CouncilMARK™ Revisited: measuring the effectiveness of New Zealand’s local government once more

Abstract

This article reviews the results of the second tranche of assessments for CouncilMARK™ , Local Government New Zealand’s voluntary quality enhancement programme. Those councils that were reassessed generally showed either a modest improvement or no change in the four priority areas assessed (governance, financial decision making, service delivery and communication). The business and corporate focus of CouncilMARK means that it yields scores that diverge markedly from those obtained by the New Zealand Local Government Survey, which focuses on public and business perceptions of council activities. The implementation of CouncilMARK has not arrested the decline of voter turnout in local body elections. Moreover, there have been no changes to either the programme’s priority areas or its procedures that recognise recent local and international research which consistently advocates a more people-focused approach to the activities of local government.