Management of Capital Assets by Local Governments: An Assessment and Benchmarking Survey

Abstract

There is a growing recognition of the importance of government-owned capital assets, both conceptually and in practice, in large part due to the 2008 global financial crisis. However, a sizeable gap remains between the academic and professional “universe of knowledge” surrounding government asset management, and the actual asset management practiced by governments. In particular, the majority of governments around the world are wholly uninformed when it comes to good asset management. The purpose of this paper is to reduce this gap and suggest an instrument specifically for local governments, for the evaluation of their asset management, in order to help them to identify the weakest elements of asset management and thus focus limited resources on improving these elements. The instrument consists of essentially a composite image of good asset management practices for three main asset types: buildings, land, and infrastructure. The instrument specifies each asset management practice by its key characteristics and then converts each characteristic into a survey question. Answers are scored and a total score for each asset type is calculated. The assessment instrument can be used by local governments, their advisers, and by researchers interested in comparative analysis of asset management in different jurisdictions or countries.

Municipal caravan parks in South Africa: geography, management and planning

“…In international as well as local South African tourism scholarship caravan parks have received only minimal attention. The planning and management of caravan parks in South Africa is one facet of municipal local government asset management which is a theme of expanding scholarly enquiry mainly outside of tourism studies (Kaganova and Telgarsky, 2018;Wojewnik-Filipkowska, 2018). Caravan parks are part of the basket of immovable assets that South African local municipalities can deploy for boosting tourism and local economic development.…”

“…The assets of municipal governments vary and would include non-physical assets or financial assets as well as a basket of physical, tangible or 'immovable assets' in the form of property holdings, infrastructure and even of an array of assets of cultural, historic or environmental significance (Kaganova, 2010;Kaganova and Kopanyi, 2014). During the past decade the management of government assets has come into sharp focus both conceptually and in practice, most especially as a result of the 2008 global financial crisis which compelled local governments to re-examine and re-assess their performance in relation to a search for new revenue sources (Giglio et al, 2018;Kaganova and Telgarsky, 2018;Kaganova and Kaw, 2020). Arguably, the assets of municipal governments represent vitally important foundations for energising local economic development (Kaganova and Kopanyi, 2014) and broader-based place-based planning interventions (Rogerson, 2014;Duranton and Venables, 2019).…”

“…Improved asset management and planning for local development is thus a critical and vibrant focus for scholarly enquiry (Wojewnik-Filipkowska, 2018). Currently, the richest debates surrounding asset management practices are occurring in the global North (Kaganova and Nayyar-Stone, 2000; Kaganova and Telgarsky, 2018;Kaganaova and Kaw, 2020). Phelps (2011: 416) asserts that "Australia, New Zealand and the UK are perceived to be the most advanced driven by strong national governments".…”

Data-Interpretation Methodologies for Practical Asset-Management

“…Model-based data-interpretation has the potential to enhance asset management strategies. These strategies have been developed by many researchers using, for example, multi-criteria decision making [37,38] and asset-performance metrics [39,40].…”

A Generalised Model of Ground Lease Pricing

“…Public real estate management continues to be a relevant issue in the context of sustainability, partly because of the role of real estate resources in different management systems [1][2][3]. In many countries, municipal governments often play a key role in the development of urban areas [4,5]. It is clear that government intervention is crucial in the modern urban economy [6,7].…”