Benchmarking as a Tool for the Modernisation of Local Government

This paper examines benchmarking as a tool of the modernisation process in local government and the contradictory tensions in the Best Value scheme are explored. Benchmarking is shown to encapsulate the dichotomous nature of a modernising philosophy which espouses innovation and local solutions alongside the government's centralising tendencies. One consequence is the advancement of 'compulsory' and 'defensive' modes of benchmarking with local authorities benchmarking for external accountability reasons; issues of tangible improvement are secondary concerns. These tensions are viewed as irreconcilable, the implication is that local government will need to carefully manage and evaluate its benchmarking activities.     

Competing,collaborating or controlling? Comparing benchmarking in European local government

The way that local authorities in OECD countries compare and benchmark their performance varies widely. This paper explains some of the reasons behind the variations. The current local government benchmarking schemes in Europe— their governance, coverage and impact—largely depend on the institutional characteristics of the respective administrative and local government systems (in other words, the starting conditions). There are signs that, as a result of the fiscal crisis in Europe and need to cut public sector costs, many countries (but not England and Wales) are leaning towards compulsory large-scale benchmarking projects.     

Political Management and Local Government: The Views of Local Authority Chief Executives

The Labour Government has introduced radical measures to change local authorities' constitutions. These include a requirement to abandon the traditional committee system and to replace it with political executives. Local authority chief executives will play a critical role in these changes and they are also uniquely placed to offer observations on the likelihood of the measures being successful. Because of this, a questionnaire survey was undertaken of the chief executives of all local authorities in England and Wales to discover how councils are responding to the Government's measures and to obtain their views on the proposed political management arrangements.     

The Role of Leadership in the Modernization and Improvement of Public Services

This article examines the central role of leadership in the Government's conception of modernization and improvement, before outlining key approaches to understanding leadership and the management of influence in and by local authorities. Local authorities are increasingly concerned with distributed leadership (even though new structural arrangements may concentrate political leadership); of leadership at the cross-roads of different organizational cultures and structures; of the importance of inter organizational leadership not just leadership by individuals; and the importance of influence across organizational boundaries not just control of the internal organization. The authors call for models of leadership to be updated to reflect new challenges.     

Relations with Non-Elected Agencies: Local Authority Good Practice

The controversy over reform of the local unelected state has tended to over-shadow principles of good practice for local authorities. This article shows how local authorities can get the best out of their relationships with non-elected agencies. In particular, how should they develop their strategic capabilities and representational roles in the 'new local governance'?     

Deepening Democracy or Élite Governance? New Political Management Arrangements in Local Government

This article discusses the introduction of new political management arrangements in local government. It places the Government's current proposals for change in the context of recent research and debate about the strengths and weaknesses of local democracy, and then draws on recent research evidence, which suggests that current reforms may have a contradictory impact. The Government's proposals are likely to bring tighter and more strategic political leadership, more effective partnership with other local organizations and, if certain steps are taken, better 'scrutiny' of policy and performance. However, there are serious concerns about democratic accountability and transparency, community involvement and the implications for many councillors, party groups and a healthy local party politics. It is concluded that more thorough evaluation of the impact of the changes is desirable.     

Effective human resources processes in local government

Local authority HR departments have come under increasing government pressure to strengthen and professionalize their role. This article explores the perspectives of line and HR managers in two local authorities on how the HR function can best be organized to contribute to the development of their organizations. A new model of effective HR processes in local government is proposed.     

Towards a benchmarking paradigm in European water utilities

This article explains the benefits of using benchmarking tools in the public sector to drive up performance. The authors examine the case of European water utilities, focusing on four countries: Portugal, Belgium, The Netherlands and the UK. They argue for the creation of a European ‘observatory’ to collect data, promote benchmarking and disseminate best practice in the water sector.     

Trends and Issues in the Implementation of Local 'Voluntary Sector Compacts' in England

This article evaluates the current attempt to develop local 'compacts' between local government and the voluntary and community sector, as a way of structuring the evolving relationships between these sectors. It is based on documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with key national and local informants. The first part of the article charts local government-voluntary sector relationships in England from 1979 to 2000. The second part introduces the concept of the 'voluntary sector compact', and argues that this is central to the Government's approach to these relationships. The third part explores the implementation of the Voluntary Sector Compact in England at both the national and local level. Finally, the authors draw out key lessons for the future of relationships between local government and the voluntary sector in England.     

The Implementation and Use of Benchmarking in Local Government: A Case Study of the Translation of a Management Accounting Innovation

Benchmarking is a management accounting innovation (MAI) that can be used for performance measurement and management in both the private and the public sectors. Although public sector accounting researchers have reported some success with the use of benchmarking, frequently charged problems exist in implementing and using this management technique. To look beyond the technical and institutional explanations, this paper takes a translation approach and presents a case study of a local government benchmarking network. We conclude that there is a link between benchmarking implementation problems and initiators’ failure to build a strong network of benchmarking allies. Implementation is facilitated if actors, other than the initiators, recognize the possibility of making benchmarking more relevant and less cost focused. However, even when a network of actors has a favourable attitude towards benchmarking, benchmarking may still appear as an unruly ‘actant’. Furthermore, the perception of implementation failure and success is heterogeneous and connected to various actors’ adoption of benchmarking. We also conclude that there is a connection between the use of benchmarking and 1) actors’ possibilities to use benchmarking in the struggle for resources and 2) the perception of benchmarking information as ‘factual’ or ‘factual enough’. However, the perception of benchmarking information as ‘factual’ or ‘factual enough’ seems not only a matter of correct or incorrect ratios but also of whether such information serves actors’ interests. A final conclusion is that the use of benchmarking increases when actors other than the initiators complement the original idea and ‘counter interest’ the initiators.     

