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fessions responsible for particular services. Policy
determination is a complex procedure in the ABC County Council
involving direct and indirect links at various levels.

The ABC County's officer/member structure (view appendix) has
established links between the corporate and political aspects of the
county. The members of the political hierarchy and corporate hierarchy
have similar members sharing similar responsibilities along the same
lines.

The overall structure of ABC could be simplified and made more
receptive be replacing the middle level by multi-functional teams for
processes and people oriented community services. These would be the
clearly identifiable points of interaction with the public and
responsible for coordinating the various services.

The HRM function has assumed a more important role since
reorganization. The earlier small central policy making team where the
loyalties of personnel staff were with the service areas and not the
function was brought together and renamed as the Human Resources
department. The fact that the Head of HR reports directly to the Chief
Officer rather than the head of the corporate services highlights the
rising significance of HR.

Performance management being the focal point of local government
reform emphasized the need for effective people management practices.
There was a need for management of change; this led to a search or
organizational development.

Organizational development is a vast and complex procedure involving
aspects ranging from structure and design, communication, work groups
and multi-disciplinary teams, clarification of responsibilities to
objective setting, stimulating innovation, decision making and
managing conflicts.

Environmental turbulences are bound to have an impact on the culture
of any association. The Chief Officer and Council Leader considered
cultural change as being instrumental in the transformation of ABC
County from a bureaucratic, unproductive council to one that
recognized that services should add value and be cost effective. For
this, a vision was formulated involving the following key elements:

* Focus on the customer

* Valuing employees

* Being adaptable to change

* Working in partnership and developing a performance management
culture.

A strategic framework was formulated to critically develop, monitor
and control the previously neglected Human Resource function. It is
must for employees to be well developed and valued to maximize
performance. Participation and involvement in the decision-making
processes along with employee empowerment in relevant service areas
would facilitate this. Well-articulated outcomes and expectations,
defining clear standards of behavioural working patterns and
conditions would provide a direction that aligns individual targets
with that of the teams and county. Having work planning integrated
into the overall council's long term planning process, clarifying the
roles and responsibilities for the management of people would enhance
productivity of employees. This should involve an analysis of the
future needs, keeping the future prospects flexible. Benchmarking
against other councils scoring high on the Best Value Performance
Indicators (BVPI's) would indicate comparati