The
coordinated management of community security
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One of the main strategic initiatives of the Blair Government in the United Kingdom is improved quality at Local Administration level. It has therefore been promoting, since the end of 1997, a programme called "Best Value", which endeavours to obtain the highest standard of quality from local services, and at the lowest possible cost. The definition of these standards of quality must take account of the specific needs and expectations of the citizens in each municipality. The evaluation of the standard of quality of the municipal services carried out by Bradford Town Council highlights the importance of successfully obtaining a balance between the active participation of the employees lending the service and the application of methods and techniques that assure the highest objectivity. Only by means of this employee participation will we succeed in obtaining their commitment to the results of the evaluation and to the measures for improving municipal output. We have to promote the plurality of the people lending these municipal services. Town councils have to give equal opportunities to both municipal entities and private companies in order to let them show their ability to improve the standard of the quality of services they offer. In 1998, an evaluation was initiated on the pilot projects of the "Best Value" programme, in which 40 British town councils are taking part. The first results show the need for the standards of quality to be sufficiently specified and for them to include a definite time limit for completion. Likewise, together with the external audits, the town councils have to concentrate their efforts on their own process of internal learning in order to measure the quality of their management. In 1998, certain English town councils, such as those of Manchester and Braintree, started drawing up their own Municipal Performance Plan. During this pilot stage, the Manchester plan is concentrating on three municipal services and is paying special attention to satisfying citizens' demands, which have been duly identified through the carrying out of a series of opinion polls. For its part, Braintree Town Council has combined all of municipal services under one synthetic plan, which covers its activities as a whole. The British "Best Value" programme offers the following highly interesting guidelines for promoting the modernisation of the municipal administration in Metropolitan Bilbao. 1. Management with the use
of data as an essential element for the continuous improvement of municipal
performance.
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The
coordinated management of community security
Achieving high levels of safety is an essential requirement for the success of Metropolitan Bilbao's revitalisation process. Thus, for example, making the most of human capital, the ability to attract new investment, tourist and business development, social cohesion or progress as regards the urban and environmental operations of regeneration are closely connected to citizen security.Local initiatives aimed at increasing citizen security in the United States have been reinforced by the federal programme "Community Oriented Police Services" (COPS), which has funded the hiring of 100,000 policemen and women to patrol North American cities, thereby increasing collaboration between citizens and the police.
Parallel to the development of public-private collaboration, it is also necessary to strengthen mechanisms of partnership between the different institutions with authority in Metropolitan Bilbao. In this respect, lessons must be taken from the experience of the "Bilbao Ría 2000" project and other organisations comprising different public administrations, with an end to providing an efficient and coordinated solution to the important challenges of the Bilbao metropolis.One of the main obstacles to public-public partnerships is the distrust between the different administrative levels and the diversity of organisational cultures. In order to overcome these obstacles, it is advisable to promote a programme that would facilitate labour mobility and an exchange of public employees between the different administrations.
A public-public partnership, based on a high degree of confidence, would solve the shortages of the present model of interadministrative collaboration. This model is based on sophisticated contracts and regulations aimed at preventing one side from reaping the benefits of cooperation mechanisms to the detriment of others.
The
rationalisation of Autonomous Administration structures
The increasing use of office computer systems in the different Public Administrations, and the excessive differentiation between administrative positions give rise to the need to promote a definitive rationalisation. With this end, and within the scope of the General Plan on Human Resources, the Basque Government has initiated a project to classify the job positions of its administrative and administrative assistants, which presently have more than 80 different denominations.The rationalisation of administrative positions started with the drawing up of a job description based on the functions they were supposed to involve, but not including the tasks or procedures that specify the development of these functions.
The
quality of municipal management
During the 90s, improving service quality has become an important part of the initiatives related to the modernisation of municipal management on a world scale. Hence, a growing number of town councils have started to encourage the drawing up of pilot plans or projects on quality, independently of their status, characteristics or political importance.In keeping with the principles of "New Public Management", quality methods and techniques have spread rapidly throughout local governments in the Anglo-Saxon countries of the OECD. For example, according to a survey carried out by Florida University on town councils with populations of over 25,000 inhabitants throughout the USA, 33% had already initiated TQM projects in 1993.
Superficial analysis of the recent initiatives taken to improve quality in Spanish town councils revealed the different approaches used: service menus (Barcelona), the assurance of quality (Logroño), total quality management (Vitoria-Gasteiz), citizens' suggestions and complaints (Alcobendas) or the re-engineering of processes (Mungia).
The definition of local government standards must consider the subject from the citizen-client perspective, putting aside opinions exclusively based on the view of the person lending the service. This said, in town councils with little experience in the field of service quality, it is more practical to base the first quality improvement initiatives on the view of this said person.
Municipal quality improvement initiatives have to simultaneously strengthen the twin characteristics of the citizen as a customer and owner of the town council. To this end, business guidelines on quality must be accompanied by mechanisms to encourage the participation of citizens in municipal management. This participation will only be effective if preceded by actions related to the education and providing of information to citizens.
Management quality at local government level implies an enormous upheaval in organisational culture, and includes the improvement of internal communication, the joint training of civil servants, leaders of the political and executive management, and the design and introduction of an incentive system to encourage the evaluation of quality.
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