Advancing Public Accountability? The Social Services 'Star' Ratings

An important development in the UK public sector is the rating and classification of service providers. The authors examine a significant exercise of this kind: the 'star' ratings awarded to local authority social services departments in England. The article explains why it is difficult to accept the Government's claim that these star ratings provide a significant advance in public accountability.     

ACCRUALS ACCOUNTING IN U.K. LOCAL GOVERNMENT: A HISTORICAL CONTEXT FOR CONTINUING CONTROVERSIES

Local authorities only adopt the accruals concept in a very narrow sense. Their financial accounting model can be called 'modified accruals', though it remains fundamentally different from best commercial practice. This paper explores the rationale for this unique model, using historical analysis. Because it has been used since before the First World War, and because the first decade of this century saw the only major public debate on local government accounting, the paper concentrates on this period. It was found that the essence of modified accruals is in the political nature of local government and control of it by central government.     

ASSESSING COMPETITION AMONG LOCAL AUTHORITIES IN ENGLAND AND WALES

The government has directed a series of initiatives at local authorities in England and Wales with a view to reducing the volume of current expenditure. In particular, in 1981 the government recommended that local authorities in England and Wales should publish various indicators of activity in their annual reports. The objective was to stimulate competition between authorities, and thereby both influence their spending plans and improve efficiency. This paper examines the trends in the published data over a five-year period to determine whether there has been any detectable increase in competition in local authorities. The results are negative.     

Contracting in Peer Networks

We consider multiagent multifirm contracting when agents benchmark their wages to those of their peers, using weights that vary within and across firms. When a single principal commits to a public contract, optimal contracts hedge relative wage risk without sacrificing efficiency. But compensation benchmarking undoes performance benchmarking, causing wages to load positively on peer output, and asymmetries in peer effects can be exploited to enhance profits. With multiple principals, a “rat race” emerges: agents are more productive, with effort that can exceed the first best, but higher wages reduce profits and undermine efficiency. Wage transparency and disclosure requirements exacerbate these effects.     

Offsetting the implicit incentives: Benefits of benchmarking in money management

Money managers are rewarded for increasing the value of assets under management. This gives a manager an implicit incentive to exploit the well-documented positive fund-flows to relative-performance relationship by manipulating her risk exposure. The misaligned incentives create potentially significant deviations of the manager’s policy from that desired by fund investors. In the context of a familiar continuous-time portfolio choice model, we demonstrate how a simple risk management practice that accounts for benchmarking can ameliorate the adverse effects of managerial incentives. Our results contrast with the conventional view that benchmarking a fund manager is not in the best interest of investors.     

Transforming Local Government: Innovation and Modernization

This article is based on research investigating why local authorities innovate and what happens when they do. The authors show how local authorities have responded to the current normative climate for innovation, and explore the interaction between central policy and local action. The article demonstrates the importance of the policy climate set by central government in fostering—or constraining—innovation at a local level.     

CONTROL OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT FINANCE

In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis upon more central controls over local authorities. This paper develops the possibility of giving local authorities greater freedom provided they will exercise self-discipline and adhere to accounting prudential ratios. While proposals to date have been rejected by local authorities on pragmatic grounds, this suggestion has not been considered in academic accounting literature. Academics are encouraged to address this topic and join the debate.     

IS E‐GOVERNMENT LEADING TO MORE ACCOUNTABLE AND TRANSPARENT LOCAL GOVERNMENTS? AN OVERALL VIEW

This paper seeks to assess to what extent e-government enables accountability and transparency in EU local governments. It also provides an overall view about how local governments are implementing ICTs initiatives to bring citizens closer to governments. Although the mere capacity of the Internet for the dissemination of information improves accountability and makes benchmarking easier, our results show that the expected benefits are far from being achieved because e-government projects are still in the early stages. The results also show that, at present, ICTs have not had a dramatic impact on EU local government accountability.     

Councillor ethics: a review of the Committee on Standards In Public Life’s ‘Local Government Ethical Standards’

ABSTRACT

The Committee on Standards in Public Life’s (CSPL) 2019 report Local Government Ethical Standards presents a detailed review of local government ethics in England, aiming to highlight both best practice and areas for improvement. In so doing, it makes 26 recommendations ranging in importance. Likely to be one of the most important, and most controversial, is a recommendation to allow local authorities to suspend democratically-elected councillors for up to six months. This paper presents a review of the report and its recommendations, with a particular emphasis on the ‘values-versus-compliance’ distinction in ethical regulation.