Commonwealth Local Government Forum

Local government service delivery

Equitable and efficient service delivery is at the heart of local government’s mandate. The resources in this section focus on the management and delivery of key strategic, corporate and technical services, ranging from those for which local government has direct responsibility, to shared service provision, and services for which local government is a partner.

Sub-topics:

  • Climate change management and adaption
  • Environmental management
  • Social services
  • Spatial/development planning
  • Strategic planning
  • Waste management and sanitation
  • Water and utilities
  • Partnerships for service delivery
  • Housing
  • Infrastructure

Featured

Assessing the institutional capacity of external agencies in holding local government accountable in Uganda

The Government of Uganda established external agencies as part of the control mechanisms aimed at promoting accountability in the public sector in general and local governments (LGs) in particular. The two cardinal control agencies include the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) and the Inspectorate of Government (IG), who are mandated to enhance public service through efficient and effective resource management, ensuring adherence to standards and regulations, and promoting responsiveness to community needs. In spite of these institutional controls, a surge of unbearable events involving abuse of authority and misuse of public resources still exists, suggesting significant managerial and capacity handicaps, not only in the internal mechanisms of LGs, but also in the external control agencies. This paper presents findings of a study conducted to evaluate the institutional capacity of the OAG and the IG in the enhancement of accountability in local governments (LGs) in Uganda. The findings demonstrate deficiencies in institutional capacity across the spectrum of financial, human and material resources, as well as the enabling legislation and lack stakeholder support. The scenario is a recipe for encouraging public malfeasance. The paper makes a strong case for strengthening institutional capacity, through improvements in planning, resource facilitation and collaborative relations among the key stakeholders. It is argued that the establishment of a special anti-corruption court could help reduce the delays and provide appropriate corrective measures in support of accountability.

Author: Umar Kakumba Publisher: University of Technology Sydney Press Publication year: 2012


Review of the commonwealth local government good practice scheme

The final (third) phase of the Commonwealth Local Government three year capacity building programme, the Good Practice Scheme, funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) came to an end in late 2011. The programme partnered councils and local government associations from six targeted Commonwealth countries - Jamaica, India, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Pakistan and Ghana - with their counterparts in South Africa, India and the UK with the objective to exchange good practice and generate innovative solutions to challenges faced by local governments. A total of 34 projects were active during the Scheme’s lifetime and contributed successfully to having a positive impact on the ground for local communities. The dissemination of the project activities through national workshops in partnership with national local government associations meant that the successes and lessons were shared with local governments throughout the countries concerned. A new focus of the third phase of the GPS was to promote south-south partnerships: six of these partnerships were set up, three of them being tripartite, two having a northern hemisphere partner, with the remainder, both dual and tripartite, being south-south. Despite partners’ diverse cultural, socio-economic circumstances and administrative practices, this methodology of technical support and exchange of ideas allows partners to share and compare their challenges and reflect on own approaches. The south-south partners, with varying cultural beliefs, learnt that cultural practices should not be ignored in advancing new initiatives: traditional norms and practices are a way of life for the majority of communities especially those in the agricultural, small scale farming sector.

Author: Rachael Duchnowski Publisher: University of Technology Sydney Press Publication year: 2012


Leading communities: community-led development in England’s small towns: the market towns initiative

The Market Towns Initiative (MTI), a UK community-led development programme, operated throughout rural England from 2000 until 2005/6. It was designed to help local people, with professional support, identify – and then capitalize on – the economic, environmental and social strengths and weaknesses of small country towns. This paper explains the origins and ways of working of the MTI. Examples of the topics explored and participants’ views are given, and conclusions drawn. The opportunity is also taken to explain how interest in the roles of England’s small country towns grew in the years following the Second World War, and how this led to the development of the MTI. Evidence suggests that the programme worked well. It demonstrated that local people have the enthusiasm, skills and knowledge to take a lead in the development of the places in which they live; something which, until local government reforms changed roles and structures, was largely taken for granted.

Author: Gordon Morris Publisher: University of Technology Sydney Press Publication year: 2012


Driving up standards: civil service management and decentralization: case study of Uganda

There is a consensus that decentralization by devolution leads to improved service delivery, but debate on the appropriate type of personnel arrangements for delivering decentralized services is far from over. Put differently, the discourse on whether civil service management should be decentralized or devolved still rages on. Little wonder that countries which started off with decentralized civil service management models in the 1990s are currently centralizing some aspects of personnel management while others are having centralized and decentralized personnel arrangements operating side by side in sub-national governments. The paper argues that civil service management should be decentralized whenever a country chooses the path of decentralization by devolution. Using Uganda’s example, the paper highlights two major challenges of managing the civil service under separate personnel arrangements: civil service appointments devoid of merit, and the perennial failure to attract and retain qualified human resource. The paper presents proposals on how to ensure meritocracy in appointments and how to bolster attraction and retention of human capital in local governments.

Author: Lazarus Nabaho Publisher: University of Technology Sydney Press Publication year: 2012


Municipal local economic development and the multiplier effect: piloting a community enterprise identification method in South Africa and Namibia

Local Economic Development (LED) is a contested concept in southern Africa, and has become synonymous with delivery of generic job-creation projects, often grant-dependent and unsustainable. Municipal LED has followed this pattern in South Africa since 1994, with little lasting success. Each local economy is unique, and has its own problems and opportunities. The ’Plugging the Leaks’ method recognizes that communities themselves know best how money enters and exits their area. By asking people to analyse their local economy as a 'leaky bucket', the method puts control back in the hands of local people, rather than external experts, and allows them to analyse their own local economy to identify gaps and opportunities for enterprise. By better networking and working collectively to improve their local economy, local communities are able to re-circulate cash internally. This circulation of cash is explained as the local multiplier effect in the workshops. A pilot process of running ‘Plugging the Leaks’ workshops in low income communities in South Africa and Namibia revealed that spending choices in these communities are severely limited in a context where there is no effective welfare state. Therefore, empowerment with this method came from the discovery of collective action and networking, rather than from individual spending choices. Local start-up business tends to be limited to survivalist and copy-cat one-person ventures, and are a last resort when formal employment is absent. In this context collective enterprise offers the necessary empowerment for people to attempt financially sustainable ventures that respond to a gap in the local economy. The pilot project is attempting to show that municipal LED staff can play the role of facilitator for initiating the enterprise-identification process and further mobilise state enterprise support agencies around the locus of LED, without crossing the line between facilitation and implementation of ’projects’.

Author: Lucienne Heideman Publisher: University of Technology Sydney Press Publication year: 2011


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