BasicGov / BLOG

Ahead of the Curve blog series authored by HB Lanarc and sponsored by BasicGov explores six major trends in municipal management in the 21st century, including a move to adopt sustainable practices. And leading communities are taking on all of these, and are leveraging benefits through their response to each trend. Read Trend 5 below and comments are always welcome. Read Trend 1, Trend 2, Trend 3, Trend 4.

Trend 5: A Greater Need for Risk Management in Local Governments

Defending legal suits is a serious financial and resource burden for local governments, making prevention a worthwhile investment. Efficiently meeting regulatory and process schedule requirements is essential to preventing costly challenges in the long-run. In planning processes, the most common legal challenges are procedural, where a public notification timing requirement was not met, or an upper tier agency referral was missed. To err is human, so effective tracking and information management systems that minimize errors are a valuable cost-saving tool for local governments.

Click here to read Ahead of the Curve white paper

It is encouraging to see that in a recent survey conducted by Mustel Group and sponsored by us (BasisGov) that software is being used by local governments to help manage neighborhood complaints (code enforcement) but there is still a myth among the non-users that it is costly.

• Approximately 80% said that the foreclosure crisis has resulted in an increase in citizen complaints over the past year;
• The most frequent complaints were overgrown yards (87%), property damage (61%) and garbage dumping (47%);
• 88% do not plan to increase staff to manage the overall problem;
• 79% of the municipalities surveyed use software applications to manage their code enforcement process and already one in four of those were using web-based software;
• among non-users, 61% thought cost a deterrent in planning to implement software.

With the rise in foreclosures, increase in related complaints at city halls and the freeze on hiring more staff, overcoming the high cost myth will help many municipalities.

Do you think cost is the only deterrent?

(Photo credit – http://www.flickr.com/photos/respres/ / CC BY 2.0)