As we begin the final day of CRM Evolution 2009 here at the New York Marriott Marquis in Times Square, we’ve heard a lot about the changing customer. Namely, how businesses will have to start playing on the consumers’ terms rather than the other way around. A large part of that, according to virtually any keynote or session here, will have to do with embracing Web 2.0 tools and social media.

This also means the government — at all levels. In my March feature on government and CRM, one source explained that we could expect to see great movement in Web 2.0 due to — at that time — newly elected President Barack Obama’s call for transparency.

While some time has passed since I wrote that piece, it seems that government agencies are getting the message loud and clear. On the first day, Brian Komar, director of strategic outreach for the Center for American Progress (CAP), talked about his work with Salesforce.com and Eloqua to bring structure, analytics, and a clear view into his business in order to further its mission of striving to improve the lives of Americans. He explained that as CRM continues to evolve, we will begin to see the line blur between non-profit and for-profit organizations.

He had three key takeaways:

1. We may be a non-profit but we are not that different from you, as both public and private sector organizations are generally concerned with products and customers.
2. We are a non profit, and we are a little different from you with regard to what success looks like. He noted the business community is usually about maximizing profits, but for CAP, it can be about exerting influence, and metrics aren’t quite as clear.
3. As CRM becomes more social in nature, non-profits and businesses have more to learn from one another. Komar said the business community is good at maximizing return on investment, while non-profits are good at building communities and soliciting volunteers.

Building upon the work non-profits are doing, yesterday’s session, “Web 2.0 Tools in Federal and State Governments Drive Participation, Transparency, and Citizen Empowerment,” looked even further at just how far government entities have come — and will go.

Casey Coleman, chief information officer of the General Services Administration (GSA) talked about the revolution, not evolution, of how government is interacting with citizens. “This isn’t your father’s federal government … it’s changing,” she said. “The bottom line is government serves the public better when it makes decisions based on citizen input. Everything we do must enable citizens to be part of the process, and Web 2.0 helps us to make that happen.”

She noted the GSA’s use of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, and other burgeoning social media sites as evidence that the government is continuing to go to where the people are increasingly flocking in order to provide them the information they need in the form in which they prefer. “Government has a lot to offer,” she said. “The public is hungry for information, and they want to participate and be involved in the dialogue.”

Robert Greenberg, chief executive officer of G&H International Services, gave attendees a sneak peek into what social CRM can — and is starting to –  deliver for the public sector, namely in homeland security. “There’s a significant challenge in homeland security because of who the stakeholders are and how they’re organized,” he said. “The first thing to understand is that everything starts on the local level before moving to state and federal. It’s also an incredibly fragmented community, as there are approximately 55,000 different agencies in terms of police, fire, and emergency medical.”

Combine all of these different audiences with billions of dollars spent in local infrastructure that cannot be ripped and replaced as well as incredibly difficult to get to connect and integrate with one another — and there is a real problem. No one wants another Hurricane Katrina. “The lack of seamless information sharing is what made Katrina that much worse,” he recalled. “In reality, all states that wanted to help out had no easy way of doing so.”

There is hope though, as Greenberg pointed to two projects of government being used as a platform: Virtual Alabama and VIPER.

“At the end of the day, homeland security is about having a capability so when you are under stress from a political, social, or economic standpoint, you can bounce back as rapidly as possible,” Greenberg said. “The key is making information actionable. Without that, what are you going to do?”

It can be argued that is the same problem facing private sector businesses today. Connecting with customers (or citizens) and being able to take the information culled from them and make it actionable, both for the business and for consumers themselves. Are you finding a change in how you can access information from government, regardless of municipality? Do you think that federal government can even be overhauled in these terms, or is it too big to change?