Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, December 2004, 23: 45-64

The prospect of government agencies, local government and community groups working together holds a number of promises. In Waitakere City, collaborative activity in social sectors is based on a long tradition of community activism, interagency collaboration and city council facilitation. Through these processes, a number of lessons have been learnt, and a language and new processes of collaboration have been developed. Drawing on these lessons, and also on international literature and wider New Zealand policy developments, this paper explores a number of critical areas for policy around collaborative planning and partnership working. It describes the need to create a better environment for local collaboration by being much clearer about the mandates that are to be managed locally, and lining these up with appropriate funding and (shared) accountability structures. These are policy challenges for central government as well as local government. There are also everyday, practical policy issues to address, including the need to recognise and resource the roles of "strategic brokers", to enable community networks and forums to achieve better "mandated representation", and to support better-coordinated action around shared outcome indicators. In particular, it suggests the formation of local "common accountability platforms" as a sustained basis for substantive local and regional collaborative action. Source: Author's Abstract.