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Moving from excellence models of local service delivery

to benchmarking good local governance
Tony Bovaird and Elke Lffler
Introduction
The past decade has seen a major set of initiatives throughout the world to reform
and modernize local government. Although there are specific national patterns of
local government reforms, there has been a strong international trend towards
the improvement of local service delivery both in terms of the performance
standards set and the mechanisms for planning and implementing service
improvements.
One important instrument of local government reforms has been benchmarking. Compared to the realm of national public administration, benchmarking
at the local level is methodologically relatively easy and not as politically contentious. Local services are usually benchmarked against some generic excellence model or compared to the service provision of similar local authorities.
However, most of the benchmarking criteria, models and methods which are
currently available and which are being used to assess local service delivery no
longer suit the needs of localities. Good local management implies high performance not only in managing local services so that they satisfy customers and
taxpayers but also in enabling local communities to solve their own problems
and to create better futures for their stakeholders. The article suggests that
local government reforms need to go beyond the improvement of local service
delivery. Calling upon the international experience of innovation in local governance, the article distils a series of benchmarking criteria which might be applied
to define and identify good local governance.
The article starts by giving an overview of the drivers for local government
reforms in OECD countries since the 1980s. It then explores recent trends in local
government and community reforms in the UK and Germany. In the following
section, the authors analyse whether the current benchmarking methods and
criteria set within conventional models of excellence in local government still
meet the current needs of local communities. We argue that the conventional
Tony Bovaird is Professor of Strategy and Public Services Management, Bristol Business
School, University of the West of England, UK. Elke Lffler is Senior Research Associate,
Bristol Business School, University of The West of England, UK.
CDU: 352(100)
International Review of Administrative Sciences [00208523(200203)68:1]
Copyright 2002 IIAS. SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New
Delhi), Vol. 68 (2002), 924; 022635

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local management models need to be widened to include local governance

aspects. The article identifies criteria for a new local governance model that
takes into account the needs of local communities in the 21st century. Finally, the
authors consider some possible uses of and limits to the proposed approach.
Research methodology
This article draws from recent experience of OECD countries in local government reforms with particular reference to the UK and Germany. Two principal
research studies form the evidence base for this article: one was a study commissioned by the Audit Commission on the lessons for UK local government
suggested by international best practice and innovation in service planning
(Bovaird, 1998; Audit Commission, 1999). This research allowed us to distil
latest trends in reforms at local levels. The other study was an international comparative study on the criteria used to assess organizational performance in the
public sector in OECD countries which was carried out at the Research Institute
for Public Administration in Speyer (Lffler, 1996). This latter study was updated
in 2000, showing that most of the previously identified performance assessment
tools and models continued to be important (Lffler, 2001).
The analysis of the two studies yielded interesting insights. It became evident
that current benchmarking criteria do not reflect recent trends in local government reforms and thus no longer give good guidance to practitioners on what constitutes good governance. Furthermore, it is clear that any proposed benchmarking criteria for local governance cannot yet based be on a fully fledged theory of
governance. Indeed, it is too early to speak of a theory of governance, even
though some bodies of theory relating to aspects of governance already exist
(Pierre and Peters, 2000: 28ff). Nevertheless, as empirical research shows, local
governance already exists in the real world and what practitioners need is not
so much a theory, based on the elaboration of purely abstract notions of local
governance, but rather some guidelines to assess whether they are going in the
right direction. This article tries to address this need by considering and structuring relevant knowledge, grounded in practical experience, to provide a clear
operational framework for the benchmarking of local governance.
Challenges for local communities at the beginning of the 21st century
In the early 1980s, budget deficits were a major motive for local government
reforms regardless of whether they were imposed by national government or
initiated by local authorities themselves. Municipalities often suffered from
severe financial pressures due to unstable tax incomes and rising demands for
municipal services. Sometimes higher levels of government attempted to export
fiscal stress to the local level, increasing the financial pressure on local government to do more for less (Bovaird et al., 1996). However, since that time, many
local authorities have achieved more favourable budget positions. While local
services still need to be managed in an economic and efficient way, the financial
driver for managerial reforms has become weaker.

