Municipalities have the necessary processes, policies and protocols available to deliver services effectively, but struggle to execute complex projects involving many organisations and stakeholders.

Clearly defined roles and responsibility matrices together with key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor municipal processes and measure performance will bring the responsibilities of civil servants in line with these existing processes and monitoring systems, says service management specialist provider and consultancy Marval Africa executive director Edward Carbutt.

“The behaviour of people is what must be changed. This is not an onerous or difficult process, but rather relies on the devolution of accountability and responsibility to people who take ownership of the processes and activities within. The secret to changing behaviours and introducing new processes is KPIs.”

KPIs enable the overarching objectives of municipal programmes to be divided into smaller KPIs that measure various departmental functions or individual projects, thereby enabling the overriding strategy to become measurable milestones and subsequently improving the framework for delivery.

“However, experience is important to ensure that capabilities are sufficient to use resources optimally. This is where benchmarking against relevant standards and against similar organisations can provide effective tools to ensure good corporate governance.

“This, in turn, will allow for continuity, capability and experience to accrete in departments.”

While service delivery is sometimes perceived as poor or inefficient, the lack of monitoring and measurements reduces the ability to report on progress and to improve processes.

“Internal operational-level agreements are key to reducing delays in projects and unifying the departments and teams in an often disparate organisation. These agreements are effective ways of ensuring that the workflow is well managed and progresses within good time,” explains Carbutt.

This also reduces conflict, as the managers and department heads will also have KPIs linked to their department’s performance, which derive from the overarching strategy. They are, therefore, accountable for ensuring that work is attended to timeously and in concert with other departments.

“Contractor and underpinning supplier service- level agreements are also important to ensure that they can be measured so that KPIs and, subsequently, the objectives of the strategy, can be enforced to ensure performance and effective delivery by all the role-players in the supply chain,” he adds.

Further, there is a limit to what can be achieved by a municipality that has limited resources, time and capacity, without taking cost effectiveness into consideration. Thus, what the citizenry expects from a project is rarely what is delivered by the project.

“However, expectation management of municipal projects can be improved and the negative sentiment of communities reduced through effective process monitoring, reporting and communications of the milestones reached.”

Meanwhile, efficiency and cost effectiveness are further issues that can be addressed through careful application of corporate governance tools, specifically roles.

“Each process requires an owner, a person who will ensure that critical success factors for each process must also be defined to integrate the process into the overall strategy and allow for the criteria for the KPIs to be properly defined to monitor the process. These can then be defined in terms of role, which enable the relevant individuals to be given the responsibility for the work piece.