ACELG staff made presentations to conferences in Indonesia and Pakistan recently. All papers were well received and generated significant interest in ACELG`s ongoing work with Australian local government on local capacity and local governance. The conferences were strongly attended by local governments, academics and politicians and a number of linkages were made related to ACELG`s program work.','

4th International Conference on Local Government, Surabaya, Indonesia

Director Roberta Ryan and Deputy Director Melissa Gibbs presented papers to the 4th International Conference on Local Government. The Director`s paper was titled `Innovative Citizen Involvement for Creating Public Value in Local Government` and the Deputy Director`s paper was on `The Challenges of Community Engagement in Rural-remote and Indigenous Local Government in Australia`. Visiting Fellow Dr Bligh Grant also attended and presented a workshop paper (co-authored with B. Dollery and M. Kortt) called `Recasting leadership in local government: A typology from political theory.` This paper will be published in Local Government Studies shortly.

A new organisation called the International Association for Local Governments (IALG) was launched at the conference.

UNDP-Forum of Federations conference: Participatory Federalism and Decentralization, Islamabad, Pakistan, 23 to 29 September

The Director was invited to present a paper to the conference titled `Local government Responses to Multi-level Governance Challenges: Strategies from Australia.` This builds upon previous ACELG work with the Canadian-based Forum of Federations.

RPDI National Conference on Citizens` Participation in Local Governance, Islamabad, Pakistan, 23 to 24 September

A second conference was held in conjunction with the UNDP-Forum of Federations event hosted by the Rural Development Policy Institute (RDPI), Islamabad. RDPI is a national non-governmental organisation (NGO) striving for the realization of human rights through participatory, accountable, transparent and democratic governance in Pakistan. The Director’s paper to this conference was titled `Citizen Participation: How to Build Community and Institutional Capacity.` Images from this conference can be viewed here.