INTEGRATION FOR PERFORMANCE IN TOWN COUNCIL MANAGEMENT

Abstract

With higher expectations on quality services, fueled by the political motivation and competition, the focus on performances of Town Councils have over time and unwittingly shifted away from the delivery of services in the Town Councils' core areas of competencies to an emphasis on how much improvement and upgrading works the various Town Councils carry out. All completed works, however require maintenance. Thus, it is important that Town Councils continuously seek ways to improve on the delivery of their services in the core areas of maintaining and managing the common areas. This dissertation studies the application of the integration concept in improving performances in the Town Council's context through a case study of Hougang Town Council by examining the Town Council's operation to identify work processes which can be integrated, exploring the use of IT in facilitating integration via information sharing and finally determining if integration results in improvement in performance. The study reviewed relevant literature followed by empirical study which was analyzed via the ANOVA statistical technique. Findings show that integration of internal work processes of the Town Council with the aid of IT to facilitate information sharing leads to improved staff performances. This improvement is translated to high residents' satisfaction with the Town Council's services delivery. The study was, however limited to only a selected few work processes and the benefit of a full integration of the Town Council's operation aided by IT may not be fully realized and should be further explored for future studies.