Comments

I would like to suggest going further than just establishing rural-urban links as mentioned in the article. There have to be links to economic centers or growth centers such as resource project sites. Currently, many people miss out on the opportunities to sell their produce at these centers and the level of isolation of these project areas is reflected in the astronomical price of betelnut in logging, mining and petroleum sites.

AusAID funded Government Strengthening Program (SGP) has two issues that deserves closer scrutiny; namely, those of cost and sustainability. On the first, the four-year program has costed Australian taxpayers a total of $138.56 million. While the exact number of Australian officials posted to PNG over the four term has not been revealed, assuming this to be the same as the 42 currently on deployment in PNG gives an average annual outlay per posted official of $825,000. This figure begs the question of the value for money from SGP. The second issue, that of sustainability relies heavily on the success of capacity building within the key agencies of the PNG government. A suggestion worthy of some series consideration is posting of senior PNG officials into counterpart Australian agencies for 2 to 3 years. A program for PNG officials similar to that of the Australians via the SGP will: (i) expose Australians to the challenges of working in PNG; and, (ii) expose those deployed to Australia of the norms of working in Australia. The existing internships and study tours go some, but only a short, distance in achieving the above. Why not have mid to senior PNG officials placed in the Commonwealth Treasury, Department of Finance, and Prime Minister and Cabinet in Canberra for 2 to 3 years? A bonus would be that those deployed from PNG would cost a lot less than their counterparts from Canberra and are likely to contribute long term to strengthening the bureaucracy in PNG.

Aaron, this is a great story – thanks! The best news is the PNG economy is growing fast enough to deliver discernible differences to the wellbeing of the general population. The question remains as to how the improved fiscal outcomes will get translated into tangible improvements at the level of individuals, particularly those living in rural and remote parts of the nation. I agree that delivering services in this vast nation of difficult topography will not be easy but there now is the fiscal headroom compared to the situation a decade ago.

Scaling up development funding to sub-national levels of government, with provincial, district and local level government grants increasing by a total of 87% presents an additional risk. Channelling expenditure through provincial systems places very significant pressure on weak provincial procurement systems. To almost double such expenditure in less than 12 months without increasing contractor capacity and the capacity of provincial procurement and contract management systems, procurement units and tender boards may place the government’s good intentions to expand its transport network, its airports, energy generation and electricity reticulation grids and fiber optic communication at risk of inappropriate spending and poor service delivery. Contractor capacity and the capacity of provincial procurement and contract management systems must be strengthened. I see no indication of a focus by government on the building of capacity of these important and underpinning institutions. Or will donors develop this capacity? <em>E. John Blunt is a Procurement and Institutional Expert with extensive experience in leading public procurement reforms in a variety of international development environments, including in PNG. He has recently completed procurement reform assignments with the Southern African Development Community Secretariat and the Swaziland Revenue Authority.</em>

Really interesting insights Dinuk, thanks for sharing!

What would be really encouraging to see would be Pacific leaders using the momentum of this initiative as the basis to engage in meaningful dialogue with women across all groupings (women's groups, women in business, students, parents) to get a real sense of where women are currently at, where they see themselves going and what they need in order to get there. Not only could this garner good information to inform activities into the future but it would also send a very powerful message - the men who lead the countries of our region sitting down with the women who form around 50% of their constituency (in a space where women feel comfortable) and getting to know each other.

Thats all very well and fine for programmes in developing countries, but in conflict/post conflict areas the living conditions are crucial make or break factor with regards to staff retention. Try spending all day, every day in a combined office/guesthouse and not get pissed off with no running water in the middle of the winter? As for using 'security concerns' to justify accommodation requirements, its cheaper to pay for a secured, comfortable housing than to constantly replace staff, address cumulative stress issues and in the worse case scenarios, insurance or litigation payouts due to staff injuries or bereavements. Therefor, it's not a 'security concern' (a grey area that programme staff often like to rebel against) but a Duty of Care obligation. As for the Oxfam pool, why doesn't that surprise me? Their pool in Islamabad remained un-filled too

