Meetings End, Touring Begins

The commitee's meetings end this morning with a presentations on public-private partnerships in solid waste before the Mega Cities Association. Cynthia Seelhammer from the City of Phoenix will be representing ICMA by making a presentation. In the meantime, Patrice and I are off to Delhi and the Golden Triangle (Agra, Jaipur and Delhi) for a few days. I will try and sum up the trip in a few days.

Priorities in Order

********************************This statement is over the entrance to the Main State Government Building in Bangalore. We could not get this close for a photo, so I was able to find this photo on the Internet.

Shared IT Issues

The committee took a field trip to Karnataka's joint IT center. Interesting issue here is that this center operates software that was developed by a public-private partnership called eGovernments Foundation founded by the co-chairman of Infosys. Cost savings in having experts develop needed applications for free.

Manvita Baradi

Manvita is the Director of the Urban Management Center, the organization spun off from ICMA here which coordinates many of the city manager association and local government management efforts here. She coordinated two great days of meetings for us to participate in. Thanks Manvita!!

Signing Ceremony for ICMA - CMA Orissa Agreement

ICMA President Ed Daley signs a new affiliation agreement with a representative of the City Manager's Association of Orissa. Orissa is located on the east coast of India. This agreement is the 20th such agreement worldwide between ICMA and a national or subnational city managers association.

ICMA Code of Ethics Discussion

ICMA President Ed Daley, Past President Tom Lundy and ICMA International staff member Diane Crosby led a discussion on the ICMA Code of Ethics. Issues of corruption are real here at all levels of government and it has been important in the formation of the city manager associations here that the issue be discussed and strategies for addressing the problem developed. The Code of Ethics does all of this, but the concept is very foreign here. The presenters did a great job talking about the content of the Code, the importance of on-going training and the importance of having local elected officials understand the importance of their staff following an ethics code. Our Indian counterparts had many excellent insights on all of this. They observed the difficulty of getting buy in from electeds because the City Manager is appointed by the state and not the local authority, so why should the electeds care. The best observation of the day was that increasing efficiency in government would like cut down on corruption, making the introduction of a Code of Ethics that much easier.

A note about the flags on the table. The Indian and US flags are easy to recognize. The other two flags are from the State of Tennessee and the City of Alcoa, TN complements of Committee Member Bill Hammond from City of Alocoa.

Water and Sewer Systems in Bangalore

The good folks responsible for these systems came and spoke to us. A few interesting facts. 800,000 people in Bangalore get their water from public standpipes. Water is delivered to customers only every other day. Most middle class residents have a tank on the roof of their house to store water for the day the City does not deliver water to them.

ICMA and USAID

Our meetings with our Indian counterparts Tuesday started with a presentation by N. Bhattacharjee, who has been the USAID India official ICMA has worked with closely over the last ten years in our work here. Mr. Bhattacharjee spoke about what he believed were the major accomplishments of the work of USAID here:
1. Assistance with implementation of decentralization of government services from national to local governments.
2. Assistance with creation of modern financial management systems for all levels of government.
3. Assistance with creation of first municipal bonds to help finance infrastructure improvements.
4. Assistance with creation of state city manager associations and the Mega City Association.

Visit to Infosys

The Committee's last stop on Monday was a visit to the Infosys campus in Bangalore. They have built a large IT campus on the edge of Bangalore that is as modern as anywhere in the USA. We heard from an executive from the company before we received a tour of the campus. The executive made it very clear how the City of Bangalore has completed failed in its service delivery role and that is why they have had to build and equip their campus entirely by themselves with all traditional municipal services provided for their use by themselves.

Needless to say we were all a little taken aback by the comments, although I think we all understood where they were coming from. The company is one of the premier IT outsourcing companies in the world and can apparently do what they need to do here. Some among us wondered what it would have been like for Bangalore had Infosys attempted to build their complex in the midst of the problems in central Bangalore and could their large investment had a greater impact in fixing the issues the Infosys executive was now railing against.

So How Do You Become an Indian Cty Manager?

Indian City Managers are part of the Indian administrative service with deep roots in the British system. Individuals are recruited and trained and then assigned to work in various parts of the government. The city managers here are not hired and fired by their local councils, but instead are employees of the national government. None of the city managers we spoke with today had any formal city management education or training, but the philosophy here instead is that these are generalist managers who "can manage anything." There was an example given of a manager who came to one of India's big cities as a city manager immediately after a post running the Indian Space Agency.

And who said city management wasn't rocket science???

Challenges Faced by Indian Cities

In the presentations we heard this morning, it was clear that the number one challenge faced by Indian city managers is infrastructure: water, sewer, refuse and transportation. Too many people, not enough infrastructure. Financing for infrastructure largely comes from their property tax base. The amount and structure for collecting funds isn't sufficient to cover costs and then there is the matter of so many people living on property that generates no property tax since there are no taxable structures on the property.

The national government is only now beginning to give money to cities for infrastructure.

Another major challenge for cities is that they are not responsible for land use decisions. These are made by the state government. Police and fire also provided by other levels of government.

