E-Government. It is normally not possible to use the traditional ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability) properties across heterogeneous ERP modules and therefore, it is not possible to integrate such modules without inconsistency and anomaly problems. That is, the users cannot trust the data they are reading and even worse they can undermine the validity of the databases if they update the databases by using such invalid information. However, it is possible to use so called relaxed ACID properties. That is, it should, from a user point of view, look as if the traditional ACID properties were implemented, and therefore, the users can trust the data they are reading and cannot do anything wrong by using this data.

E-Government Management Practice

E-government agencies in developed and developing countries are anticipating efficiency and effectiveness gains from the evolution of new e-business models. Such agencies are attempting to adopt and adapt the new technologies to public e-business in order to achieve the benefits being realised by entities in the private sector. The adoption of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is one of these e-business models. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the adoption of ERP by the Australian Department of Defence through longitudinal action research. This development may be of interest to other public sectors wishing to avoid unnecessary expense and achieve an efficient and effective outcome in minimum time.

E-Government Citizen Centric Framework at District Level in India

This chapter evaluates service quality, and suggests E-Government Citizen Centric Framework for Citizen Service Centers (CSC) of Haryana State in India. Citizen Centric framework is suggested by using responses collected from 300 users of five (5) E-Government citizen service centers. This framework can be used in other similar E-Government citizen service centers to evaluate service quality.

ERP Implementation Model, Research Findings, and its Applications to Government

An ERP implementation model is developed with the help of a review of relevant literature. This implementation model has four phases: preparation and training, transition, performance and usefulness, and maintenance. Research findings from our study provide empirical support for the ERP implementation model. For the purpose of this chapter, we use content analysis of the structured interviews to come up with solutions and recommendations for ERP implementation in government. We finally present the conclusion and future directions.

Government Process Reengineering

Despite differences between public and private sectors, business process reengineering (BPR) principles have been widely used in reengineering government processes. This has led to a growing body of literature on government process reengineering (GPR). This chapter presents synthesis and analysis of the literature on government process reengineering from 1997 to 2009. It reviews normative studies that examine the nature and characteristics of government process reengineering, challenges and problems of undertaking government process reengineering, and relationships between government process reengineering and IT-especially enterprise resource planning (ERP)-based E-Government. The review also encompasses the methods, techniques and tools for undertaking GPR; analytical and conceptual GPR models and frameworks; and empirical studies that evaluate GPR implementation outcomes and identify the critical success or failure factors. The chapter summarizes the selected articles in terms of research types, methods, theories, and contexts. Based on the review, areas for future research are defined.

Evaluating Web Sites of Municipal Corporations

While evaluation of government websites has been a matter of interest for researchers, the perspectives and parameters of such evaluation used in these have been diverse. It is primarily because the evaluated web sites had different objectives and only a general matrix could be used for their assessment. Fortunately, web sites of Municipal Corporations have a unique advantage in this respect. The kind of information needs and citizen services required in different cities do not differ significantly in most cases. In this chapter, an attempt has been made to evaluate municipal websites of twenty major cities in India. It also examines the relationship between the income levels of the city and the quality of municipal website. While the glaring differences were observed among municipal web sites of different cities, no significant relationship could be established between the quality of municipal websites and income levels in the city.

E-Governance at the Grass Roots

Ever growing and evolutionary technologies of the Internet have lured nations in utilizing information and communication technologies to upgrade the livelihood of their citizens. Governments of most countries have initiated multi-faceted programs and initiatives to provide enhanced services through means and methods that are being facilitated by the Internet. However, forms and norms of services have taken shapes and domains depending on the ground context, expansion and maturity of ICTs in their countries and communities. This chapter will explore situations of electronic forms of the government, which it argues is a pre-requisite for good governance and thus enable governments to reach the people at large. Particularly, the chapter will review the emancipation of ICTs in eight countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). It investigates some basic parameters of ICTs retrieving archived data from various institutions and organizations. Later on, the chapter tries to generalize the situation in terms of recommendations.