How can it be that people who should have the most fulfilling jobs in the world are generally far less engaged and productive than those we encounter in the private sector? The root causes, we believe, are organizational cultures that are strangled by rules. Myriad rules define the public-sector workplace—rules spelling out procedural red tape, layers of decision making, regulatory compliance, and employee safeguards. These rules are put in place for the best of reasons, such as to ensure fair hiring practices and prevent corruption, favoritism, and the influence of special interests. But as rules proliferate, they often congeal into inefficient, costly bureaucracies that slow decision making, stifle initiative, discourage cooperation, and frustrate employees.

This document is the result of the discussions held during the 2016 Uraía Workshop which took place in Nicosia, Cyprus on April 19 and 20th, 2016. It is a working paper made in collaboration with the participants who attended the workshop including representatives of local governments, city networks, service and technology providers, civil society, international organizations and research institutes from all around the world. It gathers general recommendations on the use of SMART technologies to improve municipal finances and it is based on the participants’ experiences.

All activities of local government in South Africa are tightly regulated. There are numerous Acts governing how municipalities need to run operations. Municipalities are challenged by not having effective and efficient systems, tools, and processes to support managing their operations. This ultimately impacts on their ability to being able to effectively and timeously monitor their performance against their annual plans. However, the Sedibeng District Municipality was on a manual system that had a negative impact on its effectiveness and productivity. Sedibeng therefore needed to implement a performance management system that would comply with South African legislative requirements. The municipality went on an open tender and awarded the project to Microsoft partner Vision Activ that specialises in performance management solutions for both the corporate and public sectors.

This resource guide provides practical guidance for designing, implementing and evaluating decentralisation reforms and local government practices to ensure they are as effective as possible. It also synthesises and presents current debates on the impact of decentralisation and local government on poverty reduction, service delivery and conflict as well as providing links to cutting-edge research and recent case studies.

August 2007 saw the release of 'Funding Local Government', the report of the Local Government Rates Inquiry (available at www.ratesinquiry.govt.nz). New Zealand local government has one of the world's most flexible rating (property tax) systems. Councils may choose between capital value, land value or annual (rental) value. Rates may be levied primarily as an ad valorem charge but councils may also use a variety of fixed charges. In addition they may levy a targeted rate or rates, which may be either a fixed amount or ad valorem, charged on a single property or category of properties to recover the cost of a specific service or services. Councils also have the power, in consultation with their communities, to adopt highly flexible postponement policies allowing people to defer, indefinitely, payment of rates. (Normally when this is done, councils take a first charge on the property and recover interest at their marginal cost of borrowing.)