Client and contractor roles in a changing local government environment

1989 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryn Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Local Authority ◽  
Value For Money ◽  
Direct Service ◽  
Strategic Issues ◽  
Competitive Tendering ◽  
Service Organisation ◽  
Audit Commission ◽  
Service Standards

The advent of Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT)1 exposes large swathes of local authority services to private sector competition. The challenge facing those in local government who wish to protect in-house services is how to adjust to a new commercial contracting culture without losing the values of public service. The Audit Commission argues that such a culture requires a hard split between the Council as a client, who sets service standards and ensures value for money and its contractor side that concerns itself with performing to standard and price. This article looks at both the legal and operational impetus for such a client-contractor split, from a DSO (Direct Service Organisation) perspective, and examines the strategic issues raised for local authority reorganisation.

Competitive tendering in Scottish local government

1993 ◽  
Vol 3 (First Series (1) ◽  
pp. 118-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart Black
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Competitive Tendering

scholarly journals The Effect of Shared Service Centers on Administrative Intensity in English Local Government: A Longitudinal Evaluation

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Elston ◽  
Ruth Dixon
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Administrative Support ◽  
Local Authority ◽  
Structural Complexity ◽  
Change Score ◽  
Support Functions ◽  
Service Adoption ◽  
Shared Service ◽  
Primary Service

Abstract “Administrative intensity” (AI) describes the proportion of total resources that organizations spend on administrative support functions rather than primary service and production processes. We test whether “sharing” administrative activities between organizations leads to a fall in AI due to economies of scale, as is often supposed, using organizational and financial data from more than 300 English local authorities. We employ multi-wave change score regression analysis to relate changes in AI from 2008 to 2016 to levels of shared services participation, and further test whether reform performance varies by category of local authority, type of administration, or degree of structural complexity. Although we find that some measures of AI fell slightly over this period, this was unrelated to shared service adoption for any category of local authority. Sharing of clerical rather than professional types of administration, and sharing by organizations and within partnerships characterized by lower structural complexity, also failed to improve reform outcomes. Faulty assumptions about the extent of administrative scale diseconomies in English local government partly explain this significant reform underperformance.

scholarly journals Disparities by deprivation: The geographical impact of unprecedented changes in local authority financing on the voluntary sector in England

2021 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2110348
Author(s):  
David Clifford
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Local Authority ◽  
Voluntary Sector ◽  
Recent Change ◽  
Revolutionary Change ◽  
Disadvantaged Communities ◽  
Local Government Finance ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Deprived Areas

Over the last decade, the local government finance system in England has experienced ‘genuinely revolutionary change’: overall revenues have declined and councils are now more reliant on locally raised taxes. Importantly, the nature of change has varied geographically: urban councils serving poorer communities have experienced the biggest declines in their service spending. This paper considers the impact of these spatially uneven changes on the voluntary sector. We follow through time charities known to be in receipt of local government funding at the time of peak council budgets in 2009–2010 and describe trends in the income of these charities until 2016–2017. We show that, just as the pattern of change in local government financing has been spatially uneven, so the trend in charities’ income has varied geographically. Indeed the spatially regressive nature of recent change in charities’ income is remarkable: while the median charity in the least deprived decile of the local authority distribution experienced little change in their income, the median charity in the most deprived decile experienced a 20% decline. The results provide the strongest evidence to date that, in countries with a history of partnership between government and the voluntary sector, voluntary organisations in more deprived areas are particularly vulnerable to sizeable reductions in the level of local government spending. Indeed, by illustrating for the first time the sizeable reductions in the income of charities in disadvantaged communities, the results demonstrate an important mechanism through which ‘austerity urbanism’ becomes salient in the lives of individuals in deprived areas.

Making the Break

1983 ◽  
Vol 31 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 26-39
Author(s):  
Mary Brailey
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Battered Women ◽  
Local Authority ◽  
Housing System ◽  
Effective Change ◽  
Marital Breakdown ◽  
Minimum Separation

Mary Brailey's paper reports on research into the rehousing of women after marital breakdown in four local authority areas in Scotland. The four areas represented a range of allocation and homelessness policies. The paper identifies the underlying assumptions of rehousing policies in cases of marital breakdown. One such assumption is that people fabricate stories of breakdown, manipulating the housing system in order to secure a house, move to a better house or evade rent arrears. The research uncovered no evidence of such abuse; most women did not have a sufficiently sophisticated knowledge of the housing system to manipulate it in the manner suggested. Another assumption is that marital breakdown is a ‘bad thing’ and that reconciliation is to be preferred. This leads to procedures designed to give the parties time for reconsideration, minimum separation periods being stipulated by some authorities. In the four areas studied the proportion of battered women whose applications for rehousing were successful varied from 19 per cent to 52 per cent; they were usually denied access to the better housing. The author argues that if the underlying assumptions were changed, there would be scope for effective change within the existing framework of law and local government operations.

scholarly journals Outsourcing or Giving all Out? Experience from Tanzania Local Government Revenue Collection

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukio Mrutu ◽  
Pendo Mganga
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Local Authority ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Clear Picture ◽  
Government Revenue ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Fiscal Autonomy ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
Revenue Collection ◽  
Expected Outcome

Outsourcing revenue collection in Local Government Authorities  has been adopted as a mechanism to solve the previous problems of revenue collection which resulted into loss and missmanagement of the whole process. One of the expectations was to increase revenue collection which will  provide a room for fiscal autonomy. However, experience from few local government authorities which have outsourced their revenue collection shows that, the whole process of outsourcing has not yielded the expected outcome especially on enabling local authorities to have fiscal autonomy instead it has turned to benefit the private agent who collect Tax. By using secondary data this paper attempts to show how the process of outsourcing is benefiting the private agent and therefore it is like giving everything out. It concludes that, though outsourcing seems to benefit local authorities by reducing some tasks especially on tax collection, outsorcing benefits much a private agent and therefore quick meausures should be adopted including building the capacity of Local Authorities in identifying the sources of revenue and  in estimating the actual collections so as to have clear picture of how much will be generated by the agent and what should be the appropriate amount to be submitted to the Local authority.

scholarly journals Evaluation Of Public Service Standart (Case Study At The Education And Training Agency Of Yogyakarta Special Region)

ARISTO ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 239
Author(s):  
Muhammad Khozin ◽  
Gerry Katon Mahendra ◽  
Anike Febriyani Nugraha
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Service Provider ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Education And Training ◽  
Competency Development ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
The Government ◽  
Standard Documents ◽  
Service Standards ◽  
And Training

Improvement and quality assurance of public services is very needed, therefore the Government through Law Number 25 of 2009 concerning Public Services and Minister of Administrative Reform and Bureaucratic Reform Number 15 of 2014 concerning Guidelines for Service Standards requires that every public service provider be obliged to establish and apply Public Service Standards for each type of service that it provides. One of them is the Yogyakarta Education and Training Agency as a public service provider in the form of education, training, and competency development for the State Civil Apparatus. Public service standard documents that have been prepared by the Yogyakarta Education and Training Agency in 2017 need to be evaluated because they allegedly did not meet the method in the preparation process. The research conducted is a literature review with data mining techniques using observation techniques, interviews, mini focus group discussions and public hearings. Based on the research results it is known that the public service standard documents that have been owned by the Yogyakarta Education and Training Agency are still not comprehensive, but this solution is then obtained after an analysis and discussion with stakeholders at the Yogyakarta Education and Training Agency has also successfully identified various types of services that need to be it is prioritized to develop public service standards.

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