The state government has created a new website called Council’s in Focus (CIF).
CIF aims to present comparative data across councils.
The City of Onkaparinga fully supports the intent of the website which is greater transparency of council finances, operations and efficiency.
However, to accurately assess performance and finances, it’s important to compare ‘apples with apples’.
Our council has been categorised as “Metropolitan Fringe”, which sees us compared with Playford, Alexandrina, Adelaide Hills and Barossa.
Three of these councils are vastly smaller than Onkaparinga and deliver different services. This may lead to inaccurate or potentially misleading comparisons being made. In each section of the site which shows and compares City of Onkaparinga data, we have provided additional commentary for context.
The CIF site is available here https://councilsinfocus.sa.gov.au/.
In March 2022 prior to the state election we provided a response to the media regarding the difficulties in comparisons between councils with vast different sizes, demographics, key attributes and unique challenges. That response can be found here.