Public sector auditing in Fiji:tracing its development and expansion

This paper examines the processes of public sector auditing, and its influence in Fiji over the period 1874-2003. Analyses of historical documents indicate that there were four major themes that influenced expansion of traditional auditing into performance auditing. This paper examines these. It also provides insights into the development of accountability practices as a result of changes in the Auditor-General's role. Conclusions drawn from the analysis indicate that traditional public sector auditing in Fiji expanded in accountability terms, possibly driven by public pressure through the media and elected representatives.

Modelling trade offs between public and private conservation policies

To reduce global biodiversity loss, there is an urgent need to determine the most efficient allocation of conservation resources. Recently, there has been a growing trend for many governments to supplement public ownership and management of reserves with incentive programs for conservation on private land. This raises important questions, such as the extent to which private land conservation can improve conservation outcomes, and how it should be mixed with more traditional public land conservation. We address these questions, using a general framework for modelling environmental policies and a case study examining the conservation of endangered native grasslands to the west of Melbourne, Australia. Specifically, we examine three policies that involve i) spending all resources on creating public conservation areas; ii) spending all resources on an ongoing incentive program where private landholders are paid to manage vegetation on their property with 5-year contracts; and iii) splitting resources between these two approaches. The performance of each strategy is quantified with a vegetation condition change model that predicts future changes in grassland quality. Of the policies tested, no one policy was always best and policy performance depended on the objectives of those enacting the policy. Although policies to promote conservation on private land are proposed and implemented in many areas, they are rarely evaluated in terms of their ecological consequences. This work demonstrates a general method for evaluating environmental policies and highlights the utility of a model which combines ecological and socioeconomic processes.

Whole life performance assessment: critical success factors

Whole life costing (WLC) has become the best practice in construction procurement and it is likely to be a major issue in predicting whole life costs of a construction project accurately. However, different expectations from different organizations throughout a project's life and the lack of data, monitoring targets, and long-term interest for many key players are obstacles to be overcome if WLC is to be implemented. A questionnaire survey was undertaken to investigate a set of ten common factors and 188 individual factors. These were grouped into eight critical categories (project scope, time, cost, quality, contract/administration, human resource, risk, and health and safety) by project phase, as perceived by the clients, contractors and subcontractors in order to identify critical success factors for whole life performance assessment (WLPA). Using a relative importance index, the top ten critical factors for each category, from the perspective of project participants, were analyzed and ranked. Their agreement on those categories and factors were analyzed using Spearman's rank correlation. All participants identify “Type of Project” as the most common critical factor in the eight categories for WLPA. Using the relative index ranking technique and weighted average methods, it was found that the most critical individual factors in each category were: “clarity of contract” (scope); “fixed construction period” (time); “precise project budget estimate” (cost); “material quality” (quality); “mutual/trusting relationships” (contract/administration); “leadership/team management” (human resource); and “management of work safety on site” (health and safety). There was relatively a high agreement on these categories among all participants. Obviously, with 80 critical factors of WLPA, there is a stronger positive relationship between client and contactor rather than contractor and subcontractor, client and subcontractor. Putting these critical factors into a criteria matrix can facilitate an initial framework of WLPA in order to aid decision making in the public sector in South Korea for evaluation/selection process of a construction project at the bid stage.