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However, other external challenges have emerged to drive reforms at the local
level, typically in a different direction to the managerial reforms in the 1980s and
1990s. Thus local communities face a number of new challenges at the beginning
of the 21st century:
political pressure from unresolved wicked problems such as crime and
vandalism, economic deprivation, the low quality of life of the elderly and the
isolation of people with mental health problems;
the use of information and communication technology (e-government,
e-democracy), both within local public agencies and also with regard to external
stakeholders (such as citizens, local business, etc.), not only in relation to service
planning and delivery but also in dealing with local public issues more generally;
greater pressure from the media as local stakeholders develop more sophisticated approaches to publications and websites, and there is a rapid proliferation of
local press, radio and television channels;
increasing globalization which makes local authorities an important economic player but which also exposes them to a volatile global economy; and
the development of a differentiated civil society with new information and
communication needs and in some limited (but very vocal) cases, the desire to
engage in debate on local quality of life issues (such as the environment and
community safety).
This implies for local authorities:
the need for more collaboration with other agencies in policy-making and
implementation, involving private firms, the voluntary sector and higher levels of
government (one-stop shops, publicprivate partnerships, consortia for service
provision, etc.);
a stronger engagement of all partners in issues of local strategy, planning and
resource mobilization, as well as in service delivery in particular, taking pains
to include priority target groups in the local population;
more intensive and widely spread knowledge management, not only within
local public agencies but also in the networks of stakeholders within the local
area; and
sustainability, taking into account the needs of future generations and the
strategic knock-on effects of local decisions on other stakeholders and other
areas.
Of course, the set of challenges described here developed gradually rather than
overnight. Also, in many cases, fiscal pressures have persisted and have mixed
with the new demands on local communities. Which pressures are dominant and
which are less relevant depends essentially on the setting: as local contexts
become more differentiated in the future, the variety of approaches to local community reforms may well be greater than in the New Public Management (npm)
era (Bogason, 2000: 21).

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New patterns of reform at the local level

A brief sketch of local government reforms in the UK and Germany indicates that
reforms at the local level are going well beyond the normal scope of npm-type
change. In the UK, the Modernizing Local Government agenda, set out by the
new Labour government in 1998, covers a wide range of issues (DETR, 1998):
democratic renewal, particularly through restructuring political management
in local authorities, so that local political decision-making is more transparent to
local communities;
best value, which places upon local authorities the duty of continuous
improvement of their services, in relation to the achievement of economy, efficiency and effectiveness;
community leadership, which makes local authorities responsible for taking
the lead in the preparation of Community Strategies, which set out how all the
partnership arrangements in the local area will be used to deliver a better quality
of life for all stakeholders in their area;
community well-being, under which local authorities have a new power,
enabling them to undertake a much wider range of economic, social and environmental improvement initiatives than before, as long as their local communities
agree;
standards of conduct of local politicians and officials, which must now be
monitored and enforced more strictly, partly by mechanisms imposed by central
government; and
increased financial discretion for some authorities which meet certain
criteria of excellence (e.g. in the beacon councils scheme and in inspections of
housing services), and for all authorities in relation to capital expenditure (albeit
to only a limited degree).
More recently, further elements in the modernizing agenda have emerged,
including the need for local authorities to demonstrate that they are pro-active in
implementing a citizen-oriented e-government programme (DETR, 2001). A
second emerging area is the opportunity for local authorities to negotiate with
central government a Local Public Service Agreement, in which they accept
the challenge to achieve especially high levels against some performance indicators which are particularly important to government ministers, in return for
some freedoms and flexibilities (referred to by central government as earned
autonomy) in expenditure and taxation (DTLR, 2001).
In Germany also, the local landscape has become more diversified. Many
municipalities, especially large cities, are still struggling to implement some elements of the so-called New Steering Model. The thrust of this German adaptation
of the corporate management model which emerged in the mid-1980s in the
Dutch city of Tilburg is directed towards the radical reorganization of local
authorities in order to improve their managerial capacity as a service provider (for
a detailed description, see http://www.tilburg.nl/english/modeluk.htm). Ten years
after Gerhard Banner introduced the New Steering Model (KGST, 1993) in

