The National Benchmarking Initiative is a joint initiative of the South African Local Government Association (SALGA), the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) and the Water Research Council (WRC).

The goal is to promote improved performance of water services by all water services providers in South Africa.

The initiative undertakes annual benchmarking of key performance indicators for the provision of water services in participating municipalities. This process involves site visits and quality control (of data) to ensure consistency and reliability. Outcomes are presented at an annual benchmarking conference to highlight achievements and best practices and to direct learning efforts to areas where improvements can be achieved.

ROLE OF BENCHMARKING

The South African water sector faces four key challenges in the short and medium term:

• to increase affordable access to water supply and sanitation services;
• to ensure that the services provided are sustainable;
• to develop the necessary capacity to meet the above two challenges; and
• to improve performance so as to meet the above challenges in the most effective and efficient way.

Benchmarking will play an important role in helping the sector to assess to what extent water services providers are meeting these challenges and, in particular, to what extent sector performance is improving over time. More significantly, benchmarking will help to identify best practices from which others can learn as well as areas most needing improvement.

WORKSHOP

The partners Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, Water Research Commission and the South African Local Government Association will be hosting the third annual benchmarking workshop in KZN, Umhlanga on 26 - 28 February 2008.  Further details on the conference are obtainable from Mr. William Moraka, at 012 369 8056, 082 308 5519, email: wmoraka@salga.org.za. 

Invitation to Conference

Registration Form

Read the October 2007 Edition of the Newsletter

SALGA and GCI Provide Provincial LED Training for Municipal Officials Beginning on October 18th, SALGA and GlobalCommunity Initiatives (GCI)have provided a two-day training session on sustainable development to municipal officials from cities and rural areas around the country. Trainers from both organisations are traveling to six provinces to talk about how to use effective strategies to lift people out of poverty while at the same time restoring the natural resource base that supports community life. Gwendolyn Hallsmith of GCI and Dick Ebersohn from the City of Calgary in Alberta, Canada are the two trainers, with David Bambata from SALGA as the lead organiser, with assistance from Sylvia Maluleke. Hallsmith has written two workbooks for community leaders to use - Taking Action from Sustainability: The EarthCAT Guide to Community Development, which is a Guidebook to implementing the Earth Charter on the local level, and Local Action for Sustainable Economic Renewal (LASER), which applies the same principles to local economic development. The workbooks and the presentations amde at the training sessions are available at no charge from the GCI web sites listed  below. The EarthCAT and LASER sites also provide community leaders with management support software they can use to implement sustainable development planning projects. www.global-community.org/ http://www.earthcat.org/ http://www.global-laser.org/ Subjects covered in the training include: - Community Development for the 21st century - Creating Excitement and Momentum for Community Development Planning - Asset Inventory and Capacity Assessment - Introduction to Systems Thinking - Planning and implementation - Encouraging Entrepreneurs - The Creative Economy - Sustainable Economic Development Planning - Leadership and Facilitation Skills for Multi-Stakeholders Processes, and - Project Implementation The reaction to the training has been very enthusiatic. "This really helped me understand my job better," one trainee offered. "I learnt how to focus on building on the strengths of the community, rather than always focusing on the problems." Over two hundred local officials have participated, and their requests for more in-depth follow up training led SALGA and GCI to prepare a video of the training, so people who were unable to attend will be able to see it. For more information about how to get the video contact david Bambata at dbambata@salga.org.za

SALGA National Conference The South African Local Government Association (SALGA) will be hosting its National Conference (NC) at Gallagher Estate, Gauteng from the 22nd to the 26th April 2007 For more details please download the attachment below Download document National Conference Programme LATEST FINANCIALS SALGA Annual report for the period of 2004|2005. Download document SALGA Constitution Download SALGA constitution Rental Housing Download Housing Brochure Download Toolkit  for Municipal Social Housing Policy, Second Edition Download Social Housing Policy Download Social Housing Bill Download Newsletters December 2007 Newsletter  February 2008 Newsletter HIGHLIGHTED LINKS SALGA/Health-Insite AIDs Program Electoral Commission Local Government and Water SETA South African Government Online Department of Provincial and Local Government Local Government Bargaining Council Department of Water and Forestry National Treasury The Development Bank of South Africa Rand Water Eskom EDI Holdings