A function of the Australia-Pacific Partnerships Platform is to support Pacific governments to recruit for a range of public sector roles.
These roles can be in-line positions, typically within senior management, or short-term inputs focused on progressing specific activities, such as audits, strategic plans or policy development.
With often-limited pools of available expertise, a ministry or department will work with Australia, via the Partnerships Platform, to recruit from the Pacific, Australia and beyond. What results is a boost in resources and a transfer of skills, but also the need to navigate different work cultures coming together.
Throughout his career, Chief Executive Office of the Tuvalu Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MEYS), Dr Tufoua Panapa, has worked with a range of personnel recruited through the Partnerships Platform and other, similar mechanisms.
Learning goes both ways
Dr Panapa is acutely aware that Tuvalu, like every country, has a unique public service organisational culture. Leadership within MEYS recognised that people coming to work with the Ministry needed to be aware of its culture if they were to be effective in their roles. The Ministry subsequently developed a guide for international personnel coming to work within the Ministry to help them build an understanding of the Ministry’s work culture.
Dr Panapa believes that MEYS was the first ministry to produce such a resource. He stressed it was important for those who came to work in Tuvalu to appreciate that there are personnel within his Ministry who are experts in the Tuvaluan context and Tuvaluan issues. For him, the bringing together of international and Tuvaluan personnel should be built around a process of working and learning together. It is a two-way process, not one that is built on the premise that someone will come into Tuvalu solely to transfer their skills.
“This process is not one-way. I remind everyone who comes to work with us that it is not only us, within the Ministry, who will learn from their involvement. They will learn about Tuvaluan culture but, importantly, we are experts on the issues here in Tuvalu that we are working on, and they should come with an appreciation of that and listen and learn from us,” he said.
Dr Panapa pointed to the recent input of Strategic Education Adviser, Morgana Chantagit, as an example of how this works in practice. The Strategic Education Adviser role was created by the Ministry to strengthen its role in coordinating donor and development partner work in Tuvalu’s education sector, ensuring that all partners and activities were aligned with the Te Kakeega IV (Tuvalu’s National Strategy for Sustainable Development) and the Tuvalu Education Strategic Plan IV.
‘Hard’ skills don’t always make the biggest impact
While Morgana brought specialist education skills to her long-term role within the Ministry, Dr Panapa identified the other skills and gaps that her input highlighted, assisting with his forward planning for the Ministry.
“Let me start by saying that Morgana is an angel – she saved us a lot of time and energy. And for me, the success of her input has been highlighting a big gap for us – we need to build our skills around coordinating and monitoring and strengthening our strategic planning,” he said.
Dr Panapa explained how Morgana had defined for the Ministry what ‘coordination’ meant in terms of the many education partners and programs that they work with. He emphasised that she didn’t tell her Tuvaluan colleagues what to do, she demonstrated how coordination can work in practice, and the leadership, processes and skills needed to keep this on track.
Morgana also worked to understand the Ministry’s organisational context, and demonstrated this in her approach to her work. With small steps, like following up with staff as due dates loomed, and finding a balanced approach to gently encouraging a small team to balance their challenging workloads and meet deadlines, progress was made
“Morgana took the time to understand the organisational culture. She came with an Australian, even a global mindset, and she took the time to learn the context and then do the job we hired her to do. This really worked,” Dr Panapa said.
The value of partnership and representation
The Australia-Pacific Partnerships Platform is not the only option available for the Ministry to source needed expertise, but for Dr Panapa the concept of partnership is key to his electing to work with this mechanism.
“I look at the name – Australia-Pacific Partnerships Platform – and that term ‘partnership’ is important. It is always good and always important that we work in partnership and I do feel like it is a partnership when working with this platform. The consultation is good, we are confident in raising issues with the Partnerships Platform and, with a Tuvaluan (Etita Morikao) working on the Partnerships Platform side, it is positive and we are proud to work with the Platform,” he concluded.