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Germany, many local authorities have made their resource management procedures more flexible and improved their customer orientation.
However, the recent revival of local democracy in Germany is reminding local
politicians and officers that citizens are not only customers. As Banner (2000)
points out, Germany has had major reforms with regard to representative, direct
and participatory democracy at local levels. The extension of representative
democracy (whereby voters vote for both a candidate and a party) and the expansion of direct democracy (e.g. referenda) have increased the individual voters
weight and reduced party influence accordingly. There is also a wide range of
various grass-roots initiatives revitalizing participatory democracy in German
local government. However, most local authorities lack the political and administrative infrastructure to support and sustain community participation and to link it
to democratically elected bodies at local levels (Banner, 2000).
However, on issues of democratic renewal, as with other local governance
reforms related to sustainable management or e-government, local pioneers in
Germany have received little support from Lnder governments, which formally
are responsible for municipal affairs. As in previous decades, in practice ngos
such as the Bertelsmann Foundation have taken the lead in promoting and supporting local governance reforms in Germany (http://www.stiftung-bertelsmann.
de).
The importance of these policy and legal changes is also supported by empirical evidence from international local authority case studies, including German,
USA and New Zealand local authorities (Bovaird, 1998), which suggests a
number of new themes and trends at local levels:
the npm approaches to local government management and planning (key
words control and accountability) are now giving way to governance
approaches (key words learning and partnership);
the most obvious recent trend in innovative local authorities is towards
public consultation, public involvement, user involvement and citizen engagement in the affairs of the local authority, including its budgeting arrangements;
there is growing use of the already widespread practice of surveys and other
methods to provide user and citizen feedback in relation to service and financial
planning; and
in most of the innovative authorities there is an interest in moving towards
outcome budgeting and not just output budgeting (however, there is little evidence
of joint partnership budgets being established, even though many of the authorities claim that they are engaged in partnership working and joined-up government).
Clearly, these new developments require new ways of measuring and comparing
performance a requirement which has generally not yet been adequately
addressed at local level.

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Current benchmarking practice at the local level

Conventional benchmarking models for organizations
In the UK and Germany as well as in other OECD countries there is much benchmarking activity at the local level. Comparisons of local services may be based on
results benchmarking (often combined with league tables) or process benchmarking. Ideally both forms are practised together. While results benchmarking is
necessary to identify differences in performance, the numbers do not reveal the
causes of divergence. Process benchmarking, usually with a smaller number of
local authorities, allows investigation of the causes of differential results.
In addition to process and results benchmarking, benchmarking against standards has also become common in local authorities. In some countries, such as
the UK, it is imposed by central government (where the main standard is the
performance of the upper quartile of authorities in respect of each specified performance indicator).
In recent years, there has been an enormous interest on the part of local authorities and, to a lesser extent, in local voluntary agencies in excellence
models of organizational quality. These are usually a mix of process and results
benchmarking. They are commonly structured as production functions with
enabling factors being hypothesized to lead to various dimensions of quantitative
and/or qualitative results (Lffler, 2001). Excellence models are typically
marketed as self-assessment instruments or as quality awards. Since they claim to
be generic models, they also make possible comparisons between public and
private sector organizations.
In Europe, they clearly cluster around two core models the 1999 version of
the European Excellence Model (previously known as the Business Excellence
Model see www.efqm.org) and its public sector version the Common
Assessment Framework (known as CAF see www.eipa.nl). A detailed comparison identifies the following organizational and managerial key criteria, which
are also found in most OECD country quality awards that involve public service
organizations:

leadership,
policy and strategy,
people,
resources,
processes and
different categories of objective and subjective results.

Naturally, the weightings given to these different components and the subheadings used within them differ between the award schemes.

