The goals of decentralization can be categorized as follows

• Empowering the citizens democratically to manage their local affairs such as education, health, etc.,
• Improving allocative efficiency and effectiveness, ensuring that the allocation of resources addresses the immediate prioritized needs of the society.
• Enhancing the responsiveness of policy making and the implementation in addressing the needs of all target groups.
• To take effective measures on poverty reduction and development.
• Involving the communities in decision making on development works that affect their lives.

The Institute was established as a public sector agency to perform the following functions

• Training Members & Officers and Servants of Local Authorities & Provincial Councils and to assist in building up of a cadre of competent provincial and local government officers and the personnel in the country with a view to ensuring good governance.
Making available to Provincial Councils and Local Authorities services of specialists in improving their organizational systems and management capability.
• Providing a forum for the critical appraisal of Provincial and Local Government Organizational Management Systems and Practices.
• Assisting the provincial Management Development and Training Units (MDTU) in management development.
• Providing the necessary data and information to the Minister in charge of the subject of local government for formulating national policies on Local Government and Provincial Councils.
• Network with local & foreign institutions in disseminating information, holding conferences, seminars and publishing books and magazines on Provincial & Local Government are the additional operational features of SLILG.

• To ensure the development of human resources of Local Government Institutions and Provincial Councils in order to strengthen their institutional and management capacity.
• To function as the leading centre for Training, Research and Consultancy Services on issues relating to local governance in Sri Lanka.

The above mission leads to the following objectives

To formulate and deliver programmes of capacity building activities for the institutional strengthening of local governance independently and in partnership with Provincial Management Development Training Units (MDTU).
To support and strengthen the capacity of MDTU towards delivering training and development programmes for improving the performance of Provincial Councils and Local Government Institutions.
To function as a resource centre on Local Governance, providing technical and information services for its stakeholders.
To functions as the focal point for Local Governance, networking with relevant National and International Institutions.
To provide special support services in the development of human resources, improvement of management systems and facilitate organizational changes.
To build the capacity of SLILG, to provide Advocacy, Training, Consultancy and Research support for strengthening institutions of Local Governance.