Including the 2015 McGredy Winder SOLGM Local Government Excellence Awards®

13 March 2015

Dear :Person_firstname:

A Great Response for our Excellence Awards

We are very pleased to advise that there have been 36 entries across the five categories of the 2015 McGredy Winder SOLGM Local Government Excellence Awards®. This is double the level of interest of last year's Awards and we believe this to be the second highest number of entries the Awards have attracted (the start pre-dates our electronic records).

Our Sector Improvement Manager, Raymond Horan has reported that this year’s entries have been eclectic and believes the judges will have a hard task picking from so many great ideas.

The Council Community Relations, Transforming Service Delivery and Building Organisational Capability categories received a large number of entries and will be especially competitive.

The winners of these categories, as well as the new Brookfield Lawyers Environmental Leadership and Sustainability category and the Joined up Local Government category will be announced at the SOLGM Gala Dinner on 16 April.

As always, the Supreme Award winner will be selected from amongst the category winners. It too will be announced on 16 April.

If you would like to part of this celebration of excellence in local government management, you can register for the dinner here.

Deadline Reminder for Applications for our Overseas Manager Exchanges and Leadership Scholarships

These will also be announced at the Gala Dinner so a reminder that the deadline for applications is 31 March.

Information on our Overseas Manager Exchanges, sponsored by Civic Assurance and JLT, can be found here.

Information on our Leadership Scholarships, sponsored by The Skills Organisation, the Leadership Development Centre and Opus, can be found here.

New Public Consultations and Engagement Listing on Govt.nz

Govt.nz have recently developed a public consultations and engagement listing to make it easier for the New Zealand public to get involved in government decision making by listing public consultations that are happening, across both central and local government. Not all of the consultations from every source are there now but it’s an important step to support New Zealand’s Open Government commitment, by making it easier for people to have their say.

The consultation listing can be searched by topic to make it easier for people to find out what’s happening in an area of interest, like health or education. There are also plans to enable email subscription to the listings. RSS feeds are already in place so those interested can keep up-to-date with new listings for certain topics.

Govt.nz want to know about formal consultations or other public engagement activities coming up that you’d like to add to the listing or help you promote. Please get in touch govtnz@dia.govt.nz