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The reality test

The question arises as to whether these criteria measure and assess the right
things. Or, using Jurans concept: Are the existing quality assessment models
actually fit for purpose?
The criteria in conventional benchmarking models such as the European
Excellence Model and the Common Assessment Framework still place relatively
little importance on issues like public participation, learning and innovation as
well as partnerships, even though both assessment schemes have recently
attempted to incorporate these elements. In the European Excellence Model, for
example, partnerships are now counted as resources. This is, of course, an
important dimension of partnership working but it completely ignores the role of
partnerships in setting strategy, improving joined-up processes and protecting
citizens rights. To give another example, the results factor impact on society
recognizes the vital importance of assessing the organizations knock-on effects
on jobs, environment and social relationships in the community, but nowhere in
the model is it recognized that local social capital and a good environment can, in
turn, be key enablers of excellent local organizations (Putnam, 2000).
The fundamental problem with conventional benchmarking models is that they
only assess dimensions which an organization can directly control. However, as
the borders between public, private and voluntary sectors become increasingly
blurred, responsibilities also become increasingly shared between local stakeholders.
A good illustration is the case of Brighton and Hove Council which has recently renegotiated the basis on which it contracts out garbage collection to the
private sector. In order to free public officials from the task of controlling the
quality of the contractors services, Brighton and Hove now relies on individual
citizens and user panels to report to the local authority on the quality of the
garbage collection. In this case, the quality of the garbage collection service has
become a shared responsibility between the local authority, private companies
and citizens (Bovaird, 2000).
Future benchmarking practice at the local level
The need to assess the quality of governance at the local level
It has become evident that there is a need to widen quality assessment models
from conventional (new) public management concepts to what is commonly
referred to as governance. At present, there is an obvious mismatch between
available benchmarking methods and recent local governance reforms described
earlier. But what does governance mean in concrete terms? Is it just efficiency
and democracy as the Bertelsmann local government award programme of 1993
was called?
As Pierre and Peters (2000: 9) point out, governance is a confusing term
because it encompasses a wide variety of phenomena in state, business and
society. Pierre and Peters, rightly in our view, stress that there is, as yet, no body

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of governance theory the existing streams of governance theorizing may at

best be called proto-theory (p. 9). For one influential writer in the field, Rod
Rhodes (1997: 15), governance refers to a change in the meaning of government, with new processes which focus on self-organizing, interorganizational
networks characterized by interdependence, resource exchange, rules of the game
and significant autonomy from the state. However, Pierre and Peters (2000:
1422) disagree, suggesting that governance structures cannot be limited to networks but must also be seen to include hierarchies, markets and communities.
As this example shows, the academic debate is still focused largely on defining
concepts, whereas much of the drive for good governance in the 1990s came
from practitioners (particularly in the World Bank and multilateral aid agencies)
who decided that they needed much more specific advice on how to measure
such things as civil liberties and the level of corruption in local areas. Such
measurement can only be achieved if there is a clear and usable definition of
these concepts. At the same time, however, it is of little use to produce overelaborate definitions of concepts which cannot be given an operational meaning
in practice.
Consequently, we propose a definition of local governance which honours the
conceptual requirement to take into account the multiple dimensions of governance, but at the same time can lead to operational measurement approaches.
We define local governance as: the set of formal and informal rules, structures
and processes which determine the ways in which individuals and organizations
can exercise power over the decisions (by other stakeholders) which affect their
welfare at local levels. This definition shows that governance:
assumes a multiple stakeholder scenario where collective problems can no
longer be solved only by public authorities but require the cooperation of other
players (citizens, business, voluntary sector, media, etc.) and in which it will
sometimes be the case that practices such as mediation, arbitration and selfregulation may be even more effective than public action;
deals with formal rules (constitutions, laws, regulations) and informal rules
(codes of ethics, customs, traditions) but assumes that negotiation between stakeholders seeking to use their power can alter the importance of these rules;
no longer focuses only on market structures as steering mechanisms, as in
conventional npm approaches, but also considers hierarchical authority and cooperative networks as facilitating structures in appropriate circumstances;
does not reason only in terms of the logic of ends and means, inputs and outputs, but recognizes that some characteristics of the key processes in society
(transparency, integrity, honesty, etc.) are likely to be valuable in themselves;
is inherently political, concerned as it is with the interplay of stakeholders
seeking to exercise power over each other in order to further their own interests
and therefore cannot be left to managerialist or professional decision-making
elites.
From this wider governance perspective, an excellent local authority needs to