Many thanks for the update. The 'Buzz' is already becoming essential reading for education development specialists in the region. I did read the World Bank’s policy brief on their study of the teacher certification program in Indonesia. Very helpful. But, to be honest, I think its a bit too soon to dismiss the outcome of this massive program as a failure. Teacher certification and income increases are surely part of a long-term solution to improving the quality of Indonesia's nearly three million teachers. Raising teacher qualifications and income levels could not be expected to have much impact on student learning outcomes until a few years’ time. In the short term, the writers do note that fewer teachers now have second jobs, which is a gain. Having said this, I remain skeptical. Why? Because it is clear that the upgrading process conducted by the Ministry in collaboration with the universities is flawed in many ways. The in-service training is overly theoretical (although I believe that it does include classroom action research), the delivery is tricky (many are doing it online through the Open University and have limited contact with lecturers), some teachers are taking subjects unrelated to their teaching area (just what is available locally and easy to pass, I imagine) and, as usual, the process has been corrupted with many teachers just paying for the upgrade without doing the work and a percentage being certified on the basis of a portfolio rather than further study.

I find some of Sachs’ arguments a bit strange. From Sachs' points as summarised above: “The authors' assumption that authoritarian elites are necessarily hostile to economic progress is not entirely valid.” Acemoglu and Robinson in fact go to great lengths in their book to explain and analyse economic growth under “extractive” (i.e. authoritarian) political regimes. Also, Sachs’ point about the predictive power of the theory is, in my view, irrelevant to assessing the accuracy of the theory, because a theory does not have to have predictive power in order to be accurate. What if prediction is impossible? For example, the book highlights the contingent nature (and hence unpredictability) of the progression of a nation's institutions. For those interested, Acemoglu and Robinson recently <a href="http://whynationsfail.com/blog/2012/11/21/response-to-jeffrey-sachs.html" rel="nofollow">responded</a> (rather aggressively) to Sachs’ review.

Hi I am very impressed with the work the team has accomplished. We hear of development but what is it really to the people where the resources are? Obviously, the leadership in the province are hiding in the city and not doing enough. I thank you and really hope this will do a great impact to the people of Gulf and PNG as whole. Please deliver this to the Governer and Members of Gulf.

Thank you Colin and the team. As Tess stated eloquently, this is a powerful description and a very important project. Thank you for engaging in this challenging work and highlighting some of these challenges. Very important to hear that government officials understand that services have not been provided to the people and also to understand at least part of the reasons why. I look forward to reading more about the PEPE results including how we can support people like that head teacher / CHW that you met!

Thanks Marcus, I'm still chuckling at the thought that in a world of rational consumers the Economist probably wouldn't exist 🙂 I offer a qualified defence of rational choice modelling <a href="http://waylaiddialectic.wordpress.com/2012/08/05/is-it-really-rational-to-use-rational-choice-models-to-explain-political-behaviour-in-solomon-islands/" rel="nofollow">here</a>. To summarise very briefly I don't believe humans are rational utility maximisers however I believe that enough of the time we act **as if** we are for RC models to be useful, if very carefully used. Useful because they kind of approximate to reality. Useful because it is very hard to use models based on more complicated assumptions (game theory, for example, would be come very tricky if based on more complicated agents). Useful because where behaviour deviates significantly from what we would expect from the models (say in Mississippi) they still illuminate interesting questions: why, Mississippi, why? Re voting itself - that seems like a paradox but perhaps it isn't. As Andrew Gelman and others argue, if you believe that stakes in an election are high enough then it is still rational for you to vote, even if you know your own impact is trivial and there is inconvenience involved. In Solomons case, in a clientelistic polity, if you believe that candidates can figure out whether you voted and who your voted for, and if them providing future goods to you depends on you having voted for them, then it's definitely rational to go through the hassle of voting. Having said all that, I have to confess to actually enjoying voting: which is clearly irrational...such are the contradictions of life as a political science nerd.