Yes, I think true community would be local level elections with those reps then taking part in the next level elections, with the community level being the holders of power.

One idea for improving the accountability of our elected representatives would be to establish and independent register of election promises and their implementation. Representatives should be given an opportunity to explain why certain promises were not implemented e.g. changed circumstances or couldn't get enough votes in Parliament.

Completely agree. The challenge here is in defining the performance objectives that government should be measured on - short term vs long term goals, broad community benefits vs support for small or underpriveleged groups, economic vs environmental vs cultural objectives, higher taxes vs higher spending etc. Like the private sector, good government requires smart and hard working people, operating in an administratively effective and efficient way, and undertaking the balancing act of sharing finite resources across a range of objectives. Unfortunately, what we see is inefficient government whose only performance target seems to keep their own jobs and get re-elected based on whichever performance measure seems to be making the most noise at election time. We also have the fundamental challenge of a society that is fairly evenly split on the idealogical benefits underpinning the left and right wing political movements (or at least the moderate/centre positions of each idealology). The social and economic differences between a trickle up vs trickle down belief system means we tend to see large shifts in the performance targets every time there is a change in government. Perhaps our society needs to define some long term performance targets that span across electoral terms, and which are not subject to change every time there is a change of government. From there, we could then find a way to reward our elected representatives for meeting these in ways other than re-election.