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be more than an excellent service provider. It must also be excellent in the way in
which it discharges its political and social responsibilities in the community. For
example, in the case of garbage collection, excellent service provision will not
guarantee clean streets if citizens continue to drop litter. In the fight to get clean
streets, it may be rather more important to teach children at school appropriate
civic behaviour. In other words, good local governance is more than good local
government.
In Germany, this seems to be an old truth since the constitution guarantees
local governments general power to deal with local matters. The German principle of local self-government means that local government enjoys wide freedom to
shape local life and enjoys a sound bargaining position against the state, which
relies upon local government for implementation of its policies (Banner, 2000).
(Of course, local authorities continue to be dependent on the state to some extent
due to state regulation and supervision, and because a noticeable part of their
revenue consists of state grants.)
In the UK, the Modernizing Local Government agenda and the Best Value
regime suggest that this old truth has also been rediscovered in Britain, in an
apparent reversal of the decades-long trend for central government to take
responsibilities away from the locally elected level of government. The role of the
local authority in community leadership is being explicitly recognized and reinforced by the new power of economic, social and environmental well-being.
The increasing legislation requiring local authorities to work in partnership with
health authorities (particularly in relation to social care in the community and the
care of people with mental health problems) and with police authorities (particularly in working with young offenders) has emphasized that local government has
a role in mobilizing community resources to support health and police services,
even though these are provided by other public agencies.
A radically new approach to widening the remit and responsibilities of local
government, while not necessarily increasing its budget or its range of direct services, is at the core of the increased emphasis on local governance in both the UK
and Germany (and other OECD countries as well).
However, a corollary of this new concern to find wider mechanisms to deal
with social, environmental and economic problems may even mean that local
governance does not always require a local authority for example, citizens
may initiate and sustain successful collective action without any financial or other
support from the local authority.
An interesting example of the self-organizing power of local stakeholders is
given by the Beacon housing estate, a major residential area of Falmouth in
Cornwall. During 199597 the local authority, Carrick District Council, and the
health authority together helped to initiate major improvements to the condition
of the housing, especially in respect of heating and insulation (Bovaird and
Owen, 2002). As residents saw the improvements in quality of life which were
brought about by this programme, they became more interested in working on a
series of further initiatives on the estate, covering estate management, housing

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repairs, crime watch, youth training schemes, etc. These schemes were largely led
and managed by the residents themselves, partly supported by local voluntary
agencies and businesses. As the initiatives proved successful, the strength of resident involvement grew and some of the residents decided to become politically
active on a formal basis, getting elected as councillors, etc. However, the main
locus for change on the estate has remained the neighbourhood initiatives driven
by residents through the Partnership Management Committee, on which they
maintain a majority of seats.
This broader vision of the potential role of local stakeholders is the backcloth
to the widespread attempt to shift thinking and action at local level from local
government to local governance. As previously discussed, the pressures and
opportunities for positive reforms are nowhere greater than at local levels. The
main problem that local government faces is that current management approaches
and performance measurement instruments in the public sector are no longer
adequate to deal with the governance challenge at local level.
Operationalizing the concept of good local governance
Given the earlier definition of local governance, can we operationalize the concept of good local governance? Do we need a new governance excellence
model? While ready-off-the-peg solutions are appealing to managers in both
public and private organizations, this does not seem to be a primary need. Indeed,
there are enough quality assessment models in widespread use already, even
though most of them focus on managerial excellence rather than on governance
excellence.
More than 15 years of use of excellence models in the public sector shows that
the gains from the use of excellence models (be it through self-assessment or
external assessment) are uncertain (Lffler, 1996: 2001). The key problems are,
as so often, implementation issues.
However, we do need to be able to develop further the measurement of the
quality of local governance. In doing this, the logic of this argument is that measuring the performance of the local governance system must:
focus on governance issues which are not well dealt with in government,
such as transparency, honesty, accountability, citizen engagement, levels of trust
in society, levels of respect for democratic processes and the equalities agenda (in
relation to gender, race, religion, age, disadvantage, etc.);
apply a multiple stakeholder framework and transcend organizational
borders; and
involve all important local stakeholders in the assessment by taking into
account their perceptions of how well these governance issues are dealt with in
their local area.
Clearly, measuring the quality of governance will involve finding new measuring instruments for dimensions of social behaviours and social attitudes which
have generally been neglected until recently. For example, the measurement of

