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Hello everyone; My name's Jordi I'm Spanish and I'm going to be relocated to PNG in January 2017. My employer is sending me to Kokopo. I've been living in China for the last 20 years so I am not new in the expat life but I would like to know what is it like in Kokopo and if some of you guys can give me some tips on do's and don'ts. Thanks

This process might perhaps be better described as polarisation than fragmentation The larger agencies have tended to merge (presumably to foster growth and reduce overheads) while smaller agencies are being established and closed all the time. Much of the innovation in NGOs tends to come from smaller agencies because they can often respond more quickly to changing needs and priorities and pick up on new approaches. Larger NGOs inevitably become more bureaucratic, whether they wish to or not. Being taken over is not necessarily a sign of failure. Brand names are important. A reputation is hard earned and translates into revenue, but the support base will often follow the organisation into a new format. In the corporate world there are many examples of both plural and consolidated brands. VW Group, for instance, trades under several brand names (VW, Audi, Skoda, SEAT), while BMW and Daimler Benz have a single brand. Many small NGOs reach the limits of what they can do with the resources available to them and can benefit from being absorbed into a larger entity with greater resources. In addition, many smaller entities are driven by the one or two people who established them and often cannot survive the demise or retirement of these key people. In my corporate experience (I was for more than a decade a market analyst and corporate strategist) there are some mergers (the Brown Boveri-ASEA merger to form ABB is an example), but they are actually rare. Most mergers are in fact takeovers and if this is not the case the internal disputes over power, administrative systems and culture can soon bring the new entity down.

Thanks for your comments Elizabeth. There's a lot to be said about the points you raise, and it would be great to see them explored further. Would you be interested in contributing some of your experiences/thoughts? We're always looking for contributors to the blog. Feel free to email me if you'd like to discuss further, offline: grant.walton@anu.edu.au ANU and UPNG have been doing further research on service delivery and corruption in PNG and will be writing about our findings in the coming months. Some of what we'll be writing on touch on the important issues you raise, but it would be great to hear from those with other experiences. Best, Grant

As a planning student in W.A who is currently undertaking a unit in International Development as an elective, I must say: to read about a quantifiable study that assesses international aid in Australia and Australia’s perception to aid, I found this article quite refreshing, albeit disappointing. Whilst I understand that Australia is still in a position that requires significant work on the home soil (and whilst I do not hold myself out to be an expert in Australian economics or finance), surely we as a nation can afford to better the development of others, especially those who are substantially worse off than we?! I also read Terence’s blog posted in 2015: <a href="https://devpolicy.org/what-do-australians-think-about-foreign-aid-20150903/">What do Australians think about foreign aid?</a> This was particularly eye-opening. To discover that the Australian federal government donates less than 1% of the federal budget was particularly boggling. I also have to question people’s willingness to dig into their own back pockets. With 75% of Australian’s supporting the government’s decision to provide foreign aid (<a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2652559" rel="nofollow">Burkot & Wood 2015</a>), would they themselves actually donate? I doubt it. I expect only a small proportion of that 75% would be willing to open their own purses. Whilst I think providing Australia’s with the necessary information as to how much money is spent via Australian and British governments is a must, perhaps more information is required. I know that I would like to know where exactly the money is going, how many people it is likely to help, who it will help, that it will be for long term development purposes that will ultimately help the country stand on its own feet in the years to come, rather than just short term ‘fixes’.

It would also be interesting to know of any lessons from the ActionAid/Austcare consolidation a few years ago? My outsider perception is that both this example and Janet's CAA/FFH example looked more a takeover of a weaker agency by a stronger, rather than a merger of equals. Others will have more direct knowledge. Sitting in an Australian member of an international confederation, I can see there would be fantastic opportunities if two strong well-aligned global agencies chose to join forces - more effective work, greater reach, cost efficiencies, better appeal to the public. But I can also see the practical difficulties that the respective confederation structures would present in nutting through the issues raised by a process of merger. There would be winners and losers, and Boards and Members would need to concede power and take risks. While I'd like to keep such mergers in mind as a longer term vision, maybe the first step is to actively pursue closer cooperation in country where feasible, such as through more joint office facilities, consortium projects or other resource sharing?

Thanks Thomas. Great to hear from you. The Lost Decade report can be downloaded <a href="https://devpolicy.crawford.anu.edu.au/png-budget-project" rel="nofollow">here</a>. Email me if you have trouble downloading it - grant.walton@anu.edu.au. We've been conducting follow up research into the performance of schools and health facilities in both Gulf (Kikori and Kerema) and East New Britain. We visited both these provinces <a href="https://devpolicy.org/in-brief/upng-anu-academics-begin-health-education-research-20160615-2/">earlier this year</a>. I'll send you a recent presentation on our preliminary findings. We'll also be presenting on our recent findings at the upcoming PNG update in Port Moresby on 4 November at UPNG. Wishing you and your wife all the best.

