Original Research
Efficiency measurement of basic service delivery at South African district and local municipalities
The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa | Vol 5, No 2 | a133 |
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/td.v5i2.133
| © 2009 Brian Dollery, Gert van der Westhuizen
| This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 02 March 2016 | Published: 04 April 2009
Submitted: 02 March 2016 | Published: 04 April 2009
About the author(s)
Brian Dollery, Economics and Public Policy University of New, England Armidale, AustraliaGert van der Westhuizen, North-West University, Vaal Campus, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa
Full Text:
PDF (357KB)Abstract
South Africa has experienced immense changes in the post- apartheid era and coordinated local public policy has sought to expand and improve the level of basic services provided to previously disadvantaged people. Local government has played a pivotal role in this process and has been subjected to intense reform in an effort to enhance its effective- ness and broaden its range of activities. While a number of scholars have examined the administrative, political and social dimensions of the local government reform program, little attention has focused on the economic efficiency of service delivery. This paper seeks to remedy this neglect by evaluating the productive efficiency with which municipal councils have delivered electricity, domestic waste removal, sanitation and water in line with their new responsibilities using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) techniques applied to cross-sectional data covering the period 2006/2007 for 231 local municipalities and 46 district municipalities.
Keywords
Efficiency; local government; local service delivery; South Africa
Metrics
Total abstract views: 2599Total article views: 1696
Crossref Citations
1. Local governments' efficiency: a systematic literature review—part I
Isabel Narbón‐Perpiñá, Kristof De Witte
International Transactions in Operational Research vol: 25 issue: 2 first page: 431 year: 2018
doi: 10.1111/itor.12364