Jenny Tibbitts, Organisational Development Officer with Blue Mountains City Council, recently returned from a three week study tour to the United Kingdom. She is the inaugural recipient of the Institute of Municipal Management/Task Software SOLACE Research Scholarship.
As well as attending the Annual Conference of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE), Jenny visited a number of Councils in both England and Northern Ireland. Currently completing her final semester in a Human Resources and Public Administration degree, Jenny said that the study tour was a great opportunity to research, and experience first hand, overseas trends in organisational change.
“Councils I visited are grappling with similar problems to us, particularly how to avoid the divisiveness and insecurity that can result from rapid change,” she said. “The best thing was that the people I met with were very candid about the things that had worked and what had not.”
Jenny said that the key issue impacting on Councils in the UK is the move from Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) to the Blair Government’s new approach of ‘Best Value’.
“It is not just a matter of getting the costs down, as under CCT, but about quality,” she said. “Councils are required to consult widely with their communities to ensure they are delivering what people want and are prepared to pay for.
“It is about working for continual improvement, not merely competing with the private sector but looking for partnership arrangements that will deliver best value. This calls for new management skills of working in partnership and networking rather than competition.”
With Best Value not as prescriptive as CCT, Jenny said that UK managers are still grappling with the principles and how to translate these into practice. She believes performance measures for Best Value will be a critical ingredient for success.
“It is easy to skew results by doing the easy things first to boost results, while the more difficult urgent matters are put aside,” she said. “It is vital to look carefully at what should be measured for Best Value. Is it the number of hot meals delivered or the standard of the food presented that is important?
“As described by one UK manager, ‘we are moving away from the bean counting to the bean tasting’, to quality and not merely the dollar being the bottom line.”
For further information contact Jenny Tibbitts, telephone (02) 4782 0673.
