Abstract
Faced with a context of national and state reform agendas as well as resource scarcity, Australian local government has pressing workforce development issues. This level of government is small in scale, geographically dispersed and subject to variations in state jurisdiction. These factors represent structural constraints to identifying and advocating a national approach for addressing workforce needs such as the provision of tailored education and professional development. This paper documents a sector consultation process exploring education and professional development for local government which aimed to identify needs on both supply and demand sides. The research found that aspirations for education and professional development tailored to the needs of local government aim to support the development of better local governance and leadership, and to address critical skills shortage issues. This may provide empirical grounds for promoting, planning, implementing and evaluating capacity-building initiatives in this third tier of government in the Australian federation.
Highlights
Faced with a context of national and state reform agendas as well as resource scarcity, Australian local government has pressing workforce development issues
72% were interested in facilitated problem-solving with peers in other councils and 71% were interested in exchange opportunities with other councils. These findings suggest that peer learning and good practice exchange would be fruitful methodologies to incorporate in education and professional development programmes for local government
The diversity within the sector is reflected in access to modes of learning, and the programme inventory and survey undertaken within this study identified these as vocational education and training (VET) and tertiary qualifications, seminars, workshops, conferences, mentoring, e-learning and written reference material
Summary
In contrast to other English-speaking countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States of America, Australia’s local government has historically had a relatively narrow range of functions. Building local government’s capacity to anticipate and plan for these changes is crucial to ensuring the delivery of efficient and effective services (Tan 2012) Both elected representatives and local council employees need to have an understanding of the legislative environment as it impacts upon the work of local government, and they preferably need the skills to track the implications of legislative changes. Key findings and implications from this study are described in this paper, in which the rationale for a focus on education and training is linked to understanding local governments as learning organisations (Örtenblad 2002; Rashman et al 2009), and to acknowledge the particular features and workforce needs of local government in Australia. In order for organisational changes to endure, managers and employees need to incorporate innovations into their daily routines, and this requires provision of resources to develop new processes and practices, to train employees and to test and experiment with innovations (Fernandez and Rainey 2006, p. 172); it suggests that training should focus on equipping local government managers to be generalists, so as best to meet the evolving and changing needs of employees (Cox et al 2010, p. 334)
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