Working In Local Municipal Governments Quite Different Than Working For Federal, State, Provincial Governments

The challenges and advantages of working in local government are often not explained, so here you'll find information about the uniqueness of the local government environment.

Local Government Pluses

It's typically easier to get things done in local government than it is at the Federal and State/Provincial levels. That's not always the case (see below on the issue of politics), but there are fewer levels of approval to go through, and there is a tendency for individual government decision makers to have more autonomy in making decisions at the municipal level.

• Some things move more quickly. For example, with procurement, local governments tend to work faster, while Federal governments work in agonizingly slow ways.
• In local government, particularly when the municipality is relatively small, it's not uncommon for most employees to know each other, and also to interact more "on the street". Small towns, for example, tend to promote more interaction between employees and citizens on the street level. So, it's a bit easier to connect with the populace.
• Politicians are more accessible. As are senior bureaucrats. More business is conducted through personal contacts, rather than through briefs and reams of paper. Decisions can be influenced more via this personal contact. Not only do the upper echelons tend to be more accessible to employees, but they are more accessible to citizens (which can be a disadvantage - see below).

Local Government Challenges

As with many things, the things that bring advantages also bring challenges and disadvantages.

• With politicians much closer to the action and accessible, there tends to be more political interfence in every day government work. Citizens feel they can use their personal connections with, let's say a major, to get a parking ticket fixed.
• Politicians tend to be less experienced, sometimes lacking an understanding of what their roles are in the government, and often thinking they have more power than they actually do. Some find that there's more "meddling", because of that, and of course, the easier access.
• While things tend to move more quickly in local government, LARGE expenditures do not. For a local government to decide to build a bridge, for example, is a much larger relative financial commitment than at the Federal level, so it's much more significant. For that reason, large projects can be anticipated for years and years, even at the end being cancelled.
• On occasion, local governments appear petty, in the sense that they can spend inordinate amounts of time making decisions that are relatively insignificant and tiny.

The best advantage for working in local government is that it's MUCH easier to derive a sense of job satisfaction, because local government staff really are much closer to, and are able to see the fruits of their work.

Challenges and Joys Of Working In Local Government