In public administrations citizens are starting to be seen, as in the private sector, as “customers”. Despite adopting this terminology the private sector method of valuing and responding to its customer needs/demands has not yet been adopted. A decisive change in the way of approaching customer care is needed, so that public administrations do not only react to a customers request but can also act in anticipation by actively approaching the customer through the use of new technologies.  This approach is only possible if public administrations adopt a Customer Relations Model (CRM) strategy, supported by appropriate applications.  The CARMEN project aims to aims to adapt the private sector’s use of CRM technology to create an innovative, knowledge-based multi-media service for the public sector.  This will allow citizens to receive quality services from their public administration no matter where they are in the world.

The objectives are:

1) To increase customers satisfaction, buy-in and loyalty to city services

2) To provide innovative and enhanced services to citizens

3) To generate new two way communication between citizens and public administrations

4) To provide a solution without the public administration investing a lot of expenditure

5) To ensure citizen services are accessible and easy to use

6) To provide value for money and trim down public administrations internal processes 

7) To increase the attractiveness of areas as good places to live and work

8)To encourage economic sponsorship of new and existing businesses

Thus, CARMEN will start with a Market Validation phase (18 months), where each participating city will pilot a number of services, selected among their existing applications. These services will be integrated into the CARMEN CRM platform and evaluated with a view to replicating them in one or more other cities. Such analysis will be extended so as to address the viability of the services at the European level.

1) Validate a CRM platform, made by existing modules developed in open-source;
2) Make the CRM platform available to the 4 participating Public Administrations also in ASP (Application    Service Provider) mode, to avoid huge investments;
3) Integrate the platform with an initial selection of existing applications, in order to provide CRM services to citizens, enterprises, and organisations;
4) Pilot these CRM services in the cities and evaluate the results, iteratively processing the feedback from users in order to enhance and detail the services;
5) Activate the cross-fertilization among the partners through the exchange of good practices and the duplication of the services in one or more cities in order to verify the validity of the platform and the services at a European level;
6) Disseminate the results and the knowledge of CARMEN not only within the participating countries but also on a European scale, through the collaboration of stakeholder networks; the goal being not only to improve awareness, but also to encourage the PA’s across Europe to share the CARMEN experience and to use it as a model.

To understand more about the CARMEN projects objectives please contact the project team through the 'Contact Us' section of the website.