When people ask me if seeking to co-ordinate councils is “like herding cats” I usually agree with them, pointing out that when you have the can of cat food at dinner-time, it’s easy.
Councils may exist to reflect differences in their communities but there is a huge appetite for learning, collaboration and best practice.
Local Government Associations are funded by councils as part of their thirst for best practice and in many ways we are the ongoing repository of learning across Councils.
The challenge is a simple one – understanding what is unique to a Council area and that the remainder is fertile ground for best practice exchange and collaboration.
In South Australia we have taken a variety of approaches to best practice but usually involve two actions: a survey or scan across existing practices in Councils – and an external check on practice outside of Local Government and often outside of SA – sometimes outside of Australia.
I have never struck an area in which I cannot learn from something a Council is doing or trialling in SA.
Often for us, helping Councils to strive for best practice is as simple as gathering practices together in some way for all to see and review in documents or in presentations/conferences.
A practice we have adopted, over more than a decade, is to alternate our annual conferences with a “showcase” event in even years.
The showcase topics are based on key priorities for Local Government but there is one consistent rule – only a Council can present – and we schedule more than 30 Council presentations over a day and a half.
While our members value stimulating external speakers, they usually go away more satisfied from the showcase event because they learn how other Councils are dealing with issues similar to their own challenges. Real experiences, successes, barriers and how they were overcome (if they were).
Translating such experiences into standards, manuals or guidelines takes more work but allows us to incorporate legal and liability checking and provide tools to Councils that they can apply or amend.
The development of common standards, manuals and guidelines represents key ways of saving individual Council resources to apply more strategically at the local level.
Local Government’s biggest threat and its biggest opportunity is in the level of support and understanding it has from the communities it serves.
Generally people do not care about institutions or systems.
Past polling by the ALGA suggests that 25 per cent of Australians do not believe we have a Constitution and 48 per cent think State Governments are not recognised by the Constitution.
People do love Council services and generally they only complain if services are interrupted for some reason.
This presents a challenge for Local Government in areas for which community support is vital or where they wish to change service arrangements.
When we look at the importance of direct funding from the Commonwealth and the need to clarify once and for all, the power of the Commonwealth to fund Councils, it represents a special challenge.
This year the LGA in SA has instituted a new program “Local Excellence” with four themes: community engagement, financial reform, service efficiency and effectiveness and governance.
The program has a mix of external expertise and best practice – based on projects designed to assist Councils across a range of areas but particularly in relation to communication with our communities.
The LGA has published a Social Media Issues Paper and is working on a Model Communications Plan for a Council, it will review approaches to community engagement, explore communication of regulatory activities and explore best practice in use of social media and mobile technology to name a few areas.
Having consulted with all Council CEOs in SA it is clear that a number of challenges remain for the sector but social media is certainly an area of high interest.
Councils are reviewing the opportunities presented by such technologies to relate more closely to their communities – particularly with younger audiences – but are mindful of risks and resource impacts.
The LGA will work with them and with the Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government (ACELG) to realise these opportunities.
I believe we are seeing a new dynamic in Councils in which the opportunities to work together are being embraced, without losing focus on the demands and differences in the communities they represent.
In the LGA of South Australia, we stock up on cat food just in time for dinner, and find that the cats herd themselves.
