Lack of clear national visions, a challenge for public services [1]
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - 20:15. Updated on Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - 09:54.
By Pesi Fonua
Reforms in countries, like Tonga, and some other Pacific Island countries have produced administrations with no clear and coherent national visions and who are unable to work as a team, regional public service representatives heard in Tonga this week.
So how can cabinet ministers and heads of government departments share the national vision of a government in power and work together to provide quality public services for their people in those countries?
Gathering in Nuku'alofa, the Pacific Islands representatives attending the 9th Pacific Public Service Commissioners' Conference at the Fa'onelua Convention Centre are looking at the need to produce a strategy to resolve this issue.
Dr Taiamoni Pifeleti, the Pacific Adviser, Governance and Institutional Development Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat, spoke with some conviction, that the response from the representatives of six Pacific Islands countries attending, in recognizing the problem, had convinced her that a first step was made toward finding a solution.
Dr Pifeleti made her presentation on the topic 'Political administration interface for effective Public Services', and discussed the long standing problem of cabinet ministers not being able to work together as a team to provide the quality of services that the public deserved.
"I want to translate this into some kind of intervention," she said.
Dr Pifeleti said she would take that back to the Commonwealth Secretariat, which she believed was the right organization to work toward solving such a problem.
The difficulty of getting the interface to work properly between government ministers and their heads of departments, was a common problem in most developing countries, but being a Tongan herself she found it to be more pronounced in Tonga.
She said that because Tonga's electoral system elected a diverse group of individuals into parliament to form a government, and those individuals had their own convictions and beliefs, it could take them their whole four years term in office to come up with a national vision, which they would then have to convince and share with their heads of departments.
No clear vision
Dr Pifeleti pointed out that in such a situation it was clear that a government was formed without a clear national vision, and the ministers and the CEOs or heads of departments would have no clear vision of what they were supposed to be achieving.
She said that in some countries the solution was found in the introduction of a political parties system of government, where each party would have a clear platform to work from and an ideology, and a clear vision. If the party candidates were elected into power, voters voted for them because of their ideology and their vision, and that is what they want to put into place when they formed a government.
But unfortunately, this is still not working in the developing world and she had not found the solution yet.
Dr Pifeleti said the first step was increasing recognition that many public services are having problems serving the public, because there is no clear national vision.
She said that the public service can not produce the national vision for a new government because public services are not elected.
She was certain that the Commonwealth Secretariat would support her to work toward addressing the problem and finding solutions.
The Tongan conference of the Pacific Public Service Commissioners brought together representatives from Tonga, Samoa, Niue, Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands and Tuvalu for a three days deliberation from October 25-28 under the theme - 'Initiating, maintaining and sustaining reform outcomes - How do we know we've made a difference?'