The South Australian Local Government Association has invited its member councils to participate in 68 projects as part of the LGA’s multi-million dollar two year Local Excellence program along with a range of external partners.
Projects range from best practices in use of social media, to improved asset management, red tape reduction and benchmarking work.
LGA President Kym McHugh hoped every Council would be involved in some way with one or more of the projects.
“Our experience is that where Councils work together on challenges with the LGA and external expertise, we have a very high success rate in finding how to achieve best practice,” he said.
The LGA has released four theme papers for Council feedback, which cover community engagement; financial reform; service efficiency and effectiveness; and governance.
Kym McHugh said an overarching part of the program would seek to pull together aspects from all of the 68 designated projects and describe Councils of the Future.
He said the program continued to evolve following two ‘expert’ sessions at which input was provided by a range of academic, peak body, legal and consultancy representatives including the Commonwealth-funded Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government (ACELG) and a series of meetings or telephone conferences with Council CEOs.
The LGA is now looking to form partnerships with identified organisations including universities, peak bodies and other major stakeholders to ensure the ongoing success of the program.
A Local Excellence work program was issued to councils at the end of September along with four theme papers which can be found at www.lga.sa.gov.au/goto/localexcellence.
