Entries are now open for Kiwi council teams to register for next year’s Australasian Management Challenge. Teams can sign up anytime between November 1, 2018, and February 28, 2019, to take part in the New Zealand leg of the challenge.
SOLGM strongly advises councils to get in early so they can get started on the initial pre-challenge...
SOLGM asked Ruth Le Pla to go see for herself the New Zealand heats of the
Australasian Management Challenge. She came away exhausted and impressed.
ROB GOLSBY
For Rob Golsby, there’s no question that the Management Challenge can be transformative. A member of last year’s Tauranga City Council Blue Sky team – the team that...
Samantha Gain is manager, legal and procurement at the Greater Wellington Regional Council. She has also just been elected president of IPWEA NZ. She took time out at the organisation’s annual conference in Dunedin to talk with Ruth Le Pla about her priorities for her new role, how IPWEA NZ is evolving and the significance of being the...
Peter McKinlay announces a new resource to generate research and inform debate for the sector.
Hamilton City Council, Masterton and Waipa District Councils and Rotorua Lakes Council are leading the establishment of New Zealand’s first local government-backed think tank. The Local Government Think Tank (LGTT) aims to help New Zealand...
Last month we looked at how a new SOLGM-led skills strategy aims to make councils employers of choice. For this month’s follow-up article we asked four tier two senior executives to tell us about their own professional development. We also asked them to share their views on how the local government sector could attract and retain great...
What would it take to create careers so satisfying that it’s hard to leave local government? Or to get the brightest and best people queuing around the block to join? Bit by bit, a bold new strategy is taking shape to do just that, writes Ruth Le Pla. Plus, we’ve canvassed nine more ideas on what else could be done.
When back in...
Councils in the UK are getting a major shake-up and new models emerging for future funding, roles and relationships with central government. SOLACE president Mark Rogers answered questions at the SOLGM Summit in Auckland recently.
Mark Rogers is president of the UK’s Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE) and chief...
Can elected members make good on their election “promises” to reverse decisions of the previous council or sack the chief executive? Simpson Grierson’s Jonathan Salter and Padraig McNamara spelt out the possibilities at SOLGM’s recent annual summit.
In both local and central government elections, candidates’ election promises...
Councils argue they’re already working collaboratively. Yet central government has been pushing for more shared activities. Skirmishes have centred on provisions in the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2). Ruth Le Pla wonders why it’s all so hard to sort out.
Wai Ora: Why not?
The Waikato Healthy Rivers Wai Ora...
Rotorua Lakes Council COO Dave Foster has built a list of tools for officers wanting to improve their working relationship with their council’s risk and audit committee.
Dave Foster is no newcomer to the working ways of local government. Already embedded in the sector prior to the 1989 reforms, his career has since spanned councils in...
