Transcript
AISAKE EKE: And that is why I am standing here and just pushing it. And I am very happy at the response they made and I think we make an agreement in the House that we aim for the current financial year - 2017/2018 - make sure that all the issues identified by the report that each Minister will go and discuss it with their Ministry CEOs and make sure that they are not repeating again. There are a range of issues that we identified, not only for the report but also for the government response, that we can address this, and make sure that when the other reports come again for the current financial year there won't be any similar issues repeating.
DON WISEMAN: What it shows this audit report is that there have been for generations effectively, just poorly run government departments, at least from a financial point of view and what you are looking at is some form of rationalisation.
AE: Yes that is it. Basically want to change the culture and also to have a system in place to make sure that the House calls the government to account and makes sure improve that they improve how they manage their public funds. You are quite right because that has become a culture. The government is not enforcing and every year it comes to us, so we want to change it from the past to a new management. but also the other one is that I push as well, is the Performance Audit. We haven't done that. We haven't started, this other audit is much more important - looking into the output and outcome, looking into the Performance Audit.
DW: Tonga is in fairly desperate financial straits. If these government departments were properly run what sort of gains are there going to be, do you think. I mean are we talking enough to turn the situation around, economy wise?
AE: Yeah the efficiency and effectiveness. That is the main goal here. What are the efficient and effective levels now? We haven't done that exercise yet and now the government has moved out of this normal public sector reform which started in 2001. Now launching into the requirement for all the ministries to prepare and furnish a proper corporate plan, every year, which of course has been done in the past two years and also the resource they want to implement. So that corporate plan, which is a management tool, should be I think pushed together with financial management. So that is why I am pushing this, because they should be part and parcel, they should be one package, in order to see whatever funds are given to them, because now we increase the funding for each of them, because they say we want more funding not only for staff but also for operations. But now what is left is to test, in a quantitative manner to measure the efficiency and effectiveness. So this is a management tool that we try to advocate and also implement in an effective way, by government.