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certain dimensions in this list has tended to be very crude and therefore not very
useable in the past e.g. transparency, honesty, levels of respect for democratic
processes. In other areas, such as measuring levels of citizen engagement, levels
of trust in society and achievement of the equalities agenda, there has been some
valuable work, but it has been very patchy so that little comparative information
exists.
Furthermore, measuring the quality of governance may involve more costs
(both directly to the organization which initiates the exercise and indirectly to the
other stakeholders who will be expected to participate in it) than would normally
be the case with a self-assessment exercise on the basis of a conventional excellence model. However, this is likely to have some beneficial knock-on effects. It
has been observed that self-assessment processes may not lead to real organizational improvements when external pressure is lacking. In the case of governance
evaluations, when undertaken as previously described, the involvement of several
stakeholders in the assessment process is likely to activate (and legitimate) the
local authority (and other relevant stakeholders) to take action in order to deal
with the governance weaknesses identified by the exercise, whether they derive
from within its own organization, its mismanagement of relations with external
stakeholders or the poor management of other local organizations.
The greatest danger in going down this road to assess governance quality is
that we might end up, once again, trying to quantify what cannot be quantified.
Indeed, both the World Bank and the EU have launched initiatives to find performance indicators (pis) for a range of governance dimensions. This will not
always be the most productive route, even though it is intrinsically attractive to
researchers. Rather than defining more and more quality of life indicators, some
of which have dubious validity, we have to understand that the aim of governance
evaluations is to understand how different stakeholders construct their perception
of the quality of life in their local area (Rhodes, 2001).
In Table 1 (see Appendix) we illustrate what this might mean for an individual
stakeholder, namely a local authority. The table examines the implications for a
local authority of moving to good local governance. The section headings on the
left-hand side are based on the criteria of the 1999 version of the EFQM Business
Excellence model, before it became the Excellence Model in 2000. The use
of this older EFQM model allows the new organizational requirements to be
highlighted in a clearer way than the later version, which already partially
incorporates a small number of governance elements such as resource-enhancing
partnerships.
As Table 1 shows, governance does not mean that all the bread and butter
issues on the npm agenda have become irrelevant. Thus, academics should be
careful not to interpret governance as anti-npm. Governance is rather the recognition that some seemingly technical issues are highly political and may only be
tackled by taking a wider political perspective. Moreover, behind all public issues
there is a question mark about the relative role of decision-making through democratic means, through managerialist systems or through professional expertise. In

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the governance framework, it is not assumed that managerialist solutions are

automatically more rational but, on the other hand, it is also not assumed that
democratic decision-making channels are always the most appropriate.
But if governance is highly political, is it realistic to assume that assessments of
governance quality or governance performance will take place? Even though
evaluation is a key part of the npm agenda, governments espousing npm have been
notably less enthusiastic about evaluating their overall npm systems, as opposed
to specific policies, initiatives, projects or even agencies within that system. So
why should there be more enthusiasm for evaluation in the future than there has
been in the past? And why might governance networks be more open to systemic
evaluation and benchmarking of governance than governments have been?
Conclusion: local governance benchmarking or local governance cover-up?
We suggest that various pressures towards greater transparency in all sectors are
likely to drive the use of a new generation of performance information by different local actors. With the widespread crisis of legitimacy of the state in most
OECD countries, and with increasing public suspicion of the competence and
motives of public service organizations, stakeholders are coming to the view that
they need to scrutinize areas of decision-making which in the past they would
accept on trust. Some governments have already reacted to this pressure by enacting freedom of information laws. Moreover, some companies such as BMW and
British Telecom have engaged in social and environmental reporting on a voluntary basis. Of course, there will also be vested interests lobbying against more
transparency but it will become harder for any kind of organization to hold back
information requested by external stakeholders.
Governance assessments may take different forms. Like conventional excellence models, governance evaluation schemes may be used both for selfassessment and for external assessments (stretching from certification to quality
awards). It is likely, given normal organizational psychology, that most organizations and governance networks will start with self-assessments. However, once
they get more confident about the quality of their governance they may also wish
to gain reputation capital through external validation.
Local authorities are likely to be the first candidates for a new generation of
governance benchmarking. They have always been much closer to citizens than
regional, national or international levels of government. The political and economic environment and the functions of local authorities impose upon them
pressures to demonstrate their contribution to local communities. These pressures
will often be perceived as threatening, since many stakeholders will be hostile in
their attitudes to what they will often regard as the inadequate contributions being
made by local government (and, indeed, higher levels of government) to
improved quality of life in the local area. However, as this article shows, these
same pressures simultaneously provide local authorities, and other local stakeholders, with exciting opportunities to develop new and more successful practices
of good local governance.

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Appendix
TABLE 1
Widening the scope of local government towards good local governance
Local government needs to consider
not only . . .

