SALGA Municipal Barometer

The Municipal Barometer is an initiative of South African Local Government Association (SALGA) in partnership with Centre for Municipal Research and Advice (CMRA), Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), South African Cities Network (SACN), Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) and Municipal Demarcation Board (MDB)

The programme was established in response to the following challenges:

• Limited availability of local level data.
• limited access to data that is currently available
• various institutions provide data, however, their activities are often fragmented and uncoordinated
• huge costs that municipalities pay to get data

The Municipal Barometer is anchored on a Local Data Partnership which is aimed at:

• Improving municipal governance and performance by improved planning, oversight, benchmarking, capacity and peer learning

• Identifying and addressing municipal data needs at minimal costs;

• Making local level data available to municipalities and their stakeholders;

• Managing access to data through a single comprehensive yet simple web-based portal; and

Building the capacity of municipalities to locate access, interpret and utilize data for planning, budgeting and governance processes.