Governance
New publication from the Office of the Auditor-General (OAG) on annual reporting
Local Government: Improving the usefulness of annual reports is a practically focussed guide to help officials find meaningful measures to include in their annual reports and for elected members wanting to ensure annual reports are accessible to members of the community and paint a picture of council performance that can be understood by most of us.
The paper draws on an analysis of six councils' annual reports over a seven year period, selected on the basis that they are amongst the best annual reports published by the sector. The analysis examins presentation of financial performance, cost effectiveness and the standard and quality of service delivery.
The OAG note that the most recent annual reports show signs of considerable improvement when reporting on non-financial performance measures, one of the more difficult aspects of reporting. The office noted that the better annual reports revealed a shift away from activity type measures towards outcome-based, impact-based and service-based measures which better explain council effectiveness.
Posted 7 October 2011
New publication from the OAG on performance measures
Since reform in 1989 one of the challenges to corporate planners and nearly everyone else who works in local government has been how to define meaningful performance measures to by which to measure the effectiveness of council services. Almost everyone is familiar with the KISS (keep it simple stupid) principle but how do you develop simple and understandable performance measure for the quality of libraries, parks and community services
To throw some light on this question the Office of the Controller and Auditor General has recently published "Local Government: Examples of better practice in setting local authorities' performance measures". The report is based on a study of 15 local authorities selected to achieve a representative sample in terms of size and nature. A range of eight activities were selected, such as roading, water and library services, and performance measures compared.
The Report analyses the different approaches to performance reporting taken in each activity area and highlights examples which are considered to be "better". For example under "Water Supply" a better measure for water quality responsiveness is "the percentage of urgent requests for service responded to within one day (dirty, cloudy, smelly or bad tasting water or not water at all).
The Report is a timely look at current experience in performance reporting and will be of interest to officials working in the area and elected members trying to understand how best to determine the quality and effectiveness of council services. The Report can be downloaded from the OAG website at http://www.oag.govt.nz/
Posted 16 August 2010
Women in Politics - a timely report from Oz
In order to mark 2010 as the year for women in local government the Australian Local Government Association has published a report entitled "Women in Politics", a particularly relevant topic given that this is also election year in New Zealand.
The Year of Women in Local Government was selected as a way to raise awareness of and improve the current gender imbalance in local government and encourage more women to stand as candidates. Roughly 27% of elected members are women in Australia local government (the NZ figure is 29%) and it acknowledges a number of specific campaigns underway throughout the states.
For example the Council for Gender Equality campaign will be auditing councils on the status and participation of women in leadership roles over the next three years; more resources have been allocated to the collection of data and reporting on women in local government and Western Australia has established an Advisory Committee on Women in Local Government.
In addition to information on specific initiatives underway to enhance the participation of women in local government the book is primarily a profile of successful women politicians in local, state and federal government and their stories.
Copies of the report can be downloaded at http://www.alga.asn.au/
Posted 16 August 2010
