Local authorities were bullied by Whitehall and the Audit Commission to buy CRM (customer relationship management) systems.
Some people think it is important to know that a citizen who is going through a planning application when they call up to report a pot-hole.
Some people think it is important to know who calls up regularly about pot-holes.
Leaving those issues aside, when you study the work that gets put into the CRM system you find most of it is failure demand – progress-chasing, querying letters and forms and so on.