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.

This study presents the main organisational and financial indicators related to subnational governments in 101 federal and unitary countries worldwide. It provides, through country profiles and a synthesis analysis, qualitative information on subnational government structure and responsibilities, as well as macro financial data assessing subnational government spending, investment, revenue and debt. Financial indicators of the country profiles are accompanied by short comments on the structure of expenditure and investment (by type and economic function), revenue (tax, grants, user fees and property income, etc.) and the main characteristics of the debt and fiscal rules.

Democratic decentralisation through ‘conventional’ institutions of local government is facing increasing challenges, whether from financial pressures, questions of representativeness, difficult central-local relations and from a perhaps growing belief that local government has failed to realise its potential and there may be better ways of achieving societal goals. It is clear there is need to contemplate quite radical change to ensure local government becomes or remains ‘fit for purpose’. This collection of papers illustrates the way in which the role of local government is evolving in different parts of the Commonwealth and provides practical examples of new local government at work. It showcases emerging practice, and highlights success stories from new ways of working and challenges confronting local government in both developed and developing countries. New Century Local Government makes a very valuable contribution to helping understand the changing role of local government, and will ensure that practitioners are up-to-date with the most innovative initiatives in local government planning and administration.

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.