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

Costs and savings 

Given that the Norwegian Local Government Association designed and carried out the citizen surveys in 2010 and 2014, Time municipality had no direct costs deriving from  ELoGE. Of course, the assessment process involved the co-ordination of meetings and report writing by a local officer but this did not exceed more than four days in each assessment. Obviously, ELoGE also requires elected members of the local council to engage in additional meetings. In Time this involved, in addition, a meeting with citizens after the first survey. However, our councillors would say that this was time well spent.

While the mid-term evaluation did not include a cost-benefit analysis, there is evidence that the action plan has helped Time municipality to make public service delivery more efficient. The municipal Facebook page has forced the municipality to focus more on which information to publish on the municipal web-site, news stories to follow up and what stories are suitable for a dialogue with citizens. It has, moreover, given the municipality the opportunity of fast response and correcting errors in stories published about it elsewhere. Citizens, on their side, now have the opportunity of asking both the municipality and each other for information. This provides both municipality and inhabitants with a more efficient communication system, which also gives more capacity for innovation.