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This paper examines the relationship between government economic development programming and entrepreneurial activity, by examining evidence in Southern California cities. While numerous studies explore this relationship between government institutions and entrepreneurship at the level of countries and states, significant questions remain at the level of city government, and the influence of local government economic development programs on city-level entrepreneurial activity.

This paper uses regression analysis of data from all 215 Southern California cities to decompose the complex relationships between economic development programming and different types of entrepreneurial activity.

Results suggest startups are attracted to cities with higher crime rates, more diversity, and older populations, yet not those with higher levels of economic development programming. There is evidence that some types of economic development programming may influence entrepreneurship, especially for the level of minority-owned businesses.

The paper makes three important contributions to the literature. First, it is among the first to use local (city-level) entrepreneurship as an outcome variable to measure the effect of government economic development programming. Many scholars have instead chosen to look at outcomes relating to general economic growth (e.g. new jobs) rather than outcomes specific to local entrepreneurship. Second, it explores city-wide entrepreneurial activity with respect to numerous measures, such as start-ups, minority and female ownership, and self-employment. Third, it examines the potential influence of economic development programming, both on aggregate and decomposed into economic development program clusters.

Reflects on the past decade of change in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Notes the varying degrees of successful reform and aid/technical assistance for the region provided by international organizations. Examines efforts to provide technical assistance through the application of best practice to local governments. Develops a case study, using Hungary as a setting, of a local government deputy mayor and simulates a technical assistance best practice transfer. Describes also an alternative home‐grown best practice project at the local level. Lessons learned from these projects show that historical and contextual conditions have a very large impact on capacity building efforts in countries of transition; political values have to be developed and an organizational infrastructure to express them is essential. Ultimately, the knowledge and skills of senior managers must be cultivated, to assist them in nurturing the social capital needed for them to govern effectively.

The Institute for Local Government is a research and knowledge exchange partnership which was established to facilitate collaboration between some of the North East’s major public sector institutions and its academic community drawn from the region’s Universities.

This chapter presents a summary and reflection on its roles, activities, funding, outputs and outcomes, operational experience, the problems of long-term sustainability and the lessons that can be drawn from this pioneering initiative in the North East throughout the last decade and the implications for the next decade.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and try to understand the human side of public sector reform (PSR) in local government in Ghana in the context of the challenges facing human resource capacity building and development policies.

Adopting an exploratory case study design, the paper triangulates both secondary and primary sources of data. Primary data were generated from self‐completing questionnaire and interview schedule tools covering 105 local government employees selected from national, regional and district levels. Semi‐structured interviews also solicited views from 16 senior public officers and managers in nine public and quasi‐public organizations. These primary sources were complemented with relevant secondary documents from the organisations investigated.

It was found that Ghana's PSR has significantly influenced the strategic direction of human resource development policies of the decentralized local government service. Major challenges in human resource capacity manifest themselves as related to policy, task, skill and organisation issues and performance motivation.

Addressing the human resource capacity challenges has enormous strategic and financial resource implications for policy makers in transitional and developing economies, due to their over‐reliance on external donors for funding.

Unlike previous studies, this paper did not explore HR capacity issues of elected officials; rather, it focused on the public servants (technocrats) implementing local political decisions. Of much value is that the results were derived from the experience of frontline local government staff, whose day‐to‐day inputs are critical for effective decentralization.

The tenuous financial viability of many of Georgia’s rural hospitals has driven increased scrutiny of the hospital authorities (HAs) that own and govern them. HAs are a type of “special district” established in state law to allow for specialization of function, while evading statutes that can limit local government borrowing and multi-year contracts. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper uses a case example to introduce transparency and accountability in one local Georgia hospital and expands to include a descriptive analysis of transparency measures in 29 rural Georgia HAs.

Findings indicate that, like many other special districts in Georgia and the USA, Georgia’s rural HAs often act more like private entities than the public organizations they are. The lack of transparency demonstrated in this sector limits access to public information and reduces opportunities for citizen engagement, a necessary component of representative institutions.

This case study is limited to Georgia HAs; however, the data support the lack of accountability and transparency found in many special district governments.

The lack of transparency in all of the organizations reviewed in this study demonstrates blurred lines between between public matters and private interests and raises questions of transparency, a key value in democracies.

This paper seeks to explore and understand the public sector reform (PSR) as it affects local governments in Ghana within the context of challenges facing human resource capacity building and development policies.

Adopting an exploratory case study design, the research triangulated both secondary and primary sources of data. Primary data generated from self‐completing questionnaire and interview schedule tools covering 105 local government employees selected from national, regional and district levels. Semi‐structured interviews also solicited views from 16 senior public officers and managers in nine public and quasi‐public organizations. These primary sources were complemented with relevant secondary documents from the organizations investigated.

