One of our important tasks is to conduct research on Australian and New Zealand local governments and make reports for the benefit of Japanese local governments.
Our staff, during the second year of their secondment to Australia, write CLAIR reports about a topic they are interested in and which they think will be useful information for Japanese local governments.
This year, Tetsu and Tomo, who have just left our office, wrote their reports. Tetsu’s research focused on tourism promotion in Australia at each level of government. Tomo’s research looked at citizen engagement policies, introducing new methods used by social media, precinct systems in some New South Wales councils and the community board system in NZ.
They also looked at the policies of councils on their topic where they did their internship programme. I would like to express special thanks to the City of Perth and Christchurch for hosting Tetsu and Tomo respectively.
I think not so many people who read this newsletter can read the Japanese-language CLAIR reports. But when you need to explain some topics to Japanese people, please feel free to ask us if we have CLAIR reports which already explain the topics in detail in Japanese.
I am now looking forward to what topics will be chosen by Misa and Hiromi for our next CLAIR reports.