Improving local democracy through ELoGE: Time’s good governance journey in Norway

Change management

The involvement of Time municipality with the Good Governance Strategy of the Council of Europe was triggered by a national pilot project. Having a strong reputation as an innovative local authority, Time was invited to participate in the first Norwegian Local Democracy Survey in 2010, designed by the Norwegian Local Government Association based on the 12 ELoGE principles, with the aim of providing Norwegian local authorities with a tool to assess the quality of local democracy. Interestingly, the tool included a survey targeted at citizens and a slighted adapted survey targeted at elected members of the municipal council.

The surveys included questions on perceptions of the state of representative and participatory democracy and how respondents saw the possibilities of influencing political issues and administrative decisions. For example, one key question was: “Are you satisfied with the opportunities to affect municipal decisions that are important to you?” Other questions focused on issues of accountability, transparency and efficiency of public services.

In Time municipality, 300 residents participated in the survey. Furthermore, all of the 27 local councillors filled out the survey.

The analysis revealed many strengths in local governance – for example, most respondents agreed with the statement “In Time municipality, elected members of the local council take the views of local residents into account”.  However, the citizen survey also showed the need to strengthen communication between the municipality and citizens and to improve social cohesion in the local area. 

The mayor of Time wished to respond to this challenge and therefore welcomed the invitation of the Norwegian Local Government Association to pilot the European Label of Governance Excellence in 2011, supported by the Norwegian Local Government Association.

Given that the ELoGE pilot had to be carried out within a short time period, the assessment had to be organised in a lean approach. Time council set up an assessment team led by the mayor, which included two officers and two local councillors. The team members were provided with evidence by local officers to assess each of 12 good governance principles of ELoGE thoroughly. The assessment team also considered the results of the recent citizen survey. For each of the 12 ELoGE themes, roundtable discussions were organized in the team, to discuss the assessments and agree on improvement actions.

The fact that Time municipality received the external ELoGE certification in February 2012 sparked off a lot of interest in the report of the assessment team, both among the political parties represented in the local council and the officers.

After the first survey among citizens and politicians, a wider working group was set up, on which all the political parties were represented. The working group met for six months to evaluate the results of the survey and to agree on actions to strengthen local democracy in Time.

The discussion in the local council that concluded with the improvement action plan.took into account the ELoGE-assessment, the experience from the surveys, the council’s own selfassessment and the expert advice of the experts from the Norwegian Local Government Association

The action plan for Time municipality was approved by the local council on 6 November 2012 and published on its website to ensure full transparency.

Key actions included:

• Strengthening of involvement of local councillors with specific client groups, with a particular focus on ‘disadvantaged’ citizens.
• Information about complaints made to the municipality and the council’s response to those complaints, including any changes made , are made public on the website.
• Development of a long-term sustainability strategy with the involvement of local people.
• Strengthening inter-municipal co-operation to make local public services more efficient.
• Strengthening of internal audit to reduce the risk of fraud and corruption
• Improving social cohesion in the local area – for example, Time municipality has used pupils from the local Norwegian language school centre as a reference group in city planning.

Following an invitation from the Council of Europe, Time council also presented its action plan at an international conference in Strasbourg in June 2013.

In January 2014, Time undertook a mid-term evaluation to assess how well action plans had been implemented and whether local democracy in Time was going in the right direction. All elected members of the municipal Council participated in this evaluation, together with the CEO and corporate management team. After this mid-term evaluation, Time carried out another citizen survey in April 2014. The results are currently being analysed and, after a new ELoGE self-assessment by the council, will shape a new action plan, to be submitted to the council in autumn 2014.