New South Wales councils have a unique opportunity to access a leading edge performance management tool for the sector – the Local Government Management Association NSW (LGMA NSW) Local Government Operational and Management Effectiveness Survey.
“We are leading the way for councils to get big business benefits for themselves and for the sector by acting collectively together” said Annalisa Haskell, LGMA NSW Chief Executive Officer.
“This initiative means councils across the state – big or small, metro or regional, rural or remote, have the opportunity to access high quality reporting and sophisticated analytical research techniques plus consulting support for an affordable cost.”
LGMA NSW’s professional members have worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to build a tailored local government survey that will support councils to review how they are performing in their operations and management and will give them three annual progress reports by the time their next new council is elected. This initiative was launched only two weeks ago and already, one third of councils are indicating they are extremely keen to participate.
Smaller regional councils are excited to have high quality reporting that they would not usually be able to afford alone, while larger councils will find the new system a great compliment to current systems said LGMA NSW CEO Ms. Haskell.
“There is increasing pressure for councils to improve performance especially as we are in the midst of local government reform” said Brian Bell, General Manager of Lake Macquarie City Council.
“For my council, we already have a strong understanding as to how well we perform but we were delighted to participate in the design of this new tool that will allow us to benchmark ourselves not only against NSW local government as a whole, but also Australian business and other levels of government through accessing the expertise of PwC analytics.”
The survey will cover the areas of corporate leadership, finance management, operations management, risk management and workforce management and will complement and support the very important enhancement that the Department of Local Government is doing with their own council reporting.
