Online community promotes ‘fakalakalaka’ in the Pacific

For the best part of the past four years Professor Pak Yoong has been spearheading a small-scale technological revolution in the Pacific.

The IT academic from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, has been the driving force behind ‘Pacific Village’ - an online portal where public servants and other professionals can meet, communicate and share knowledge with one another.

The site, which acts as a repository of materials, documents, and web links, features half a dozen ‘communities of practice’ – networks of professionals such as Human Resource managers, trainers, IT staff, and public sector workers from 11 Commonwealth countries and territories.

“A community of practice,” explains Professor Yoong, bubbling with enthusiasm, “is a group of people in similar positions who meet regularly to share their experiences, consider best practice, what they have done and what didn’t work and what they have learnt – essentially knowledge-sharing and informal learning.”

Web portal rooted to one region

At its launch in 2005, the Pacific Village had around 50 users. Today it has some 300.

The idea first arose out of a short-lived Commonwealth Secretariat project that used teleconferencing to connect public servants in a series of live sessions structured by Professor Yoong. Participants were spread as far afield as St Vincent and the Grenadines, Mauritius, Kenya, Cyprus and the Cook Islands, but the project was soon unwound.

“That didn’t sustain itself purely because of times zones,” says Professor Yoong. “I had to get up at four in the morning to take part.”

When it was reborn with funding from the Secretariat, the concept was broadened to incorporate a website and focus on just one region – the Pacific.

Training and information-sharing

“There are a number of advantages when you regionalise it,” he continues. “You are dealing with people from similar cultures and living conditions. If you are a recruitment professional in Samoa, the chances are that you can find material relevant to you from Tonga. Even though it may not be identical, it will be pretty close compared to material from Britain.”

By anchoring to a website, the project allows users to attend virtual meetings, enter into text-based discussions and manipulate an online records management system. The cost savings to Pacific Islands authorities are a significant fillip, says Professor Yoong.

Providing learning materials in a central, easily accessible location also reduces the need for expensive travel. “Training can be provided on islands instead of sending people to the capital,” he says, pointing to countries like Solomon Islands whose population is spread over nearly 30,000 sq km.

Solomon Islands, like a number of other Commonwealth countries in the Pacific, is now planning to incorporate the Pacific Village into its induction programme for new civil servants.

Support to small and micro businesses

The website is also being extended to help the private sector. Last month, Professor Yoong launched a section dedicated for small-scale businesses in Tonga with support from the government as well as the Secretariat.

“Over 90 per cent of businesses there are micro or small businesses,” he says. “We thought we can set up a site that contains information to make it easier to set up a business – a one-stop shop. It contains information on how to get business licences, tax matters and how to handle money, manage cash flows, get a loan and develop a business plan.”

Users include public servants, business owners and their employees coming together to share their insights on how best to support local development, known more colloquially as ‘fakalakalaka’. The project, says Professor Yoong, “is a very good example of a public-private partnership.”

‘They can see the future is with technology’

Not that it has been all plain sailing. Time, Professor Yoong explains, is a commodity in short supply for many public officials and businesspeople. “In the Pacific, people usually have two or three different roles. Finding time to interact [on Pacific Village] becomes a real balancing act. Many people are leaders in their own village, in church or the wider community.”

Notoriously slow internet connections have also limited its scope. “[At the beginning] I often got challenged,” says Professor Yoong. “‘Why do this project when you don’t have the internet speeds?’ For a long time people would say they didn’t want to use the internet and email because it was so slow.”

But improving connection speeds, the replacement of dial-up with broadband and even the installation of wireless networks have rendered much of that criticism redundant.

Sustainability and self-sufficiency

“The fact we persisted with it is a demonstration of the strength of the Pacific Islands’ people,” he says, “that they can see the future is with technology and are prepared to persevere with it.”

Professor Yoong is hopeful that in the not-too-distant future he will able to exit day-to-day management of the project, safe in the knowledge that it will continue to be used by professionals across the Pacific.

“I hope in one to two years time I will be out of the picture,” he says. “When you do something like this you want to pass on the skills and then let people take care of it. It is designed around this principle of self-sufficiency.”

Key Links:

• Country Profile: New Zealand

Related News:

• Pacific Village Online