Swinburne Research Bank http://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au Brackertz, Nicola; Kenley, Russell (2002) A service delivery approach to measuring facility performance in local government Originally published in Facilities, 20 (3/4), 127-135.

This article draws on a three-year collaborative research project investigating how community consultation is practised by Victorian councils, especially in relation to multiple publics and groups that councils can find 'hard to reach'. Based on an analysis of consultation documents, this article looks at councils' understanding of community consultation and underlying assumptions, the expected outcomes and how this is translated into guidance for practice. The research demonstrates that councils aim to consult to provide a range of outcomes, but there is a lack of clarity about how to choose and use the appropriate combination of consultation tool(s) and public(s) to facilitate these. Councils are also unclear about how the outcomes of consultation feed into existing decision-making processes and the implications of this for democratic legitimacy. This is in part due to the fact that the conceptual tensions around consultation and the democratic process are apparent not so much by virtue of what is said about them, but of what is not said. The article begins by outlining the conceptual and definitional problems associated with consultation using typologies of public participation. We investigate how typologies inform the consultation documents developed by councils and in how far they support practice. We then address the need to involve multiple publics and the vexed issue of who is hard to reach and why they should be consulted.

This paper uses empirical data from a case study of two metropolitan councils in Melbourne, Australia. Both are committed to the strategic management of their community facilities to maximise service outcomes for their constituents. To this end they implemented a strategic tool to measure the facilities' performance, using key performance indicators. The data indicates a statistically significant correlation of the performance of the physical building and the quality of the service delivered from it, supporting the hypothesis that better physical facilities engender better service outcomes. The implications are that the strategic planning for buildings and services should be undertaken in concert to maximise the enabling effect the physical building has on service performance. While this study concentrates on council buildings, the findings may be equally applicable to other service businesses. This paper has implications for the way facility management practice should be undertaken and fills a knowledge gap about the effect which the quality of the physical surrounds has on the processes taking place within.

2002),"A service delivery approach to measuring facility performance in local government", Facilities, Vol. 20 Iss 3/4 pp. 127-135 http://dx.If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractStrategic management of facilities is now generally accepted best practice. Appraisal of facility performance has developed correspondingly and financial measures are no longer seen as the prime indicator of success. Holistic models that include the processes supporting fulfilment of an organisation's strategic aims are now considered to provide more appropriate measures. Recent focus in the service-oriented context of local government authority (LGA) facility management has particularly turned toward such models. This paper discusses the issues and inherent tensions arising from the strategic measurement of local government facilities in a service delivery context. It is argued that outwardly the strategic objective of service delivery is common to the private and public sectors, but fundamental differences in the desired outcomes and responsibilities of the two sectors require different solutions. Even if one accepts the current trend in 'balanced' performance measurement, differing parameters in the private and public sectors impact on the design and evaluation of performance measures, especially in relation to process, efficiency, strategy formulation and responsiveness of the organisation to customer needs. If a facility is considered to be an enabler of processes that lead to desired outcomes, these differences must necessarily affect the design of facility performance measurement tools. The research with eightLGAs, reported here, supports the need for a new model for the evaluation of community facilities applicable in the local government context. Using stakeholder-based focus groups, the need was identified for a service-oriented model, where the facility is understood as the intersection of aspects of service provision, physical building substance and the community utilising the facility.

In Australia financial counselling has emerged as an important component of policy responses to assist low income households and individuals in financial stress. However, the evidence on its effectiveness in alleviating or resolving debt-related issues is patchy. This article contributes much-needed empirical evidence on its impact on low income households and presents the results of a recent national study of financial counselling clients in Australia. The research findings demonstrate the complex factors contributing to financial stress and the effectiveness of financial counselling in providing positive outcomes on a range of measures, including debt resolution, financial capability and health and wellbeing, and highlight the importance of early intervention. From a policy perspective, the study points to the importance of having a mix of strategies to address financial stress in low income earners that combine approaches based on individual responsibility and models based on social justice and advocacy.