Measuring the Effectiveness of New Zealand’s Local Government

Abstract

Local Government New Zealand’s recently introduced CouncilMARKâ„¢ scheme assesses local councils’ effective management of finance and resources, their leadership and their responsiveness to their communities, and enables them to be compared and the prospect for collaboration towards improved performance explored. Other measures of reputation and ratepayer participation suggest that CouncilMARK may be over-emphasising managerial capability relative to stakeholder engagement, which may have implications for the scheme’s value if community well-being is introduced as a prominent measure of performance.