From Mr M. Fava

Over the past few years, local government has changed a great deal as it had to face up to new challenges. This included initiatives such as Best Value, Community Planning, New Political Management Structures, Partnerships, e-government and Waste Management. The main objectives are to have a stronger community, better leadership skills, continuous improvement, modernisation of administrative and financial systems and also for a more effective central / local government partnership. It is imperative that both the central and local government recruit new young people if we are to start meeting these challenges of the modernisation agenda.

What is Best Value – In my opinion Best Value should improve local government services. It urges us councillors to review, over a period of time, the way in which we carry out all our functions in consultation with the local community in order to deliver the most effective, economic and efficient service.

This can only be achieved if we believe in Challenge, Consultation, Comparing and Compete.

•The Challenge is to reassess and evaluate the services we provide and the way we deliver them. We have to seek justification for the way a service is provided and look for new and improved ways of meeting communities’ needs.

• Local councillors must Consult with local people, residents and staff about the services they provide. They should also monitor consumer satisfaction.

• Councillors should be obliged to Compare, by benchmarking their own performance against that of other councillors and national performance indicators.

• Also they must Compete with other local councils in order to create a better environment for their residents. This helps keep them active and always looking for more effective methods.

Best Value is all about continuous improvement. It ensures that at the end of the three-year period, all councillors reach the same levels of performance. This guarantees better councillors for the future. It will also help on a practical level, as councils will develop innovative methods of service delivery and will be involved in more partnership arrangements with private, voluntary or other public sector organisations. The idea of Best Value is to feed information into an overall comprehensive performance assessment of the local council.

As part of the wider improvement agenda for the public, I believe that there should be a Quality Public Service Unit. This will be designed to assess the quality of a council’s overall performance. The ultimate aim is to drive the improvement of services. Information gained from the process is intended to better target support for councils, provide better information to the public on the performance of their local council and make it easier to identify poor performances in order to taking action to resolve any problems.

The evidence on council’s performance must be taken from a range of different sources and be gathered together to give an overall view of the council’s performance. After the assessment takes place, councils will be identified as being in one of five categories of performance: excellent, good, fair, weak or poor. Councils placed in excellent and good categories should benefit from additional freedom and flexibilities and will undergo less inspection in the future. Those in the other categories will be expected to improve their performance and will receive targeted help to progress.

E-government is about using the power of technology to provide better public services. The aim is to have all public sector services available electronically. This also includes local governments. The strategy has four guiding principles: building services around citizens’ choices, making government and its services more accessible, social inclusion and using information better. E-government is more than just putting paper-based systems on to the web or database; it is intended to provide the services communities and individual needs at a time and place that is most suitable for them. This presents a huge challenge to the local councils and many are now thinking of innovative ways to plan and implement their local e-government strategies. For example, introducing public access points for free Internet to the public, providing video conferencing facilities or enabling people to calculate on-line whether they are entitled to benefits.

With more and more services being delivered electronically, staff will need some basic computing skills and an understanding of electronic service delivery whether by Internet, e-mail or other electronic means. Many staff already have the basic skills required but where necessary, training should be provided. This also means a greater variety of work, particularly for front line staff who can divide their work between face-to-face contact with customers and electronic contact. Therefore, an employers’ organisation for local government should work on the development of such skills, which will aid the implementation of e-government policies. The most important thing about e-government is to be committed to ensure equality and opportunity for all its employees and service users. This means that there is a level playing field for everyone – for staff with career progression and for the public with the treatment and customer service they receive. Furthermore, all councils should have a recruitment policy clearly stating that no person will be discriminated against by reason of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, culture or language, political beliefs or any other reason.

Diversity is a huge benefit. Diversity means taking into account all differences. It values the different contributions different people can make. Local councils should recognise that the strength of an organisation lies in having a diverse work force. This means that the council can use the skills, knowledge and life experiences of its different employees, councillors and volunteers from different backgrounds to help develop services appropriate to the needs of the wider community.

Delivering Quality Public Services is the ambition we all share. Rightly, the public has high expectations when it comes to the delivery of services. Public services must strive to meet these high expectations. We should all recognise this challenge and have the genuine desire to respond to it in dynamic and innovative ways. There is still much to do to achieve this. The government has to review the system; allocate funds, human resources, LES, and the services the corporations are giving to local councils. Services should be joined-up. Local councils are being shunted from pillar to post because different organisations and corporations are not committed enough to give best value for money. We want seamless services. This is particularly important for the most vulnerable in society, such as the elderly living at home, who rely on key providers such as social services, housing department or associations and health services acting in collaboration.

People expect high quality service, but are worried about the cost and the implications for their taxes. Rightly, they expect councils to deliver services in the most efficient and effective way possible. They want to see value for money. Unfortunately the government and departments responsible for this are doing very little!

Mario Fava

Swieqi Councillor