The quality of management and work place capabilities matter if organizations want to improve their performance, particularly in terms of productivity and quality of services. In order for local government to be efficient, effective, responsive and developmental, it needs essential capabilities and capacity.

The quality of management and work place capabilities matter if organizations want to improve their performance, particularly in terms of productivity and quality of services. In order for local government to be efficient, effective, responsive and developmental, it needs essential capabilities and capacity.

The Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME), together with the assistance of Emanti, developed the LGMIM to measure or benchmark the institutional performance of municipalities across a number of key performance areas. In each key performance area, performance is assessed against standards established by the relevant transversal departments (e.g. National Treasury for financial management and Department of Water and Sanitation for water services). Each municipality is required to complete a self-assessment of its management practices in the six Key Performance Areas.

The LGMIM framework is built around 6 Key Performance Areas (KPAs), namely:

• Integrated Planning and Implementation
• Service delivery
• Human Resource Management
• Community Engagement
• Financial Management
• Governance

The purpose of the self-assessment is to assess the current level of performance of the municipality and to pinpoint areas that are in need of improvement. The self-assessment is then moderated. Moderation is a structured evidence-based quality assurance process of the municipal self-assessments by DPME supported by sector experts specifically in relation to KPA 2: Service Delivery. Municipalities are also afforded an opportunity through a review process to have their moderated scores reconsidered. At the end of this process the LGMIM provides a consolidated view of a municipality’s performance across several critical key performance areas, thus making it easier to prioritize areas that are in need of significant improvement.

The main features of the LGMIM web-enabled system are as follows:

• Homepage and log in
• Set up users, organisations, Key Performance Areas (KPAs), Standards and criteria
• Associate Municipalities with Analysts, associate Municipalities, KPAs and standards with Moderators, associate Municipalities with Observers
• Capture general information
• Conduct self-assessment, view completion status, self-assessment summary, self-assessment dashboard, submit assessment for moderation
• Moderate self-assessment, Moderator view of municipal general information, Moderator view of completion status, Moderation Summary, review of Moderation
• Finalization of self-assessment, view final dashboard, view final summary
• Improvement plan
• Administrator Dashboard
• Trend analysis and heat map

Following launch of the web-enabled LGMIM, a number of amendments have been introduced to further enhance the experience for municipal users, data analysts and system administrators. These enhancements ensure that the LGMIM is an attractive tool for municipalities to assess their current status, and help plan for future performance improvements.

Emanti continues to assist the DPME with improving and refining the LGMIM.

For more information on the LGMIM, please contact us.