It was clear hearing from the city managers that political pressure is huge for change since the impact of these issues is crushing these communities. There is talk of having strong Mayor form of government replace city managers. All of these are old cities (Ahmedabad was founded in 1411) and have survived a long time. The rush of change here and the explosive growth of cities has severely chalenged the ability of cities to provide municipal services here. We will hear more about all of this tomorrow.

Meetings with Indian City Managers

The members of the International Committee attended a seminar sponsored by the City Manager's Association of Karnataka this morning at a nearby hotel. Karnataka is the state which Bangalore is located in. The session was also sponsored by the state government and ICMA's recently spun off Indian affiliate, the Urban Management Center. There were about 100 city managers and deputies (or commissioners as they are known here) at the event.

The session started with ceremonial singing and the lighting of a candle by myself, ICMA President Ed Daley (his photo speaking to the group is above) and the presentation of garland made of sandlewood shavings to each of the ICMA participants.

Ed welcomed the group on behalf of ICMA and I explained a little about the work of the International Committee. Committee member Roin Bergman gave a brief overview of local government structures in the USA.

Our Indian hosts responded with a presentation on Indian local government structures and then presentations from the City Managers of Bangalore, Mumbai (also known as Bombay) and Ahmedabad.

Whast was striking to me was that in the course of about 90 minutes we heard from three city managers responsible for providing municipal services for 31 million people!!! (Mumbai -19 million, Ahmedabad - 5.6 million, Bangalore - 6.5 million).

Sunday Committee Meeting

Today's focus of discussion was on issues relating to ICMA's international affiliates. These are mostly national organizations of city managers around the world. They run as big and complex as the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives in the United Kingdom, to smaller groups such as the Slovak City Managers Association. ICMA staff discussed our current outrech and partnership efforts with these groups and received feedback from the committee that we still need to do more in engaging these groups.

The second part of today's meetings was to discuss revisions to our current committee workplan. The biggest change that we agreed to was to begin developing a specific policy document to recommend to the ICMA Executive Board on how ICMA should pursue future international efforts that are funded by sources other than traditional foreign aid funding sources.

The committee decided to meet in Europe for its Winter/Spring 2009 meeting in order to encourage involvement from our European affiliates at the meeting. The next regular meeting of the committee will be in Richmond, VA this Fall as part of the ICMA Annual Conference.

Life in Bangalore

Our committee meeting ended around 4 PM this afternoon and I decided to take a walk around the hotel. The first thing that strikes you about India is all the people. Even on a Saturday afternoon they were everywhere. The poverty even in the midst of a business district is right outside the door of our hotel. The traffic here also lives up to its reputation. Several of us walked to an outstanding Indian restaurant last night for dinner and crossing the street was worse that anything I had ever experienced in New York City.

Saturday Committee Meeting

The committee began its meeting on Saturday morning at the Taj Gateway Hotel, our base of operations for our stay in Bangalore. Everyone else had arrived Friday or earlier in Bangalore, so they were not suffering from the jetlag that I was trying to fight. Two sets of lost luggage, but otherwise everyone arrived safely.

Our meetings here Saturday and Sunday are based primarily on ICMA association issues. We spent Saturday reviewing progress on our workplan for the year. (PDF) A big discussion took place regarding where ICMA should be headed in our work outside the United States in cases where the work is not being funded by outside foreign assistance agencies like USAID. Committee members also expressed frustration that we are not getting the word out to ICMA members about the benefits of the association's work outside the US. We will likely talk more about this on Sunday.

Currently, much of ICMA International's work is being done with projects in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guatemala, Indonesia, Serbia, India, Ethiopia and Lebanon which are funded by grants from outside foreign assistance agencies. ICMA funded international programs focus on those offered through ICMA South Asia and ICMA Latinoamerica.

Travel To Bangalore

After a nearly 24 hour journey and 11,000 miles my girlfriend Patrice and I arrived in Bangalore at 1:15 AM Saturday morning. Of course we received one piece of baggage from baggage claim in 10 minutes and the second an hour later. We got to sleep at our hotel around 4 AM. The transit from the USA was relatively uneventful, just very long flights (about 10 hours each to Frankfurt and then to Bangalore).

Article on Committee's Meeting

There is an article posted on the ICMA website about the meeting.

What Does the International Committee Do?

The ICMA International Committee is one of six member committees or task forces which studies issues of interest and importance to the organization or to local government in general. The committee is appointed by the ICMA President for fixed terms which vary from one to three years. As Chair, I serve at the pleasure of the current ICMA President, Ed Daley, City Manager of Hopewell, VA.

The committee is charged with responsibilities each year by the ICMA Executive Board. The current committee charge (PDF) was approved by the Executive Board last June.

Meeting Agenda and Schedule of Events

The meeting starts in a week. Here is the latest draft agenda (PDF) for our committee business meetings next Saturday and Sunday and the overall schedule of events (PDF) for our five days in Bangalore.

Welcome to Blog

The International Committee of the International City/County Management Association is going to India. I have blogged during my attendance at two previous International Committee Winter/Spring meetings in Johannesburg, South Africa and Dublin, Ireland via my regular blog. However, this year I decided to try my hand at a whole new blog just for the trip. I will try and do some preview posts in the next two weeks and then hopefully many entries while in India.