The federal Attorney-General's Department is seeking information to assist with the procurement of a new CRM application to support its diverse contact requirements.

According to Greg Potter, director of ICT business and project management, the department intends to consider commercial, off-the-shelf CRM software that does not require customization as an enterprise solution for its CRM needs.

"The department has diverse functions and needs with differing definitions of 'customer', and therefore versatility is important," Potter said. "Some functional areas regard customers as individuals, while other functional areas deal at the enterprise, governmental agency or not-for-profit organizational level."

The ability to enable or disable features of the CRM application is important to the department as "the needs of different functional areas will need to be taken into account".

The Attorney-General's Department develops and maintains Australia's system of law and justice, and national security and emergency management systems.

This new CRM project follows two years of aggressive software cost reduction at the department spearheaded by CIO Graham Fry.

The department is divided into five groups, including civil justice and legal services, national security and criminal justice, information and knowledge services, corporate services, and financial services.

The request for information closes January 8, 2008 and a decision to take further action will be made in February 2008.