Managing the municipality
1 January 2007 saw the formation of a new Municipality of Skanderborg, based on the merger of the municipalities of Skanderborg, Ry, Hørning, and Galten as well as the parish of Voerladegård from the former Municipality of Brædstrup. The merger also resulted in the transfer of tasks and activities from the former counties of Aarhus and Vejle to the new Municipality of Skanderborg.
Almost two years before the actual merger, all 62 politicians from the merging municipalities started preparing the political foundation for the new and larger municipality. Before the end of 2005, the objectives and visions for the new municipality’s political and administrative structure were approved by the town councils of the four merging municipalities. And in spring 2006, the organisational outline of the new municipality was in place.
Innovation
The new municipal map of Denmark comprises 98 municipalities, of which 66 are the results of mergers. The Municipality of Skanderborg is one of the few municipalities which have consciously decided to see the municipal reform as an opportunity to try out new political and administrative structures and local government systems. The municipality has initiated a course of development which can help to create change and renewal throughout the municipal and public sector systems in Denmark. It required a dispensation from the Ministry of the Interior and Health to implement the desired political system of local government. The dispensation applies provisionally for the electoral period up until the end of 2009.
The Municipality of Skanderborg’s political and administrative structures and system of government are based on the following three basic principles:
• Policy-formulating and controlling committees: There is political agreement to move away from the traditional political committee system. Instead, the politicians will use their resources to enter into dialogue with citizens and in this way ensure the development and innovation of the municipal services. This system of government incorporates a number of control functions. They are designed to ensure that citizens receive the levels of quality and service intended by the politicians.
• Narrow central management model and just one administration: The elected politicians in the Municipality of Skanderborg want to reduce the central administrative costs. Therefore the municipality, unlike most others, does not have either five, six, seven or eight new managers, but simply a three-man management team headed by the chief executive. There are no traditional administrative departments, but just specialist secretariats. Their tasks partly involve the so-called public authority tasks such as the national register, child benefits, pensions, taking children and young people into care, processing planning applications, local planning and environmental approvals as well as the municipal functions and institutions targeted at citizens.
In practice, the structure means that “the cold administrative hands” have been replaced by “warm hands” in the direct services provided to citizens.
• Agreement and contract-managed functions and institutions: “Central control and decental management” is an underlying philosophy in the municipality’s system of government. Agreement management applies to the five staff functions and specialist secretariats. The staff functions are: Town Council & Management Secretariat, Planning & Business, Finance, HR/Staff & Wages, and Innovation & IT.
The specialist secretariats are: Children & Young People, Leisure & Culture, Employment & Citizen Service, Technology & Environment, and the Physically & Mentally Disabled.
Contract management takes place in relation to the municipality’s 87 functions and institutions, typically involving user representatives on the boards of schools, childcare institutions, residential accommodation for the elderly, institutions for the disabled etc.
Agreement and contract management is based on the adoption of the budget each year by the town council.
Development over time
The next three years of development in the Municipality of Skanderborg will be both challenging and exciting. Running in the new structures and local government systems will not happen by itself. It demands a lot of the people involved to move into “uncharted waters”, where the answers are not always available but need to be developed along the way.
The locally elected politicians have to find new ways of communicating with citizens and the new managers, and staff and specialist managers need to demonstrate that they are capable of taking a new management approach. The agreement and contract managed functions and institutions must assume responsibility for ensuring a greater degree of influence for the local user boards without the official responsibility and the visible local management thereby being lost.
Success will be entirely dependent on the will to win, and on the elected politicians, managers/employees and users/citizens being truly willing to try something new and take new paths to achieve something which goes beyond simply drawing up new municipal boundaries on a map. The aim is to enhance the quality of the core services provided by the municipality to its citizens.
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