Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Local government
• proximity to major towns (in the case of smaller settlements) where services
can more easily be accessed. 73
According to James, the provision of performance information by local
governments affects citizen expectations of and satisfaction with local government
performance: ‘Information is valuable because it helps them exercise choice as
users of services through knowledge of what they expect to receive’. 74 Community
satisfaction surveys are one way Australian local governments determine citizens’
expectations and assess performance. Typically, these surveys ask ratepayers to
indicate how important each service is to them, their satisfaction with what has
been delivered and what they feel needs improving. 75
Community satisfaction surveys have become powerful tools to examine and
communicate citizens’ expectations in terms of service delivery and the
community’s judgement about performance. They help local governments to
identify gaps between expectations and performance and highlight areas where
performance improvement is needed. Increasingly, the findings of these surveys
form the basis of local government annual reports and are being fed into major
whole-of-organisation service delivery review processes. 76
Conclusions: a public value approach to local government
Australia’s local governments are increasingly important to the proper function of
economies, communities and environments across the country. This is is reflected
in the growing diversity of their legal foundations, characteristics, governing
arrangements and funding. While recent reform agendas have focused more on
structural and monetary outcomes, the introduction of community strategic
planning, with place shaping and performance management as guiding principles,
is an exciting development that reflects the evolved role of local governments in
contemporary Australia society.
As local governments assume a greater role in society, beyond services to
property, they must strive to meet rising community expectations in increasingly
constrained and layered service-delivery contexts. This requires new frameworks
to guide their activities. Discussion of ‘public value’ has been widespread in public
policy since Mark Moore developed the conceptual framework for it in 1995. 77
There is strong support for public value as a guiding principle for contemporary
local governments because it is seen as enhancing service-delivery outcomes. 78
73 Independent Local Government Review Panel 2012, 6.
74 James 2011, 1431.
75 Morton Consulting 2014.
76 Ryan and Hunting 2015.
77 Alford and O’Flynn 2009; Williams and Shearer 2011.
78 See Benington 2009.
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