Key points

· Most councillors are more interested in making policies and initiating new programmes than they are in overseeing them once they are in place.

· Efficiency and effectiveness are important benchmarks for determining performance.

· If you have to sacrifice one of them for the other, make sure its efficiency. Usually there is more than one way to be efficient. Being effective is more difficult.

· Policy outcomes are more important than programme outputs.

· Three factors should dominate your efforts to oversee your own policy making and programme planning activities:

- Does it meet a demonstrated need?
- Is it feasible to implement within our community's means?
- Who else could do it as well or better than we can?

· Overseeing implementation involves closing the implementation gap before it has a chance to gape.

· When you under-resource any programme or policy activity, you are unfair to everyone involved, including yourself

· It's usually a safe bet to wager money on a council's unwillingness to fund maintenance.

· It is wise to involve all those who will be significant in the implementation of any council initiative in the planning and development of that initiative.

· Staff and institutional development should be treated as a cost of doing business in local governments and factored into every new policy and programme initiative undertaken by a council.

· Develop a monitoring and evaluation system that meets your needs and no more.

· Get consensus on all of the key issues of your policy and programme on initiatives before your staff or contractors begin to implement them.

· Don't be an over-zealous overseer. You could lose your effectiveness just when you need it most.