Taking on Goliath (Terrorism), CRM.GOV in Action

Dears,

CRM pundits predict the biggest growth area in CRM over the next three years will be in the public sector, especially within state and local governments. The good news is not only this going to enhance Citizen Relationship but also to contain terrorism, the Goliath of new era.

Organizations that use CRM have long been raising the bar of customers' service expectations in the private sector. Those expectations are now crossing over into the public sector. Government agencies are feeling the same pressures as their corporate cousins--both financially and from customers. Recognizing the necessity and opportunities presented by those challenges, government agencies are embracing CRM to conquer them. we expects the government sector to spend at least $3 billion on CRM software over the next three years, and at least $3 billion on CRM services over the same period. This is the number one growth sector in the CRM industry today..

Currently, the three most common areas for governments' CRM investments are emergency call initiatives (phone calls to a toll free government number) case management, and getting accurate Citizen record for multiple purpose the most critical one is counter measure against terrorism.

The U.S. GOVERNMENT has now realized what corporate America has know for years: Data is king. As a result, data management companies are now using their data cleansing technology to help the U.S. government hunt down suspected terrorists in a massive effort to avoid another large-scale attack. Simply put, having the most current and accurate data on an individual could save lives by preventing a terrorist from carrying out any plans of destruction. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon Government agencies in US insisted there must be a way to track known terrorists through the use of the airlines' customer databases. There was a pattern with the terrorists. And where there's a pattern that could be detected and fixed.

This resulted in the quick release Vality's Veri-Quest, which matches the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list of wanted terrorists and criminals to transactional and other customer records to pinpoint and track possible suspects. Veri-Quest searches companies and organizations' databases for known terrorists and criminals from the OFAC list. The application works in batch and real time, and helps companies and charitable organizations to comply with the OFAC requirements for reporting and blocking suspects' transactions.

The OFAC list is a list of known terrorists and drug dealers that are suspected of providing funds. It's the black list. If you are a bank, the government wants you to process your existing customer list against the OFAC list. Banks need to do this to spot terrorist activity and freeze accounts. If they do not run the data matching technology against the OFAC list regularly, he says, they can be fined up to $250,000.

Due to a heightened sense of security, the OFAC list went from being updated on a monthly basis to a weekly basis. Thanks to Vality, more organizations, such as universities, are required to check their databases against the OFAC list as well. Specifically, universities are being asked to compare their lists of foreign exchange students against the OFAC list to make sure known terrorists are not infiltrating U.S. schools.

The process of comparing databases against the OFAC list is done using Vality's probabilistic matching technique. So accurate is this process it is "justifiable and can be upheld in a court of law.

Vality is not the only data management vendor trying to work with the U.S. government. Experian, California based provider of credit reports and related services, maintains it can also help fight terrorists by combining its credit reports information with its recent data matching and cleansing technology. As a powerhouse in the credit services industry and owner of one of the largest consumer databases in the U.S., Experian can track the movement of money perhaps better than any company in America. Once the money is linked to terrorists the government can freeze the account, making it impossible for anyone to withdraw money from it.

Taking it to Rest of the World

Things we discussed are in US and today Terrorism is omnipresent and every part of the world is seeking the solution to counter measure the goliath’s effect. Today when we look at wiki leaks disclosures we feel ashamed of the disgruntled politics and no universal effort to win against terrorism. Given this scenario every country should plan for his own shield and CRM can help the government agencies to a great extent provide they have the vision and might to do the Citizen Management Programs. The provision of National ID and enablement of variety of Data quality measures would be great value add to our current defense infrastructure.

My dear Diplomats, It’s time to get into action.

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