. . . but increasingly

Organizational leadership

Leadership of networks

Developing organizations
Ensuring policy coherence across
organizational departments and services

Developing communities
Ensuring policy coherence across
organizational and sectoral borders and
levels of government as well as over time
(sustainable development)
Managing expectations of citizens,
companies and other stakeholders so that
they become more deeply committed to
democratic processes and more engaged in
policy-making and services management

Creating a set of values and a sense of

direction, which leaves room for individual
autonomy and creativity for mid-level
managers and employees

Policy and strategy

Politicking: balancing strategic

interests

Focus on the needs of customers

Activating civil society (through

information, consultation and participation) in local policies and management
Public management as a process of interaction between elected officials, politically
appointed officials, ad hoc advisors, career
civil servants and external stakeholders
Long-term plans, incorporating community
plans, capital budget plans and asset
management

Separation of politics and administration

Annual plans, concentrating on current

expenditure

People management

Management of the labour market

Increasing labour productivity through

downsizing
Getting staff to focus on quality of service

Improving staff contributions to all the

goals of the firm
Getting staff to focus on quality of life, in
terms quality of service outcomes for users
and other stakeholders and also quality of
working life for fellow staff
Motivation by allowing staff to contribute
a wider range of their skills and aptitudes
to the work of the organization
Recruiting and training staff who are
most likely to deliver effective services
and to help stakeholders to help themselves

Motivation through more objective

evaluation systems and more flexible pay
systems
Recruiting and retaining qualified staff
through competitive hiring processes to
minimize the wage bill

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TABLE 1 (continued)
Widening the scope of local government towards good local governance

Local government needs to consider

not only . . .

. . . but increasingly

People management

Management of the labour market

Recruiting, retaining and promoting staff

purely on their ability to meet narrow and
mechanistic job specifications

Recruiting, training and promoting

appropriate staff in ways which increase
the diversity of the public service in terms
of gender, ethnicity, age and disabilities
Making better use of staff resources by
increasing mobility within the public
sector and also between other sectors and
other areas

Making better use of staff resources

within the organization

Resource management

Resource and knowledge management

Budget formulation as a top-down exercise

(with fixed ceilings on total expenditures)

Preparation of local budgets with active

participation of city councillors and
community representatives
Measurement of the money and time costs
of the organizations activities, as
experienced by both the organization and
its stakeholders
Fiscal transparency to communicate with
external stakeholders (business, citizens,
media, etc.) on the value-for-money of
activities
Improving social efficiency, including
equitable distribution of budgets and
services
Making ICT available to all stakeholders
to improve quality of life
Generating and sustaining new knowledge
through knowledge management, both
for staff and for other stakeholders
interacting with the organization

Measurement of unit costs for performance

improvement and performance monitoring

Transparent financial reporting

Improving technical efficiency

Making ICT available to all staff for

efficiency-enhancement purposes
Helping staff to improve knowledge base
through training, to increase efficiency and
effectiveness in the job
Processes

Internal and external relationships

Internal improvement processes (Business

Process Reengineering)

Managing processes beyond organizational

borders, including inter-governmental
relations and constraints
Managing multiple contracts and supplier
relationships; building and maintaining
accountable partnerships, with users,
communities and other organizations
where appropriate (co-production of
services with users, communities and other
stakeholders)

Competing for tendered tasks

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Bovaird and Lffler: Benchmarking good local governance

23

TABLE 1 (continued)
Widening the scope of local government towards good local governance
Local government needs to consider
not only . . .

. . . but increasingly

Measurement of objective and subjective

results

Measurement of multi-dimensional
performance

Reporting systems based on needs of public

managers and government oversight bodies

Publishing of performance information

based on the needs of stakeholders in the
community (social, ethical and environmental reporting)
Involving stakeholder groups in the
definition of governance standards and
measurement of performance
Use of performance information for
encouraging innovation and learning at
multiple levels (individual, organizational,
networks)

Benchmarking results, internal processes

or organizational performance against
other local authorities
Use of performance information for control
purposes

Functioning of the local authoritya

Developing good local governancea

Serving the community by producing

policies, services and information
(service provider)
Improving the internal efficiency of local
authorities
Increasing user satisfaction of local services

Enabling the community to plan and

manage its own affairs (community
developer)
Improving the external effectiveness of
local authorities
Building public trust in local government
through transparent processes and accountability and through democratic dialogue

This final section draws on Adam Wolf (2000: 6912).

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