Amongst others, it was found that Ghana's PSR has significantly influenced the strategic direction of human resource development policies of the decentralized local government service. Major human resource capacity challenges manifest three‐dimensionally as: policy, task/skill/organization and performance motivation induced.

Addressing the human resource capacity challenges has enormous strategic and financial resource implications for policy makers in transition and developing economies, due to their over‐reliance on external donors for funding.

Unlike previous studies, this empirical study did not explore human resource capacity issues of elected officials; rather, it focused on public servants (technocrats) implementing local political decisions. Of much value is that the results were from the perspective of the frontline local government staff whose day‐to‐day inputs are critical for effective decentralization.

National policy's inadequate evidential base potentially undermines the modernising social services agenda. Energy may be diverted from the production of welfare and real performance for the people by ‘tick box’ preoccupation with targets that are not outcome‐driven and through ‘death by a thousand inspections’.

The study aims to provide a clear framework of steps on how to implement the balanced scorecard model at the level of measuring and managing local performance, with a mix between what theoretical approaches show in this matter and examples of applied experiences in different contexts.

The study relies on the case study approach, which was used to present pioneer experiences in the field of application of the model on local government's level, namely, in the USA, England and South Africa. This paper was done by reviewing the original balanced scorecard literature and writings regarding the public and local government sector. This literature formed the basis for analyzing the various sections of study.

Balanced scorecard is one of the important models for developing and measuring local performance. International experiences under study confirmed that application of the model requires the following: The availability of bureaucratic will at the local level to apply the model, necessity of capacity building of local government units to apply it, introduction of institutional and strategic changes to the local units to be able to build their own performance cards, as well as strengthening local information systems, and not standardizing the performance cards at the different local administrative units.

This study will be useful for scholars, policymakers and local executive leaders on ways to apply the balanced scorecards at the local government units.

This paper aims to construct an assessment framework to establish a maturity model for Web Electronic Services offered at a local government level and investigate the maturity of Greek municipalities in the E-Government field, trying to correlate how this is affected by demographic variables.

An original assessment framework regarding municipal Electronic Services was created based on the literature review. The assessment framework was included in a methodological approach supported by the PROMETHEE II method, as well as by selected statistical methods. The framework and the methodological approach were applied in the case of Greek municipalities.

The analysis revealed the low maturity level of Greek municipalities in Electronic Services sector. The Greek case study indicated that the proposed framework and methodological approach could provide useful insights to municipalities for the improvement of its E-Government Web services based on their strategic preferences.

The assessment took place only in Greece, assessing all the country's municipalities and conducting research only in the municipalities’ websites. The proposed methodology suggests that the PROMETHEE II multi-criteria decision analysis method can support the assessment of the maturity level of local government entities. Moreover, the combination of the PROMETHEE II–empowered assessment framework with demographic statistical analysis can assist orthological decision-making concerning future investments in Web Electronic Services. The methodology could be a good option for future research efforts (assessments) in municipalities, in Greece and worldwide.

The framework is both easy to use and fairly complete. The fact that the assessment was conducted in all the Greek municipalities makes it much more reliable, as it provides the whole picture. The suggested methodology which includes the proposed framework could be used in the cases of municipalities in other countries to assist future actions concerning the investment in Web Electronic Services.

This study provided a medium-size framework, being both complete and easy to use during the evaluation process of all the municipalities in Greece. In addition, the statistical analysis received data from a decision-making tool to execute the clustering (Cluster analysis is usually performed based on the raw data).

In this paper, the aim is to develop a framework for evaluating the web sites of public authorities. The proposed framework consists of four axes: two for assessing the general characteristics and content of the web sites (namely general characteristics and e‐content); and two for assessing specific functionalities addressing their governmental character (namely e‐services and e‐participation).

The proposed framework is gradually built through a critical analysis of the two relevant domains, web site evaluation and e‐government. The methodology used in the case study includes the construction of an appropriate questionnaire for assessing the framework metrics. The practical use of the framework is demonstrated by means of a case study, namely evaluating the web sites of Greek public authorities at local and regional level.

The proposed framework presents a more holistic approach to e‐government web site evaluation, while the case study provides some interesting results with regards to the shortcomings of Greek public authority web sites.

The proposed framework could be further enhanced by incorporating an evaluation of the demand site of e‐government. Moreover, a more thorough approach with regard to privacy would have to include metrics to be answered directly by IT security personnel.

The proposed framework can be used for evaluating the web sites of public authorities in a more comprehensive way. As an example, the case study reveals significant results of practical importance by indicating overall progress, aspects that are under‐developed, etc.

This paper provides a novel framework to e‐government web site evaluation that also considers e‐government services and e‐participation. We anticipate that it will be of interest to both researchers and practitioners alike.