Intelligent local governance: a developing agenda

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the issues which surround making local government more intelligent. In particular, the focus of the paper is to examine how better research and more effective knowledge management can assist this process. Local government is a particularly fertile area for analysis given the large scale managerial and structural changes being occasioned within it and a developing central government agenda to reinvent local democracy. The paper argues that developments are needed in several areas. The need for more effective information management, the need for better frameworks for assessing performance, the need to develop the "strategic capacity" of local authorities, and, perhaps most importantly, the need to create an environment in which intelligent local governance can develop and flourish.