NDL have produced their latest (sixth) report on ‘Integration and CRM Systems’. As one would expect from a commercial organization they require you to register by email with them at info (at) ndl.co.uk in order to receive it but it does reinforce my own academic work and they have managed to cover over 50% of local authorities, getting them to complete it over the ‘phone.
In summary it states:
P.2., talking about eforms and CRM – “our research has shown that both of these technologies have been applied as a veneer, masking continuing areas of inefficiency from public view.”
P.3., discussing NI14 – “very little activity is taking place based on this data, with most authorities still ‘collating’ or ‘analysing’ their data sets.”
P.10., examining integration of back office applications – vast majority have only integrated between one and five applications with their CRM.
P.10., very few have CRM’s transacting directly with back office.
P.11., over half of authorities are only partly complying with NI14.
P.13., “we draw the conclusion that many of the smaller District councils see middleware as an expensive and largely non-essential overhead that is impossible to justify.” Which I quite agree with!
P.14., with regard to Government Connect – 46% are firmly convinced that it will never shown any value!
As to the last (Government Connect), from this IT Manager’s perspective, using it continues to be a slow and agonising process, as technical issues still arise, although some process improvements in Benefits are showing. However, there are still a limited number of government departments playing the game, although they’ve been told to exploit it. If they all got on board more quickly it would really demonstrate some value!
The Great E-mancipator 
“we draw the conclusion that many of the smaller District councils see middleware as an expensive and largely non-essential overhead that is impossible to justify.”
They could try http://wso2.org/ which wont cost them a cent and will do what they need. Still need to find skilled people, which is the real issue.
I should hope so if they’ve already paid through the nose for Lagan… and as to skilled people that’s the reason why, along with the middleware and CRM it’s so expensive!