Hi Thomas - I will leave it to Grant to respond as he has the data. Congratulations on your many years of service to PNG. It is the dedication of you and your wife and the many like you that give cause for optimism about the future.

Hi Grant & Jane, Firstly, thank you so much for the very informative comments. I accessed this link by chance and by reading your commentary, it has opened my eyes and mind to two of the biggest social indicators that require a lot of budget funding and application in the right areas (priorities). I come from the Gulf Province and would love to see your full report - PNG’s lost decade? Understanding the differences between health and education for the Gulf Province, including the other 7 provinces. I have been a teach for 6 years, and my spouse is now in her 28th years of secondary school teaching hence, the data you have compiled in your research will be very useful to me as a citizen of this beautiful country and from Gulf. My contact details are stated below: Looking forward to your response. Thank you

Hi Grant, I am very interested in getting more info on this newly created DEICs. I come from Gulf Province and has been at some point in my professional career being a teacher with 2 years in Kwikila, then 2 years in Passam, 1 year in Aiyura and a year at UPNG undertaking my PDGE. My spouse has been teaching for the last 28 years in secondary schools including 2 years in a primary school right across this beautiful country. Furthermore I have been a school board member at primary, secondary & international schools over the last 20 years across the country. At present I am a member of a BoM's sub committee (Infrastructure) for the school my 5th born son attends year 11 in NCD. My work in the (O&G Industry) takes me back & forth between my home province (Gulf) and Port Moresby. Thus, I am very interested in your research report on the DEIC in Gulf (& East New Britain). The DEIC I presume is a new policy hence its objectives maybe very good, but the actual implementation may face some impediments along the way. Your report on the DEICs in the two Districts in Gulf Province would be very informative to me. Your feedback will be greatly appreciated. my contact details are stated below.

Thanks Peter and Grant - there are too few such insightful positive articles about PNG. As you both know corruption is a very complex issue in PNG and understanding the challenges facing collectivist societies which are in transition is not easy for those of us who have grown up and worked professionally in contemporary western democracies of the past 40 years. Understanding how long it took feudal societies to transition to our current Westminster system is important - and we are still by no means free of corruption - perhaps just more sophisticated about it. The Australian public service of the 60s to the 90s (of the 20th century) was also still pretty nepotistic - just ask women, Indigenous people, and people from other cultures, for a start, and people running funding programs at that time. Private companies and individuals making massive profits from prisons, unemployment, detention centres, hospitals and aged care, today, leaves some of us pretty appalled. It's really important to listen to more stories like Peter tells from PNG. In a recent project I worked on in PNG, which aimed to inform an international donor about the service delivery reforms of the past 15 years, I think the evidence is there to suggest that change is happening and that PNG service delivery improvement is at a tipping point with strong policy foundations and strong leadership from many good leaders, politically and administratively, trying to make a difference. But still with many challenges - not the least of them being how to make a western governance system imposed on a collectivist society work; another set of complex political and public policy challenges which cannot ignore culture and social structures. We began exploring whether any work is being done to address incentives which encourage stronger positive actions and decisions by politicians and administrators, rather than punitive and lecturing approaches on weeding out corruption. The recent study by the NRI in 2014 on governance and service delivery improvements in PNG addressed this question and argued that a new approach to addressing corruption was needed (Reilly, Brown and Flower). The work of Ha-Joon Chang also offers other economic and political explanations for why we need to interrogate our existing understandings of what is happening in countries like PNG. The issues have implications for nation building and national identity in collectivist societies, goals which PNG is also striving to achieve. Would be good to explore this further and Dev Policy might be a good forum for doing so. Again many thanks - always enjoy your work Grant.

One of the most significant mergers in Australia was the Freedom From Hunger merger with what was then Community Aid Abroad - which subsequently rebranded (in stages) to become Oxfam Australia. No-one would know Freedom from Hunger any more - it's very good brand just disappeared over the years. As one who observed it from the outside, that " merger" was quiet a takeover really.

I think it might be whether charities do (or are perceived to do) the same thing that determines whether they would want to merge names or not. E.g. Merlin and Save the Children both provide services for disadvantaged children, but if two charities clearly provided different services (and had brands associated with that) it may be a different story, e.g. (hypothetically speaking) were Femili PNG and Fred Hollows to merge, I'm not sure it would make as much sense to consolidate the names.